I don't exaggerate

Korea is out there. I can't make this stuff up. My former coworker recently posted this picture. This is from one of the work books. My coworker had to do this lesson with 12 year olds. 

I wasn't sure if it was a legit story in Korea, or an SLP original. I did some googling, and I'm still not sure. There were other people who wrote about it, but I think most of them were teachers at other SLP schools in Korea, who were using the same workbook. 

Either way, I'm not horribly surprised. One of the pages in the workbook I used with my preschoolers was about a boy who ate too much junk food and got diarrhea. My babies spoke English well, considering they were 5 and 6 years old. But diarrhea was not in their vocabulary yet. So naturally as we were reading that story, the first thing they asked was "What is diarrhea?" Thanks SLP. 

Dust Bowlin'

On December 21, I wrote a post complaining about the lack of Christmas snow. I took this picture. Notice the grass. It's kind of green, which is weird for December.

A few minutes ago, I took this picture. The grass was greener in December than it is now, in July. Mother Nature, we have a problem. Rain please. However, on the plus side this drought has given us a delightfully mosquito free summer with very minimal mowing. No joke, I've mowed twice since May. 

I've been doing some baking lately for Niel & Shorty's BBQ. This morning I made some chocolate chip bowl cookies, to go with their homemade ice cream. I impress myself sometimes. I think my dad liked this recipe because there was some trial and error as I figured out how much dough it took to make a bowl, so there were lots of rejects. As I was baking, I had a couple of thoughts. And since my thoughts/opinions are fact, I will share them with you. 

Thought 1

Homemade chocolate chip cookies are the best. For real. Growing up, I never remember there ever being a bag of Chips Ahoy in the house. I desperately wanted them. I'm not sure why, but I did. I probably wanted to fit in with the other kids in my class at lunch. What was I thinking? So uniform! So much less delicious! That doesn't taste like chocolate! I feel this way towards all store bought desserts vs. their homemade counterparts, but especially those. Maybe it's because homemade chocolate chip cookies are SO good, but I'm actually legit offended by Chips Ahoy cookies. Where is the delicious buttery brown sugar taste? Those are not cookies. Ugh, and don't even get me started on store bought pies. 

Thought 2

Dear Food Bloggers, as fascinating as your prerecipe background stories about how you craved this food during your pregnancy and now it's Junior's favorite, and as artsy fartsy as all your photos of all the ingredients arranged around the mixing bowl are, I don't want to waste ink printing them. Please put a link to a printable page with your recipe. I've been getting a lot of my Niel & Shorty dessert recipes from baking blogs. Food bloggers need to spend less time uploading macro shots of  two eggs laying on a flour bed in a bright orange mixing bowl and more time putting "PRINTABLE RECIPE" links on their pages. I guess I could copy and paste the recipe into a word document, but come on. Does anyone actually read/care about the food someone you don't know cooked for her future husband on their first date, and how she has made this cake for him every year since then? No. I didn't think so. Give the people what they want, please. 

hiatus

 I haven't abandoned this. I just haven't had much motivation/inspiration to write anything in the past month. I actually have 4 half written entries saved, and they were shaping up to go nowhere, so they will probably remain in the draft folder forever. Hopefully soon I'll feel a bit of motivation again, but in the meantime, here's a few pictures.

4th of July was a bit warm! I guess this is what we get for enjoying 80 degree days in March. But it was a great day nonetheless. I went swimming, ate grilled food, and watched fireworks. What more could a person want for the 4th of July? 

3 years ago this month, this kitty showed up at our house. He was fur and bones, so scared of people, and most importantly had a bunch of extra toes on each paw. Eliza and I started feeding him, and thankfully he stayed because he is the sweetest buddy. He is no longer fur and bones. He is way less scared of people. And he is still polydactyl.  He is a little slow ("I wish he were 20 times smarter so he'd be like a normal cat" is how my dad describes him), and lacking the usual quickness and agility of cats. But one of my favorite things about him is that his tongue hangs out a lot. Usually it's just the tip, but last night this happened.