Happy Picture. Enjoy!

You'll Eat It and You'll Like It

In an effort to force chicken onto the Hubs (due to this), I just threw an entire chicken in the crock-pot. The reasoning being:
A.) We have about 10 things that will be happening in the later afternoon and I have no idea when we will get to dinner so it needs to just be ready.
B.) I'm sick of waiting for fall to dig out my crock-pot
C.) I've never done a entire bird in there and I'm sort of curious what will happen.
and
D.) Dude better learn to like chicken again because it was cheap at Costco and I have a hen-house-worth of birds and drummies in the freezer.

I'll let you know how it goes!

UPDATE: He ate it and he said he liked it but I'm pretty sure that was a lie. I could feel it.
So tonight, we had chicken again. Ha!

Chicken Hate

The other night during dinner the hubs informed me, "I don't think I like chicken anymore."

While we were eating chicken.

So you don't like the easiest most standard meat anymore? The one that is always in the freezer. Always available to do something with. Can always be made into a nutritious dinner.

Son of a...

And now I have decided I hate making dinner. So WTF am I suppose to make tonight?

No Soliciting!

I know I can't be the only one that feels this way which just makes the concept of door-to-door anything even more confusing to me. I don't need anything anyone can sell me by coming to my door. If I want it, the internets or Target can provide it to me.

Even though any time a solicitor came to the door it would enrage the hubs and me because they would NEVER take no for an answer even with our rabid dog barking, a kid on my hip and a kitchen timer blaring. And even though we never bought a single thing from any solicitor other than our 5 year old neighbor. And even though I always had a slight fear that solicitors were either casing the joint or eyeing us up as some sort of target in a weird scheme, we still held off on putting up a "No Soliciting" sign. We sort of felt like jerks putting one up. What's less welcoming than a sign that basically says, "Get the ef out, we don't want to talk to you!"?

And then some rumors started flying about a woman going door-to-door in our city under the intention of selling children's books. The rumors in our 'hood were that this "woman with a strange accent" was actually a scout in a sex trafficking ring (what!?) and she was finding out which homes had children by offering these fab reading materials (ah!?) and then she would later kidnap the kids that she thought would be beneficial to her crime (shut the ef up!). Not cool. So that day I made a trip to Fleet Farm for an $.89 "No Soliciting" sign, I even picked up a couple for the neighbors because it was time we ALL become jerks for the sake of our kiddos! I promptly stuck our sign on the siding next to the front door. "No way strange lady, you aren't allowed to knock on this door!" Neighbors started putting out the little security system signs in their yards for the systems that they had disconnected years ago. No, they hadn't hooked them back up but those signs are pretty threatening! Curtains started to be drawn more. Front doors closed. Lock down peeps!
Four years of bitching about people coming door to door without us doing a single thing about it. 5 minutes of neighborhood gossip and it. is. on.

And then we found out it was just that. Neighborhood gossip. The woman in question was registered with the city and worked for a legit company. Yes, she was asking people about other houses in the area that had kids but that was because houses with kids were her target demo. So now we all look like asses. Jerky asses.

We kept our "No Soliciting" sign up because A.) I still don't need anything that can be sold to me at my door. B.) I hate dealing with our rabid dog when people come to the door. C.) That sticker is really good quality and I can't get it off the damn siding.

Do you have a "No Soliciting" sign? Is it a jerky thing? And honestly, has ANYONE reading this EVER been happy that they received a visit at their front door from some dude peddling his wares? Creepers.

Summer Squash

The #backyardfarm is ramping up for some super sweet fall harvesting....

And my summer squash is getting to be embarrassing.

Honestly, we have FAR too many for us to use but I feel a little like a perv walking over to the neighbor's with them.

Luckily I found this recipe today and was able to kill one giant squash by making a double batch. Nom nom nom.
http://recipesforsustenance.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/summer-squash-bread/

Cabin Life

As a kid I spent most weekends in the summer with my family at my grandparents' house "up north". The Cabin. It was glorious! I was in my swimsuit for 90% of the stay, could eat whatever I wanted, drink gallons of soda, play outside with the dog all day and stay up until the wee hours of the night watching nonsense on TV. This past weekend the hubs and I took Little Bear on his first mini-family vacation to a cabin and some not-so-romanticized memories came flooding back to me.

• The sand - Seriously, sand everywhere. So much damn sand. In every article of clothing. In Little Bear's diaper. In the diaper bag that I barely even used while we were there. The only thing more prevalent than the sand was the...
• Sap - How is there sap on every surface!? I would walk across the kitchen floor and somehow step in a huge drip. Are there pine trees in the damn cabin!? Where is this shit coming from!? At one point there was a giant glob on the inside of my arm. I'm ghost pale there. Sunlight doesn't even reach there. How the eff did sap get there!?
• The water stank - What IS that!? By far the worst thing. I remember hating that smell as a kid and it was so much worse as an adult. I'm guessing part of the reason is that the pipes at our rental are used much less than the pipes at my childhood cabin were, the other reason is that I now have to use the stanky ass water WAY more. Dishes. Bathing the kid. (Nearly impossible to do without him catching on that the water smells and then being anti-bath. Smile and scrub. Push through. Don't react!) Cooking. Rinsing stuff. Making coffee. (Which we eventually ended up using four bottles of water for. Sorry earth.) Washing my hands/brushing teeth. (Let's be real, we all know we do those things way more now than we did as kids.) I actually gagged while doing dishes. Pathetic, I know. I can change a blow-out diaper or be vomited on by my kid but cabin water stank almost makes me hurl. I didn't even bother to shower while we were there for fear I wouldn't make it out without puking on myself. Yep, I would rather be full of my own nastiness from 2 days of 90 degree weather and lake scum than suds up in cabin stank water. Worst part, the smell is everywhere. We stopped at a diner an hour or so after starting the trek home and both the hubs and I smelled it there too. Luckily we noticed it AFTER we had plowed through our omelets.  
• Bugs - Somehow ok when I'm up north? A spider crawls up our bedroom wall at home and I scream for the hubs or feel all creepy crawly for an hour. At a cabin I simply nod props to the spider for having such sweet digs and we both move along with our day. Honestly, it was more his home than ours so who am I to stomp him dead?
• Fish - I'm pretty sure I used to fish off a dock using corn from a rusty ass can I dug out of my grandma's cellar. It had probably expired in 1982. And I ALWAYS caught fish in no time. Little Bear's grandma got him a fancy new pole (which the hubs and I totally stole), fancy fake bate and fancy Spiderman bobbers. We caught two fish. Tiny ones. It was sad. Little Bear still thought it was fun but the hubs and I felt slightly robbed. 

Apart from those things, the trip was lovely and totally worth doing again but at least next year I will be more prepared for aaaaaall that.

Welcome!

Away we go, folks!