Fare update

As I suspected, airlines charge more for Valentine's Day weekend trips to Orlando. The weekend before and the weekend after are cheaper, or at least the cheap fares are still available.

Paint and petulance

It has been a long time since I updated, so you probably gave up checking it, but here it is. Summer is almost over and it's time to wring out the bits of commentary that have been sloshing around my brain.

That isn't my cat, but the message is the same. I have been painting, and the first day I had the roller pan out Not strolled through it. Fortunately I found the footprints on the rug and kitchen floor in time to avoid them becoming permanent, but since then I have to lock him up when I get out the brush and paint. He would rather investigate what I'm doing than eat, and I don't want to replace a rug.

School starts Wednesday for the one that's still in school. The other is busy looking for full-time work with benefits. I have been walking a fine line between too much help and letting her figure it out for herself. Having just gone through a job search in recent years I do have some expertise to offer, but I risk looking controlling, at least from her point of view. I have been called a hypocrite (I'm not even sure what the exact context was, it was just part of a bitchy rant), accused of wanting to pry into every detail of her life (because I ask her, when I finally see her at 11pm, what she did that day), snarled at for circling possible jobs in the paper. Then she will come and apologize. What I do doesn't vary as much as how she reacts to it. I am leaving as much of it in her hands as possible so that she can learn. I even offered to help with trash boyfriend's resume, which I'm sure has hugely exaggerated his abilities, since he needs a job too. With him with a GED and her with just a high school degree it will be interesting to see what they end up with. Her latest interview was for a receptionist for a car dealer, which might need a better wardrobe, so I suggested consignment shops. She and Trash want to get a place together some day, which I can't really prevent once she's 18, but it will take them a long time to afford it. It will be interesting to see if he can pass drug tests if he does get hired somewhere.

I looked into airfare to Orlando for Feb., and it's not as cheap as I had hoped. What, do people go to Disneyland to get married on Valentine's day?

I spent my vacation painting my living room/hallway/stairway a beautiful sky blue with white trim. Apparently the kids never knew that the walls were light blue - they thought they were white. Both of them approve the color, rare agreement with me. Boy helped with the furniture moving and roller work. I only used one coat, so we had to do some hole patrol - looking for the pale holes in the blue that indicated incomplete coverage. The hardest part was the trim - it needs two coats to cover the previous medium blue, and baseboard is hard since one knee doesn't bend enough to sit cross-legged for long. There are 4 doorways in the hallway, 3 at the top of the stairs, baseboard everywhere, windows which I am saving for last, and heat vents - too much woodwork for my sanity. But most of it is done. The windows have not been done in about 20 years - I skipped them last time, which was about 12 years ago (yeah, I'm a lazy slut). I might need to strip away what's there, which still bears wear from dog feet and has old adhesive from attempts to seal out cold air. Not only that, but there are big holes cut in the molding from the people who lived here before - they had louvered blinds on the bottom half, and didn't understand how to use the hinges, so they cut the molding to attach them instead of turning them around to attach properly. So now cold air blows in through the holes in the molding. I'm thinking of some serious quantities of wood putty and some careful sculpting. This whole thing has been the kind of upheaval in the house that I just didn't want to contemplate before divorce because of the fuss that it would cause. Things were out of place in the living room for at least 4-5 days and I'm still not done after a week, and there would have been whining like crazy.

I took a day off in the middle of that to take the Boy to Dorney. It was the best weather possible, and we had a blast because he learned to love looping roller coasters. The only downside was that some things were closed or short staffed because so many kids had gone back to college, but we had a good time anyway.

I made blueberry muffins with Grandmommy's sour cream blueberry cake recipe. Even converted to gluten-free this recipe rocks. Especially yummy to eat raw. I crockpotted a big batch of eggplant parmesan - not quite the same without breading and frying first, but I threw some gf breadcrumbs in between layers and it was good. The mozzarella I sliced didn't melt and spread, so I get it in chewy chunks, which is actually quite good. The boy just left with his dad for a few days, so I'll be living on the eggplant parm and huge salads for a few days - I got a head of red leaf lettuce the size of a laundry basket at the farmer's market today. I made peach crumble last week - hard unripe peaches treated like apple crumb pie. I just put a loaf of "gluten-free multigrain miracle bread" in the oven. I have to stop baking because then I eat it. Bad carbs, bad!