A To-Do List

-- *BRING BOOK*
-- ask Allie what color her room is
-- decorate locker
-- go to pool
-- wash t-shirt
-- *FIX CIRCLE NECKLACE!*

My 10-year-old son found the above list in his library book. He showed it to me and we laughed and laughed. There is just something about finding other people's lists -- I just like it. Other people's agenda can be quite interesting. Like the time I found the list that Jon's centenarian aunt had made before a very special dinner and left in the cookbook that I inherited. I'm not sure, but I think that Aunt Jenny must have had a very exceptional meal that night. And, Jon and I agreed that if the above list was our list, well, we'd knock it out in like 5 minutes and spend the rest of the day drinking sweet tea or maybe margaritas.

Sleepy Conversations
My youngest is still taking a nap on most days. Today he told me that he was tired around noon and by one o'clock (after we read several books) he was in dreamland. The problem is that he wants to stay up late if I let his nap go overlong. So lately I've been trying to wake up the little darling. This leads to some funny exchanges.

Me: Hey, Sweet Boy, time for you to wakey-wakey.
4th son: sniff
Me: Little Barlow, you need to wake up now.
4th son: sniff I smell cheese.

He sits up and the conversations continues.
Me: What do you smell?
4th son: I smell cheesy cheese from da moon.
Me: Really? The moon has cheese?
4th son: Yes, the moon has wots of cheesy cheese, you know. I wuv cheese. sniff

Recap
So, please believe me when I tell you that I know what day of the week it is. I didn't really know that yesterday was Thursday but I definitely do know that today is Friday. And this differs from last week when I lost Friday altogether. So I guess that is an improvement?

Summer + Scatterbrains = Not knowing the day of the week

It's sad but true. Anyway, the reason that I'm saying this is that I thought the So You Think You Can Dance competition was last night -- not the results show. But, thanks to our handy Tivo, we watched both shows last night. Perhaps I'll do it like that next week on purpose so that I won't have to spend a day wondering who will get the boot.

My favorite dancers this year are Joshua, Will, Twitch, Mark, Gev, Kherington and Katie. From Wednesday's show, I thought that the dance of the night was a toss-up between the hip hop routine of Twitch and Kherington and the samba done by Joshua and Katie. I also really enjoyed the routine done by Mark and Chelsie. The Tabitha and Napoleon routines from this year have been really successful -- I hope that they are choreographing again this week. That is about it....as far as eliminations go, well, I don't really understand the judges, I thought that they let the two more capable dancers from the bottom 2 couples go, but of course, I don't know everything that goes into the decision making process.

If you don't watch this show, well, I think that you should.

My Favorite Show
So You Think You Can Dance is my favorite, FAVORITE show this summer. Talk about talent....these dancers have it. I already have my favorites. I hope that they do well tonight. And, if Nigel can take a chill pill AND keep his seat -- well, that would be great.

Recap tomorrow.

You Probably Know About This Already,
but there are some free movie opportunities in St. Louis this summer. Wehrenberg theaters are offering the ones that are totally free -- so I suggest that you go there.

I also suggest that you get there an hour before the start time so that you can get a good seat. Because if you don't, well, the front row will have your name on it. Guess how old you have to be to dislike sitting on the front row? I thought that it was 34, but judging from the complaining (with reason, I might add) from children around me, I think that the age might be 4.3 years.

We all came home with aching necks and the ambition of being earlier next time.

This is Good Cake
I got this recipe from Pioneer Woman and then I tweaked it. It isn't a pretty cake but it is really good, serves a crowd, and is done in less than an hour. And, if at any point you don't understand my crazy directions, just click on over to Pioneer Woman because she takes pretty pictures of the cake and all the steps. And, in case you're wondering, my addition to the recipe is cinnamon and my alteration is Kahlua instead of vanilla.

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, whisk together:
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/4 t. salt
1 1/2 t. cinnamon

Meanwhile, melt 2 sticks of salted butter in a saucepan. Add 4 heaping T. of cocoa and stir. Add 1 cup boiling water to the cocoa/butter mixture and allow to boil for 30 seconds before turning off the heat. Pour this over the flour mixture and stir it together lightly.

In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup buttermilk, 1 t. baking soda and 1 t. Kahlua and 2 beaten eggs. Stir this into the mixture of flour/cocoa mixture until it is blended. Pour in a half sheet pan, like this one and bake for 20 minutes.

While the cake is baking, wash out the saucepan. Then, melt 1 3/4 sticks butter in the saucepan. When the butter is melted, stir in 4 heaping T. of cocoa. Take the pan off the heat. Now add 6 T. milk, 1 T. Kahlua, and about 4 cups confectioner's sugar. (I usually sift the confectioner's sugar to make sure there are no lumps. You can also put a bunch of chopped pecans in the icing. I don't because of my picky people and because I figure the cake has enough fat as it is.)
Pour the icing over the cake right after you take it out of the oven. Spread the layer out evenly.

And then you have to try to practice self-control until the cake is cool -- or not.

I Made Mint Juleps Today
Do you know what I found out? I don't like mint juleps. This is sort of a no-brainer, but if you don't like bourbon, then you probably won't like mint juleps.

Guess that I'll be using my mint for some other use. I would try mojitos, but that won't work either, because even though I like rum, I don't like sugary drinks and I'm not the biggest fan of soda water.

All right. I'm going to stop now since I'm sounding like a really picky person. I guess that it's just that I go for beer and wine more than mixed drinks.

So....any suggestions on how to use my mint?

Something Interesting
I just finished reading The Mayor of Casterbridge. This is the first time I've read a novel by Thomas Hardy. It was a fine novel, but I think that I've had enough depressing, darkly fascinating, and tragic reading lately.

The reason that I'm bringing up the novel is really probably just a curious coincidence. In chapter 20, just a few paragraphs from the beginning, Hardy uses 2 words in a paragraph that are very interesting, to me at least. What are these two words? The words are: dumbledores and hagrid. I kid you not. And I'm sure that numerous Rowling fans have noticed this before me. Like I said, I thought it was interesting.

Enough with depressing books.....on to P.G. Wodehouse.

The Perfect Moviegoing Experience -- With Children
We're back from visiting Alabama. While there we drank way too much coke, ate loads of watermelon and ribs and other wonderful foods, visited with dear friends and family, hiked a gorgeous canyon and visited this gem of Americana...



This is the drive-in movie theater in my hometown. I took two of my boys there on Sunday night to see Kung Fu Panda.

Every time I take my children there for a movie it just makes me wish SO MUCH that we had something like this in St. Louis. My children love movies and I would like to take them much more often if this was the way....why? Because it cost us 10 bucks, total, to get in. Because you can bring your own food and drinks -- no more $4 cokes. Because the children are enclosed in a vehicle and their talking will not bother anyone but you -- and, let's face it, they are going to bother you anyway, so you can't really count that one.

But do you know my favorite thing? It is the Southern/small town nature of the whole experience. The way the colored lights around the concession stand come on when the credits roll, the way you can swing on the swings while watching a movie if you wish, the way the good-ole-boy announcer comes on between features and says something like this:

Hey, y'all, thanks so much for coming out to see our shows tonight. Now, we're going to have us few trailers after the first feature and then we'll get that Indiana Jones all spooled up for y'all. Now, I don't know what features we're goin' to have next week, but we're goin' to get some real good ones for y'all. Like I said, it's goin' to take us a few minutes to get the Indiana Jones all spooled up so y'all just be patient and thanks for coming to the drive-in tonight.

In Order to Move the Photo Down a Bit
That isn't my sole purpose, of course, but it does play a part.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm currently reading the essays of E.B. White. They are great. It is a volume of essays that he chose and edited himself. He really was a wonderful writer.

One essay of the book deals with his remembrances of his professor and friend Will Strunk. He was asked, after the essay originally appeared in 1957, to revise and amplify the Elements of Style so that it might be reissued. White said that this task, which he thought would take him a month's time, took over a year to complete. White said of Strunk's little book, "Its vigor is unimpaired, and for sheer pith I think it probably sets a record that is not likely to be broken."

I wonder what Strunk would think of all of the writing on the internet when I read a quotation from him like this:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.


What do you think?

For Harry Potter Fans...
here is a link to a prequel story about James and Sirius that J.K. Rowling wrote in a collection of short stories (along with like 13 other authors) for auction.

I can't wait for the anthology to come out. I'm sure that it'll be years, though.

Curly Girl
I don't know why I'm thinking about hair today, but I am. Maybe it's because Jon cut 3 inches off of my hair last night? He did a really good job. Curly hair is so easy.

The funny thing about my hair is this -- I didn't even know that I had curly hair until I was like 13. All I knew before that was that whenever I had my hair in braids or a pony tail, I would start out the morning looking smooth and sleek and end the day with a halo of frizz.


See? Halo of frizz, check.

And then one day I went swimming, didn't comb my hair and looked in the mirror several hours later and discovered ringlets. On my head. What a revelation.

Now, when one has curly hair, you have to give up a few things. Looking sleek and smooth -- it's not going to happen without a lot of effort and time, hair products and electrical gadgets. We all know how lazy I am with those types of things so I just let the urge to have sleek hair pass.

With curly hair, you also give up your brush and comb. What? That's right, curly girls should never brush their hair. No. That is how you get the old halo frizz effect going. It does nothing for your curls.

Finally, with curly hair, it is important to always use conditioner the lower half of your hair and finger comb it through before rinsing. That, and using a product like this one to style. Seriously, this is my favorite hair product -- the best thing for curly hair.

So, like I said, I don't know why I was inspired to do the curly hair tutorial here -- and it's not like I know everything about it, of course I don't -- but well there it is, anyway.