Fire Safety Month Hazards

Yesterday my neighbor told me about how on Wednesday, her 9 year old son's friend decided to take the sheets-tied-together method of exiting the house from the 2nd story window over the concrete patio. He denied it, but thankfully nothing awful happened. Fire Safety month tends to do that to people, I guess. It reminded me of a situation 2 years ago...

We had checked a book out from the library about Fire Safety, called "Stop, Drop, and Roll." The kids loved to read it together, so one morning when I was in the bathroom and heard them chanting that phrase, I didn't think much of it. But seconds later, when the house was filled with smoke, I extinguished the small fire on the kitchen table and it was time for questioning. Seems that my little pyros decided to take the candle burning down from up high and ignite some paper with the flame, to see how good their fire safety response would be. Matthew was 18 months at the time and they ran away into the corners, leaving their younger brother with the fire. No lasting damage, but I was pretty mad.

They were definitely P for Punished. So we are a little extra cautious during Fire Safety Month.

How did my foot get in my mouth when I didn't even open it?

Our house is directly behind the high school. This has many advantages (huge field to play in that we don't have to take care of, soccer practice for both girls is just outside the backyard gate, etc), but a few disadvantages as well (band/drumline practice at 7 am, loud Friday night football games). One disadvantage is that on occasion, kids have cut through our yard on the way to school. I have only seen it happen once, but who knows what goes on when I'm not around to look?

Wednesday morning found me looking oh-so-lovely in my holey pajamas, rumpled hair and glasses as Matthew and I were dragging out the recycling bins. I looked up when a young man called out "Good morning," as he walked directly toward my back gate. I gave him the hairy eyeball, saying in body language, "You've got some nerve!" He stopped and pointed to his shirt- "Atmos Energy!"

Whoops. Too full of humble pie to respond. Well, he'll get over it- that's happened to me so many times, when others have thought me much younger than I am. Like my sister visiting us from AZ, who was ID'd when buying spray paint (with Felicity, Katrina and Matthew in tow) because they weren't sure she was 18 (she's 24).

Our pepper plant was disqualified from the Olympics

We counted 17 peppers growing on this thing today! Compared to a measly 1 on the other plant, this one is clearly on steroids. The garden this year has been very odd. The cucumbers and peppers are pretty much the only producers, although we had 2 rather measly bean harvests and more than enough basil. No survivors from squash or watermelon, and a pathetic showing from the tomatoes. There is a small green one on the Last of the Tomato Plants, but we'll see if the birds don't get it first. Today I found a half-eaten cucumber and I don't think it was the ants who were consuming. Wish we'd planted some lettuce to have farther into the winter months, but it's already October, so we'll just wait until February.

Fall Desserts

My neighbor and I agreed today, 'Tis the Season to be a jolly size. After all, it's autumn and some of us feel like hibernating soon. This is the time of year that I really enjoy making desserts. Of course I always feel like eating dessert, but sometimes I'm just not in the mood to create yummy food and then have the hassle of cleaning the kitchen afterward. However, as the weather turns, it puts me in a festive mood and suddenly turning on the oven doesn't seem like such an irresponsible thing to do.

I wanted to remember the things I've been making so here's a picture of this weeks' dessert fare.

From left: Cinammon rolls with maple frosting, apple crisp, and pumpkin swirl cheesecakeI need to give credit to Mark for peeling and cutting all the apples for the apple crisp. He's right, it's the hardest part of this dessert.

My notes... These were some of my better rolls. I didn't give in to the temptation to keep adding flour, so they were not dense like they usually are. The maple frosting was a last-minute improvisation because I didn't have any more cream cheese, having used it up in the day before's cheesecake. We were all surprised that just a few drops of maple flavoring into butter/pwd. sugar frosting would make it that good.

The cheesecake was nice, but a lot of work. (Part of it was that Katrina was helping.) Tasted kind of like a blend of pumpkin pie and cheesecake. Not too light and not too heavy. I had to substitute since it called for 1/2 cup brandy and we did not have that. Not knowing what to substitute, I put in 1/4 cup brown sugar and some almond flavoring. It was probably totally off.

The apple crisp was okay. We make this one all the time, because it's brainless and doesn't even require a recipe anymore. So it should be perfected, but the oven got turned off somewhere in the middle, so we had no clue how done it was and played the oven roulette game. Consequently, the "crisp" had mushy apples. Also not enough apples. Mark likes a lot of crisp though so he was satisfied.

Daddy's Occupation

When I was a little girl, I never seemed to know how to explain what my father did for a living. He is an information systems professor, although at the time, I only knew a couple of catch phrases like "databases" and "computers" and "business". I think it's also a pretty good excuse that in the 80s, information systems were not as commonly known of as they are now. To illustrate: my dad has never taken a course in computers or in business, but has a PhD in mathematics and experience in the business world working with developing information systems.

That's background for the conversation Katrina and I had last night. We were reading the book Meet My Grandmother, She's a Supreme Court Justice, and Katrina started talking about her dad (Mark), who has "an insulting job for Deloitte."

"A what?"

"A...a Deloitte job."

"What does Daddy do at his job?"

"He goes to people's houses and tells them how to be better."

So Katrina's concept of Mark's job is that by insulting people, he inspires them to change. Well at least she got the -sulting job for Deloitte part right. And "con" does seem like it would worsen the meaning as a prefix.

More Stale Pix

One of our family theme songs is "Sweet Home Alabama," because it is in fact, Mark's home. We went and visited at the end of July, and got to see some of Mark's friends and relations who were around. Most of them have stayed right there in Bessemer, which is a few miles outside of Birmingham. Mark had to work a lot, as did everyone else, so it was pretty quiet. We went to visit his grandmother one night at her home. They call her "MaDear" (pronounced: madeah), short for Mother Dear.

Here she is again at Sunday dinner, with Tehrea, Aunt Reta, Arcola (Nana), Rewa, and Mark with Max in the background.


Mark's sister, Rewa, aka Tee Tee Rewa, lives in Atlanta. She's pretty busy as an assistant district attorney and mother of 2, but she came out to visit for the weekend, and brought Kel and Kayla to meet their new cousin Max. We were all astonished at how much Kayla and Max resemble each other. Here are the "mock twins"sitting on their Nana's lap:

It's her first birthday today (Happy Birthday Kayla!), so they are only a few months apart.

On Sundays, they all gather together after their various churches they go to and have a southern meal. They don't call it southern food though, they call it regular food. We had macaroni & cheese, turkey & dressing, collard greens, fried corn, sweet potato souffle, banana pudding, 7up cake, and lots of other low-cal items. It's good but we usually can't move for several hours afterwards. I was so happy that we actually got nearly everyone out on the front steps for a group picture. Mark's dad didn't make it.


And one last shot of Nikea holding Max. He proved to be a popular baby, since he's pretty happy most of the time and shares smiles so readily. I don't mind having such a sociable child, especially since the other 3 are pretty time-consuming...unless "Family Feud" is on, hosted by none other than Mr. Peterman.

The First Day of School...a month late

I lost my camera for a little while, so I got panicked and had to slap up a bunch of pictures, regardless of how hopelessly out of date they are. These ones actually aren't so dated, they are just from this August, when Mark stayed home to take the kids to the first day of school:

Matthew looks pretty happy to be awake, dresesd, and fed by 7:30 am.

Whereas Max is still in his Sunday clothes. What can we say, he takes after his Uncle Brian.

Katrina was pretty excited (but too cool to show it) for the first day of Kindergarten
with the lovely Miss Lawson:

Here's Felicity, right outside her classroom. She has Mrs. Kinney this year, who told me today that if we get sick of her, Felicity can move to her house. Interesting how (some) children behave better at school than at home. But we'll keep her.