Time Stamp

If you had asked me at 8am this morning, I would have told you that today was going to be a horrible, no good, very bad day. At almost 9pm, I'm here to tell you it rocked.

• 6:45 am: Mr. Man wakes up in our bed [We've instituted Friday family bed night.] and asks if he can go play. The answer is always a definitive yes because he occupies himself while his lame ass mommies get a few more minutes of sleep.



• 7:30 am: Mr. Man comes back from his room and announces he wants breakfast. I get up and make him oatmeal. I eat leftover mushroom stroganoff from last night's dinner.



• 7:45 am: Mr. Man decides he wants to watch the rest of the Heffalump Movie which came yesterday from Netflix. (Sue us - he finally succumbed to the damn ads that precede the one and only video he owns - Mary Poppins.)



• 8:00 am: If the Heffalump Movie isn't bad enough, the cat decides to take the mother of all dumps. The stench wafts through the apartment. Some of you who know our cat may remember that he neither remembers to fully cover his shit or to take a shit gracefully. You might also remember that he has very long hair. Chalk this up to a cat smearing shit around the kitchen floor at 8am in the morning. I am tired. I have cramps. I am hormonal. I run to the sleeping wife and insist she must come help me. I clean the cat shit off the kitchen floor only to find that he'll continue smearing it around until we get the gobs off of his tail. The wife and I trap him in a tub full of water. This is the only positive use I have found for sliding shower doors. Yes, it sounds cruel, but we leave him in there until he's sloshed around enough to get the shit off his tail. We've covered the bathroom floor with towels to soak up the shit water that is likely to come off of him when he emerges. (Trust me - we've done this before.) Fortunately he comes out clean. Let's just say I was a tad bitchy to the wife during this process. Mr. Man is all the while watching the Heffalump Movie.



• 8:30 am: The three of us snuggling on the couch conclude the viewing of the Heffalump Movie. We go to the bonus features on the DVD and find a recipe for the type of cookie the Heffalump likes. Pumplerumkins or something stupid like that. Mr. Man decides we should make them.



• 9:00 am: The baking commences, followed closely by a coffee and cookie breakfast.



• 9:30 am: I scrub the kitchen floor. My wife goes back to bed.



• 10:00 am: Mr. Man and I begin making salt dough for holiday ornaments. We rolled out the dough, used cookie cutters and Mr. Man put all the holes in each one so we could insert a string when they're finished. The first two dozen ornaments are baking and we make braided candy cane ornaments with metal hangers with the rest of the dough.



• 12:30 pm: I begin making a menu and a grocery list for the week. I hear the gate open and there's a knock at the door. The woman from NWVeg has come to deliver the basket of goodies we won at the Vegan Holiday Festival two weekends ago. It was like Christmas. In the basket was 2 books about food, a cookbook I really wanted, a bar of soap, a gift certificate to a vegan grocer, 3 boxes of Fantastic food mixes, 2 cans of Amy's lentil soup, a head of garlic, an acorn squash, 3 gravy mixes, 2 Peanut Better peanut butter spreads and 2 Bumble Bars. I might even be forgetting something. It was awesome. My wife rouses herself to come see and we sit down to a bit of lunch.



• 2:00 pm: I get input from everyone and finally finish my weekly menu plan and grocery list. The list is massive. I slowly entice Mr. Man to come to the store with me. We have no idea how we will carry everything back home the 3 blocks from the store.



• 3:30 pm: Mr. Man and I finally finish shopping. He got tired of pushing the cart and eventually climbed in the cart. I piled everything on top of him. Our cart was overflowing. We checked out and I asked the clerk to pack as compactly as possible since we were on foot. By the fifth full bag he said, just take the cart home. I said, okay, we'll bring it back. "No, don't bother bringing it back, he advised. We give the homeless $1 for every cart they return." There was a dilemma I wasn't expecting. Mr. Man loved pushing the cart three blocks home. As it was I carried one bag and the cart was still full of bags. We had to work tag team to get the cart up the hill to our house. We wheeled the grocery cart right up to our door and unloaded it. What fun.



• 4:00 pm: I proceed to reorganize the fridge and pantry to make room for all the food I bought.



• 5:00 pm: I begin making vegetable chowder for dinner. Mr. Man decides he wants to eat the pomegranate we bought at the store. None of us has ever had a fresh pomegranate. My wife conducts internet research so we know what to do with it.



• 5:30 pm: The pomegranate has been scored and is soaking so we can easily peel of the husk to reveal the juicy kernels. We have agreed to sprinkle the seeds over ice cream for desert. In the meantime we eat dinner. The vegetable chowder was okay, but not the best recipe to come out of the Uncheese Cookbook.



• 6:00 pm: We all strip the pomegranate seeds from inside the fruit and have dessert. I loved the seeds. Mr. Man was 75/25 in favor and I think my wife was the opposite. Nonetheless we had a great time with a new fruit.



• 6:30 pm: We attempt a family game of Parcheesi, but Mr. Man tires and we suspend play.



• 7:00 pm: Mr. Man goes to bed. I venture out into the blustery, cold night with a shopping cart. I return it to the store and pick up the tea we forgot to get.



• 7:30 pm: I watch the tail end of the Veronica Mars episodes my wife is watching.



• 9:00 pm: My wife is in the tub. I'm in bed under blankets. I might go make almond biscotti. I might curl up with my sparkly clean wife in bed.