Innards, Piths, Pips

I've learned how to bluetooth my phone to my computer, so I can get photos real real easy. Welcome to 2012. Maybe now I'll be able to make Baby Monkey (Going Backwards On A Pig) my ringtone for the midwives.

A sad day

Stellina and Space Monkey's grandfather died this morning. He'd been struggling with illness recently, but I didn't realize it would be so soon.

Stellina has talked a lot about Space Monkey's upcoming first birthday, and she's always said how happy she is that she'll be able to see her mom's parents. I don't know what it's like to be three and a half years old and lose someone who means so much. I do know that on occasion he and I met in person - the day Baby Space Monkey was born - he treated me immediately like family. He loved his children and grandchildren and he is missed by many.

Lessons in the seed of flax and its oil

Look at all that delicious flaxseed oil!

Look then I wiped it all off!

Three things I learned yesterday while doing the first round of flaxseed oiling.

1) My oven preheats to 500 degrees Fahrenheit in 14 minutes,
2) Rubbing flaxseed oil into the pan makes my hands really soft, and
3) Flaxseed oil smells DISGUSTING.

The pan did an hour at 500 degrees, and then I let it cool off in the oven. I haven't looked at it yet, because I went to bed before it cooled all the way down, and then today I took too long in the shower so I had to run out the door to work. My best guess is that it won't look any different, but I'll take a picture anyway.

Look! It's iron-y

After the vinegar for a couple of hours, I scrubbed it more with the SOS thing, which now is just steel wool because all the blue soap crap is gone. You can kind of tell from the picture that the bottom is about halfway stripped completely, and halfway stripped a bunch. I couldn't physically make that other half come off, so... we'll see. The iron is pretty darn bare. Now it is time to go turn off the 200 degree oven from the drying.

I had a little egg pan, someone made it out of cast iron

A few years ago my momma sent me a cast iron egg pan, which comes preseasoned and my mom also did some seasoning for me. Maybe about a year ago one of my roommates somehow managed to coat it in rust. Boo. So, I stripped it with a brillo pad and then reseasoned it with a couple of coats of vegetable oil, like the internet said. When I cook I use butter and then when I'm done I wipe all the extra gunk and oil and stuff out. so, it stays nice and not rusted now, but it gets sticky and gross, and gross. and there's still a spot on it that isn't black, but isn't rusted? I dunno what's up with that.

So, now I am following these instructions for stripping (but not the reseasoning instructions), and I'mma use these instructions for reseasoning with food-grade flaxseed oil.

Here is cast iron before anything! it is shiny but really that is sticky and gross and I don't want that.

see the part that is lighter? Hopefully that bit will go away.

I scrubbed it pretty well with an SOS pad, because I do not want to work with oven cleaner or lye like that site says, but I am going to do the rest of it. so, it got scrubbed, and then put in a 200 degree oven for a while to dry out really well.

Here it is in its vinegar bath:


It is supposed to be 50% vinegar and 50% water but I ran out of vinegar, so it is one extra cup of water. it is probably now 40/60. So, I'll leave it until I get back from work, and maybe turn it over and let it soak some more, and then scrub the rusty bits off, and then proceed to the next step, which I believe involves baking soda or stronger base to counteract acid of vinegar.

The woman who wrote the blog that I linked to up there got her cast iron all the way down to the grey. I clearly did not, it is very much still black except in that patch, and on the bottom, where it's grey. I may do another round of intense brillo scrubbing after the vinegar soaking, and then go from there, we'll see how effective the vinegar bath is.

Having some photo upload issues, I'll try and work on it.

When I am Old I will dye my hair red but not until then.

Sometimes I should not watch the music video for a song that I like.

NYM 938L

We're watching Top Gear and I don't understand half the jokes, because they're all in British.

H is for Helping

Today I watched a solid 25 minutes of Sesame Street while icing my sciatic nerve on the couch. At home. No children present.

I need no defense but if I did, it would be that Grover 2.0 is hilarious.

two thousand what now?

It's winter now all of a sudden and so I think it's time for a round up of the year. Here, read some stuff about somebody else's kids.

Stellina and Space Monkey
Stellina's in school three days a week, and looooves it. Loves wearing the shirt that has the name of her nursery school on it, and would probably wear it every day if her mom let her. So smart, loves her brother, very particular about ... everything. Eats a turkey sandwich for lunch every day, with dill havarti.

Baby Space Monkey, 9 months already! Crawling, drooling, says "mama" but is that just a thing that kids do without knowing?, has four teeth - bottom two central incisors and two top lateral incisors... he looks like he got in a fight. Would love to stand and walk, not quite there. His hair sticks straight up on top because he's got two cowlicks on the back of his head.

I went on a 5-day trip to Florida with these kids a few weeks ago, and it was much less work than I expected. Stellina loves the iPad so that made her portion of the flight really easy, and Mr. McDrool slept on the first flight, and kept the screaming to a minimum on the way back.


Big and Tiny
Tiny is about 14 months, walking, eating everything in sight, signing and talking also, still has barely any hair, and her mom wrote in their Christmas update that Tiny is sunshine in human form, which is all the way accurate. Not so tiny anymore, because of all the eating.

Big is still big and everything. I don't really see him very often because he goes to school.


Baby Bieber Bear
Turned two at the end of October, and talks all the time and is intelligible about 65% of the time. Has gotten to love playschool, and all he wants to do ever is "play cars and trucks and trains" which means sorting through his giant box of vehicles, and sometimes building tracks, sometimes just lining all the vehicles up on the table. We like to go to the library and also to Union Station to watch the MARC trains.


Three Horsechildren of the Apocalpyse
They moved to Alabama a few months ago, which makes me sad but I guess they are doing okay there. I saw them last week at their cousins' house so the parents could go out for dinner, which was hilarious and exhausting, but so nice to see them.

Zannah is 9, and is as string-beany as ever. Loves talking back and doing other delightful pre-teen things.

Prince Philip is 6, reads (!), wrote me a beautiful Christmas card that says he wants me to come visit them in Alabama. My heart grew three sizes that day. He's lost both top two front teeth, so he looks like an older bigger version of Baby Space Monkey, which is hilarious, because they share the same name in real life.

Captain Bananio is insane. He's 3 and a half, is only intelligible 50% of the time, and the rest of the time lives in his own little Bananilicious world. He stomps around and spits and jumps and yells and laughs maniacally and sometimes you just have to shake your head and walk away.

It's been three whole years now since I started watching those kids. Surprisingly, the one who I miss the most is Prince Philip. When Captain Bananio was a baby, he was sweet and docile and calm and all smiles, and Prince Philip was pouty, threw terrible tantrums, whined, and was just kind of a crappy 3 year old. Three years later I see that those tantrums were nothing, when compared to the havoc that Captain Bananio now wreaks on a daily basis. 6-year-old Prince Philip is happy, sweet, loving, and just wants to do things that he can be proud of, like reading and writing. He's still the silly little boy who loves to fight with pretend swords, and man, you should hear that kid recite the plot of Star Wars. I think I'll always have a special attachment to Captain Bananio because he was the first baby I ever watched, and I'll never be able to get over the wonder of watching kids grow up, but Prince Philip has surprised me the most by turning into not just someone I like to take care of, but a person I really like.


The Newest Charge
Now I watch a new baby, who I will call Small Fry, and I love her and she is so cute. She is three months old and what a three months it has been. Her parents are first-timers so they ask advice from me sometimes, which is pretty crazy to think about, that anyone would ask advice from me about anything, much less the rearing of a small infant. She's a good baby, very calm, very observant, very peaceful in the way she watches things. I hope I get to know her for a long time, because I think she will grow up well.

And now what I know about 2012 is that these kids will all get older and bigger, and new babies will come and they also will get older and bigger. For that is what the little ones do best.

November 22!

Whoops, forgot about yesterday. It was a good day, though.

This is my walk home from my new choir which I love love love.


The choir, that is, not my walk home. Though, it is not a bad walk, seeing as how it is a walk, not a 10 mile, 90 minute public transit journey / 30 minute drive, like my old choir was. New choir is SO MUCH BETTER.

November 20!

Another cheating day! I got out my camera to take pictures of some reimbursement forms for my health insurance company, because I don't have a scanner or a copier anymore. so, that's classy. Anyway, I found pictures that I took when I was in Oregon in May and never uploaded because I'm lazy. This is a picture of a girl who was at the Peter Iredale, which is by far my favorite shipwreck.

November 19!

I had to go get my TB test read, so while I waited for the nice CVS Minute Clinic nurse practitioner, I played with filters on my phone camera.

November 18!

Here is a picture of a relatively new baby (7wks), whose name I cannot decide upon yet. She is sleeping in this photo, and she had my finger grasped really hard, so I could leave until she finally relaxed enough to let me go, which happened eventually. It was a difficult nap day that day, so it was good for her to sleep, and less desirable to accidentally wake her up. So, I took pictures of her and waited for her to let my finger go.

November 17!

Today I went to get a police background check and this is what I learned :


woooo!! They can't find any records of my copious arrests! or... something.

Background check and TB test are required for volunteering thing that's coming up.

Took some cute pictures of a cute baby today who doesn't have a blogname yet. I'm still thinking.

November 16!

Baby Space Monkey is getting very big. His first tooth is about halfway in his mouth! well, it's always been there... it's just visible now, or, whatever. He's getting really good at crawling and he really wants to stand and also really likes wiggling back and forth while he's sitting, as if he is learning how to dance. It is excellent. Anyway, these are his hands.

Oh also interesting story. I took that picture of my cat hiding on the stove because it was a new thing, he'd never been on the stove before (to my knowledge), and I thought it was very funny. I probably should have just shoved him off the stove instead of pausing to laugh and take a picture. Today I was cooking ramen and he jumped on the stove and, well, now he's missing a portion of some of his whiskers, and my downstairs smells strongly of singed cat. Funny, also sad, also funny.

November 15!

Here there are irises blooming because we are still having crazy things like 60+ degree days in the middle of November.

November 14!

Believe it or not, this is my cat thinking that he's hiding from the vacuum cleaner.

November 13!

Surprise! Today we have a video of Bear learning how to count diapers.




Two! Six! He has all the animal sounds and all the colors (including silver and gold) down pat, so apparently next we'll work on counting.

November 12!

today I am going to cheat a little bit. I think technically I am supposed to post a photo that I took today, but it's 6pm and I'm still in bed, so really there are no photos to take or post or anything. and, this is a photo I've been meaning to post for a while.

During the weeks of the equinoxes/equinoces?, DC turns into a henge, because we were designed to have streets that line up directly east-west. So if you go stand in the middle of one of the letter streets at sundown on either the vernal or autumnal equinox, the sun sets right down the middle of the street. It is pretty close for the few days before and after, too.

Anyway, here is my photo from the autumnal equinox this year (Sept 23), from L Street, SE:

Also I post this because I miss the long days. Winter Solstice, come quickly!

November 11!

Apparently I am only interested in taking photos every other day!

This was my snack:


Animal crackers and apple juice. So tasty!