What it is?

Can you guess?






"Here's" another "clue."





If you enjoy caption competitions and photographs, you may wish to nip along to"DJ Kirkby" over at "Chez Aspie" and test your brain power.

Woofless in San Jose

I have to admit that as a non dog lover, Thatcher has won me over. His behaviour is so predictable and he is so eminently trainable. He is even tempered and for a puppy, very quiet. For some while I believed that he was a dud because he did not bark, at all, ever. My knowledge of dogs is sadly limited to a handful of unpleasant first hand experiences with vicious guard dogs in South Africa, as well as the wee yipper that lives next door. Of all the things that I know about dogs, one thing for sure is that they bark.

It took some while for him to find his bark and when he finally did, it was so loud, deep and throaty that we all collectively jumped out of our skins. We now all know the occasions when he is likely to bark:- when a stranger enters the property, through the gate, not casual passers by, squirrels, but he’s learning not to, when someone treads on him by accident or when playing with his doggy or human pals.

Quite restrained for any member of our household.

With this in mind, our family enjoys our usual noisy dinner, together at the table one sunny Californian evening. Thatcher lies inert in his bed whilst we discuss fearful things. Who is fearful of what and when and why? It is a heated debate. Each person believes that their own fear is genuine and justifiable, whilst everyone else’s is ludicrous. There is very little common ground. It is probably the first time we have ever managed to be able to have such a discussion, since more usually the mere mention of the trigger word would produce mass meltdowns and abject hysteria.

“I’m only really scared of Black Widow Spiders, not other arachnids, just the Black Widows.”
“Snot fair to pick on one spider!”
“I’m think I’m afraid of pain, personal pain. I have a very low pain threshold.”
“How can you say that when you’ve had four kids Mum? The only thing I’m afraid of is dolls.”
“Dogs? You’re afraided of dogs?”
“Not dogs! Dolls.”
“I can understand that,” adds her husband, “I’m afraid of masks……creepy.”
“Dey are not creepy. Seagulls are creep me out!”
“Nuffin is scary excepting for death.”
“It’s chaos of for me, that’s what I’m afraid of,” adds the head of the household although he addresses Thatcher, not the general company at the table. Thatcher lifts his nose as his ears prick up and tears out of the room, through the kitchen into the family room where he begins to bark, frantic. The boys canter off after him to see the cause of the commotion in the back garden.
“What is it dear?”
"A giant!"
"A giant?"
“Itza ball.”
“What?”
“He is being afraid of dah ball.”
“He’s not afraid of balls! He’ll play catch for hours, he never gets tired out.”
“No! He’s afraid of the ball.”
“What ball? Which ball?”
“Dah one…….dat did be came over dah fence.”
“Oh……it’s great to have such good neighbours. You really need to be more careful where you throw them dear.”
“No.”
“No what?” I put down my knife and fork and go and do what I should have done in the first place.
“See…….dat is not being our ball.”
“My what a windfall!”
“No……not a windfall……a ball fall.”

What is that?

So what is this?





Here's a "clue."


But if that is too tricky, how about this:-





Here are some suggestions:-

a] a dog who continued to drink from the "toilet?"
b] a dog who has put himself up for adoption due to pet "abuse?"
c] a new breed of dog, part dog, part peacock. [Please offer your suggestions]
d] none of the above.


Answers.........

The top one is a picture of guitar strings before they were attached.

The second one is poor Thatcher after his beauty treatment. Maybe it will help them remember which "end" is "which?"




If you enjoy caption competitions and photographs, you may wish to nip along to"DJ Kirkby" over at "Chez Aspie" and test your brain power.

Green Capitalists - step by step guide

How to make paper flower pots from newspaper and then further exploit the enterprise.

This idea was originally from my chum "DJ Kirkby" on her post over "here" but I decided to steal it from her to provide her with the opportunity to sue me for copyright infringement. They're a litigious lot those Brits.


1. You will need a PVC pipe of the right diameter [small, medium, large] a cutting tool and some newspaper.

2. Chop the pipe to the desired height that you want your pot to be.

3. Turn the newspaper diagonally and fold in half for extra strength.



4. Fold over again to the same height as the pipe.

5. turn over the paper and roll the length of the strip around the pipe.

6. several time until you have a couple of inches of tail left.


7. fold upwards.
8. Tuck in the other end, squish it, to form the bottom.

9. tuck in the top tail between one of the folds.

10. Voila! Pots for free.

11. Make loads in advance ready to fill whenever you come across an errant seeding.





This was, necessarily, a joint family enterprise to take account of different people's skills and limitations. Those who were paper averse in the tactile defensiveness department relied upon the fine motor skills of their sister to help fashion the pots.

Then is was the boys' turn to identify the seedlings in the garden. It's easy enough to spot different coloured flowers but it's far more taxing to identify teeny tiny little green plants and to differentiate between them. However with a handy aide memoire clutched in their hot little puds, this too turned out to be easy peasy. Laminate both sides because you know it's going to get muddy and soggy.

N.B. make one for each child to avoid hic-cups.





Then all you have to do is wait a couple of weeks for the seedlings or cuttings to settle in.

After that teach the basic principles of capitalism to your socialists who pocket money is apparently deficient.




Then sit back and watch the competition clean up with baubles for the magpies amongst us.






N.B.B. This post is brought to you via the ability to enjoy outside play.

No finger painting for the tactile defensive child

Hosted by "Tracy" at "Mother May I," but the photo-picture below will whizz you right there with one click.

Just call me snap happy.

If you are with a child that abhors tools such as painting brushes and crayons, someone who MUST remain clean or the OCD will kick in then this is an ideal activity for their suppressed creativity.

All you need is a high sided tray or old cardboard box. Tape a clean sheet of paper to the bottom. Provide shallow dishes of preferred colour paint. Guide the child to plop a marble in the paint, swirl it around gently and then transfer the marble to the paper lined box. If you don't have the right sized / easily manipulable tweezers or tongs to transfer the soggy marble, help out with a teaspoon. The transfer is the challenge for us but once that marble hits the paper then the fun takes over.

This is also a good exercise for eye tracking, balance, challenging the mid-line or it won't roll and all that other good stuff.

Join in and don't forget to visit other participants.

Literal minded

My elder daughter struggles with the smoke billowed barbeque on Mother’s Day. Hot dogs for the wee ones, spicy ones for the adults along with a marinaded Tri Tip Steak, a foreign cut that we have yet to truly fathom.

She is a tour de force. Everything has been planned down to the finest detail to take account of each and everyone’s very personal accommodations. I’m ready to retire I am so impressed.

“There you go!” she beams, “the kiddie sausages are ready so tuck in guys!”
“Agh! Don touch em! Don touch em! Don touch em!”
“Why we are not be touch em! Dey are too hot?”
“No eat dah safe chips. Don eat dah sausages made outta kiddies.”

It’s always so heart warming to see the children looking out for one another! Not so long back siblings weren’t even on the radar. Such a long short time ago.

Today I am also over "here" at "5 Minutes for Special Needs."

SOOC Smiley Saturday

Sadly, things are not quite as cheerful here as they usually are:-

Get the code:-
Cut and paste
from this little
boxy thing below

<a href="http://www.lighteningonline.com/"><img src="http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q158/mmcewen/smiley-saturday-1.jpg" /></a>

Lost Cat
Unis = Tabby and Stripes
Red collar with heart shaped tag.

If found please call [408]............

I'm afraid there aren't many smiles around here today, but maybe if we keep looking......

Keep your fingers crossed for us.

The art of Persuasion

In an ideal world I would send my children off to school each day with a nutritious, organic, salt free, home made, preservative free, high fibre, low fat perfectly balanced lunch and snack. However, I don’t or rather I don’t live in an ideal world and I send my children to school with a bunch of junk. I send my little darlings to school with a bunch of junk on the off-chance that given a less than perfect setting, they may just eat a mouthful or maybe two. Lunch times are noisy and busy and over stimulating and just about everything is more interesting or testing than eating, which is pretty low down on their personal agendas.



Whilst neophobia has been banned from our lives following the 5 year food campaign, it is not a total success. With persuasion and patience he does indeed eat a full panoply of food at home, at dinner time but we are still spoon-feeding him, quite literally. The spoon-feeding will be faded but in the meantime we count are blessings and try not to count his ribs as the clothing campaign still flounders.




It is therefore with some suppressed giggle factor that I take on board the very wise words of another mum. Another mum has witnessed the true vileness of my children’s lunch when she happened, just by chance to be present during the cafeteria madness, otherwise known as luncheon at school. She is of course duly horrified by my indulgence but manages to speak in diplomatic tones since I am so clearly a charity case in need of her no doubt vastly superior nutritional advice.





“It’s just….you know……during STAR testing we want them to have the very best chance.”
“Yes you’re absolutely right.”
“Healthful snacks…..that’s what we recommend.”
“Quite, quite.”
“It’s just that he told me he packs his own……you might just want to check what he chooses.”
“I shall, I shall. I do, I do.”
“It’s great that he’s learned to be so independent.”
“You’re right, very true.”







“It’s a pity the trash cans are right next to the recycling cans.”
“Luckily they can all read very well. The icons are very helpful, eye catching.”
"It's not rocket science but every bit helps."
"You can be sure he'll make the right decision for him."

Cooking lessons with Chicken Little

Clearly it’s an exaggeration, but it’s the nearest I can get to convey the abject panic in the kitchen. Kitchen’s are fraught with dangers for the unwary and the ever so slightly paranoid. The motivation is clear and present, the desire to create something yummy but the overwhelming amount of angst that swirls around the kitchen soon have us both heading up the vortex.

This is primarily due to my own ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and feed the OCD beast within.

Throughout this exercise there is the underlying ghost of tactile defensiveness, the abhorrence of dirty hands. I think there may well be a smidge of this phenomenon in many of us. It’s the reaction we feel when the unexpected happens. We stroll along on our own sweet way, when out of nowhere we find something deeply offensive on our skin. The sensation is so vile that it shocks the conscience, enough to see your own hand in 3-D, ten times it’s normal size, pulsating and alien. It’s the same as being in a concrete car park with no leaf to act as a wipe, no grass to scrape it off, where your only option is to sacrifice your top or your trousers and remain half clad. It’s the preferable option. Slightly preferable to the temptation to chop off the appendage and run away because you forgot to pack your machete. Or at least that’s my interpretation of what I witness daily.

***

The oven farts as the temperature rises, “what is dat sound is being?”
“Oh it’s just the stove coming up to 325. It sounds like it’s about to explode but it won’t.”
“Itz gonna explode? Agh!”
“No, no , no, it’s just a figure of speech. Lets go and crack the eggs, your favourite bit. Stand on the step but don’t wobble or fall off.”
“I am fall off and be hurted myself?”
“No, no, no. Here, concentrate on the eggs. Crack them on the post in the middle of the Cuisinart as it’s less messy but be careful you don’t cut yourself on the blade.”
“I am gonna cut my fingers off?”
“No, no, no. Here lets grease the pan shall we?”
“Grease is dah disgustin. I don wan dah disgustin on my bread!”
It may be only 72 degrees in my Californian kitchen but the beads of stress make it feel like a tinder box. At each and every step we meet with the unexpected or rather the ‘not thoroughly researched and prepared in advance.’ His progress in the art of chefdom is hampered greatly but the adult sized disposable gloves that hang like condoms from each finger. I am now deeply uncertain if this compromise really is an improvement on the alternative two minute hand washing ritual?
As we spoon the mixture into the pan the whole kitchen looks like a war zone but his excitement is palpable. He smacks his lips with exaggerated anticipation and an air of mischief as a centimeter of tongue protrudes.
“You’re not supposed to lick the spoons with the raw cake mixture these days or you might get Salmonella poisoning.” I look at his little furrowed brow. A child who has only eaten real food for about 6 months of his little life, and maybe a baker’s dozen of eggs. Do I really want to wipe out his digestive system with raw eggs?
“I am gonna be poison?”
His eyes are on stalks having navigated the total nightmare of his mother’s death trap clangers. “Tell you what?”
“What?”
“Let’s lick the spoon and see if you get ill?” He looks at the smeared spoon just beneath his nostrils with the captivating combination of cinnamon, vanilla and sugar as fortunately zuchinni appear to have been overwhelmed by the other ingredients. “Do you think it’s worth the risk?” I watch as he squirms and racks his taut and tangled insides, both brain and body. “The hospital’s only a hop, skip and a jump away if anything goes wrong……” After much dog panting, eye squeezing and hand wringing he pounces, envelops the spoon with his mouth as little shivers, fire cracker through his elastic spine. I count, silently, although I’m not quite sure what I’m expecting. “Dat is dah greatest Chef’s triumph….even better dan Elephant Ears.”
“That good indeed!”
“Yes my chocolate chip zucchini bread is being manners from heaven!”

It’s cake actually, but that’s Americans for you.

Someone might be wondering where the other two were during this 30 minute marathon? That’s right! Electronics time was sacrificed in favour of cookery, although to be fair that probably added quite considerably to his angst.

My angst? Well I left out the fact that during this same period, with a cacophony of ‘electronic’s time’ musak, Mr. B was very kindly washing up in our very narrow galley kitchen. Mr. B, a Portuguese speaking Brazilian, had numerous questions regarding the English present tense imperfect. Thatcher had two accidents which needed attention, as puppy training can never be neglected. My daughter arrived home from work, hungry and determined to make cheese rolls in the very same kitchen. All conversational exchanges were fraught due to her waterlogged ears, a mild improvement upon water on the brain. It’s a miracle we all survived. And if that was you who kept phoning and leaving messages, then forgive me as I had the volume turned off.

p.s. I wrote that a week ago. I just thought you might be interested to know that he can now cook without using up a whole box of disposable gloves. I hope Mother Earth takes pity on environmental whores like me?

Here’s a "link" to the recipe we used for "Zucchini Bread" or rather Courgette Cake. We added a cup[ish] of chopped up mangled Walnuts and half a cup of chocolate chips. It’s very, very sweet.

Moluscs with slime on the side

This also tied in with "Works for Me Wednesdays" the "Frugal" Edition.

I actually stole this from "Scribbit" who borrowed it from "Plum Pudding."






Because I am forced to try these things out in advance to iron out any kinks, I can tell you that it works better with thicker skinned hot dogs and thinner pasta, [the link does specify thin pasta but I rarely read labels] anything that cooks more quickly. Whilst normally you would keep pasta a a rolling boil, for this a simmer and then a dunk in iced water works much better.

Now if that isn't the cheapest frugal children's meal around the bazaars at the moment I'll eat my hat, just please don't ask me to eat either the pasta or the hot dogs.





To finish it off a quick Bechamel or cheese sauce would be ideal, especially with a splash of blue food colouring for our swimmy friends. It that doesn't confuse your taste buds nothing will.

Last for those who cannot abide people who play with their food, instead you can just dress it up into a necklace for those more formal occasions.



Lastly, for my son who loves snails almost as much as I like slug pellets......










I cannot begin to describe how much fun my "little chef" and I had making these. Now eating them......well that's quite another matter. Apparently Molluscs are mouthwatering. Who knew?

Thank you "Megan" for giving us such a brilliant time.






If you enjoy caption competitions and photographs, you may wish to nip along to"DJ Kirkby" over at "Chez Aspie" and test your brain power.

How to make a chef's hat

Now surely this is something that everyone needs in their life, regardless of whether you're a gourmand or a cheez whiz kind of a cook. It's really a question of look the part and step into the role.

All you need is some stiff card, seleotape, scissors, measuring tape and five minutes.

Measure the diameter of the head that you wish to adorn and mark that length plus an inch onto the card. Try and find a large piece of old card to re-use rather than recycle.




Cut through the card to a two inch border that will form the head band.




Clip and then tape the headband to overlap one inch.




Reach through the inside and tape the lengths together to form a dome.



Done.



Go on, indulge your child's latest whim. Now that's what I call "positive reinforcement." When I think of how I had the nerve to ask the staff at Flames for one of their "disposable chef's hats," I can feel a blush! What can I say? Pushy Brits. Now that's something I'd never have been brave enough to do a few years ago. There again the real bravery award goes to someone willing to put something on his head!






Don't forget to check out other participants.

On a side note, if you are struggling to pay for therapy for your special needs child, if the insurance has dried up and tossed you to one side, if you ever think for one moment that the whole thing is completely hopeless, takes forever and wonder if you really are doing the right thing.......I'm here to tell you, or rather ask you, to remain hopeful.