So Sean made this nifty Facebook app that autoposts to Facebook whenever I blog. In theory, it works. This post is to see if it actually works.
Author: Phoebe Gleeson
house!
We’ve found a house to buy! It’s not one I’ve posted about, but one my mother discovered and we fell in love with. Now comes the packing-and-moving part, which is not so much with the fun. But! House!
I’ll try to get some good pictures. It has HIGH ceilings in the living/dining and the master bedroom. And a huge rock fireplace. And the previous owner had a big organic vegetable garden and compost bin!
I’m very excited.
Peak Oil!
I’ve been reading these Peak Oil bloggers lately and getting nervous. Tabitha tells me not to read them because I’m already doing everything I should be so why make myself fret, and Sean just mocks them, but I can’t stop! Sigh.
Reading about [Cuba’s Special Period](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period).
Gil is sick, girls’ haircuts
Gilbert is sick. He might have picked it up at Capitol Day, or somewhere else, who knows. He woke up puking. In a large family such as mine the domino effect lives large, so I’m preparing for the other five to sick up. I’m washing my hands every time I have anything to do with Gilbert in the fervent hope I can avoid this myself. Siiiiigh.
Today’s events include: caring for Gilbert, washing my hands every three minutes, baking that bread I made last night, which is about to overflow the bowl by this point, and the bulk of my day will be prepping for the Oncoming Sick. I have to make sure everything not washable is put away for a week or until the sickness fades so it won’t get puked on. Also making sure all the towels and prefolds are washed.
In other news, Faith and Abby got haircuts yesterday and they both look soooo cute! Abby got a stacked bob/wedge and Faith got a blunt cut right above her shoulders. Tres chic.
adventures in breadmaking
I made bread dough tonight. I’ve started making it at night, then putting it in the refrigerator to rise overnight. In the morning I take it out and punch it down and put it in loaf pans for a second rise and poof! Easy peasy bread.
Speaking of pans I found some I love. I had been using Pyrex loaf pans, but I only had two and two loaves of bread last a day around here. So I make three loaves worth, but the third loaf was always a problem. Sometimes I just free-formed it and baked it in an 8×8 Pyrex dish, sometimes I turned it into sixteen small round rolls in the 8×8 dish, and sometimes I put 1/3 of the dough back in the fridge to wait its turn for one of the loaf pans. The obvious solution to this problem would have been to buy another Pyrex loaf pan but I couldn’t find one shaped right. So, I bought this kind instead
My bread recipe:
– 2.5 cups warm water
– 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
– 1 tablespoon salt
– 4 tablespoons oil
– 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
– 2 eggs
– 3 cups whole wheat flour
– 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
I mix everything but the flour together in a large bowl. Then I dump in 8 cups of flour, keeping a half-cup of all-purpose back to knead with. Mix the dough in the bowl with a big wooden spoon until you just can’t, then dump it out on a table and work in that last half-cup of flour with your hands. You should knead it for ten minutes or so, it’ll get very silky and smooth. Plop it back in the bowl and cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning it will be very, very risen. Take it out, punch it down, and shape it into loaves and put them in oiled loaf pans. Cover them up with plastic wrap and let them rise til they’re about twice as big. Take off the wrap, put them in a 350 degree oven and bake until they’re a nice deep brown, about 40-45 minutes. Makes 3 one and a half pound loaves of bread.
creeeak
Hey yall.
I’m blogging over at feebeeglee.com. It’s rough around the edges yet; Sean’s redding it up real nice though. He’ll tell you all about it at his blog. Also, head on over to Swell 3D while you’re at it, if you want to see exactly how shiny he can make stuff when he tries.
“Don’t you get it? I am Mrs. Nesbitt!”
Gonna get this
for Trixie for her birthday. She will be delighted. Right now she sets up elaborate scenarios with Gloria, a stuffed bunny, and a doll but she’s forced to use regular cups instead of a tea set.
One lump or two?
a retraction, musings on winter coats, Capitol Day
Sean said last night that he didn’t resist the idea of a fifteen year mortgage, he just didn’t fall over with girlish enthusiasm. So, there you go.
There are some decent sales on winter coats right now at Lands’ End. I had a coupon for free shipping, so even though the budget is tight until we get our taxes back I bought one for Bede. His current coat is flimsy, poorly made, and bulky without warmth. Really a crummy excuse for a coat. It’s from Wal-Mart (or is that Walmart, now?) and I can say with confidence that we will not buy any more coats from them unless they go up in quality. Really, it’s just junk. Not that they’re alone in that. Why do coat manufacturers think that bulk = warmth?
So Bede gets a new coat midseason. No big deal. One nice thing about having so many kids is the handmedown factor, and this will be worn by at least two of his younger sibs.
Today I need to bake some cookies and decide whether to freeze leftover chili or use it for enchiladas tonight. Enchiladas are winning. I also want to set aside some time to look into different options for midwifery training, but that may not be in the cards for today.
Sean and Gilbert are at Capitol Day for homeschoolers. We have some asinine bills proposed this year that restrict homeschooling, so I hope the turnout was good.
trixie, repelling dipes, future plans
Trixie is wearing a Jayne hat and a grey sweater, both knitted my me, and a pair of maroon sweatpants, and a swimsuit, and her Chucks. She’s ready for anything!
I’ve had trouble with Gloria’s diapers repelling because they had all gotten oily from diaper ointment. I stripped them with superhot water but it didn’t help. I had to wash them all by hand, sliding each one over my hand like a flipper and rubbing them against each other with a little dishsoap. It was tedious but it worked. Moral of this story: don’t use ointment with your cloth diapers without a liner.
We found a house to try to buy! I sure hope we can get it. We have no credit so we are not great mortgage candidates, but it’s owner will carry and we have a nice chunk for a down payment. I’m really pushing for a fifteen year mortgage but Sean is resistant. He says if we get thirty year we can pay it off early. My problem with that is, well, we never pay more than we have to on anything, so the notion that we’ll double our payments is humorous.
I think I’m going to become a midwife. I think I’d be a pretty good midwife.
Ice Cream for Breakfast Day
grinchified
baking again
Today I baked a gross of cookies. Not gross cookies, but 144 cookies. Twelve dozen! They won’t last, but good cookies are meant to be ephemeral.
(This is where a beautiful photograph of the cookies goes, artfully stacked, pleasantly lumpy. But I’m sure your imagination is even better than the real thing would be, which would be a crummy artificially lit picture shot in my dreary kitchen.)
And yesterday I made bread for the first time in a while. We’d been doing without because we had a plumbing emergency that meant I had to be a chambermaid and then four of the wee Glees got strep and then I got strep, and well, I was finally back up to snuff again to bake bread and rolls.
I love doing all our baking. I didn’t want to buy even one loaf of store bread because it tastes so bad after months of our bread, and we didn’t! We did break down and buy store cookies.
Gloria went and turned two. My baby is two!
same old same old
Not particpating in a discussion doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I guess discussion isn’t the right prase. I’m talking about something that has no established dialogue.
I’m so tired. Autism and homeschooling are being debated. What will happento the autistic children today, when they become adults who still need support, help? The people today are deciding that, with radically different agendas. Saying they all want what’s best for their kids doesn’t cover it, when the “best” in question (or the Best, which is another story!) is not agreed upon.
In Oklahoma there are two bills introduced that would curtail homeschooling freedom. One is a pain in the neck – yearly registration. It won’t pass but it wouldn’t be a big deal if it did. Sure, chinks in walls, etc etc. But still. The other one says that homeschoolers have to provide appropriate education to their kids, where appropriate is defined as the same subjects and the same time spent as a public school. That would bring Oklahoma into the select group of states that are horrible to homeschool in. It won’t pass either.
But I’m tired. I don’t want to fight. Why do these things happen? Sigh.
Trixie’s language
Trixie adds extra syllables to words.
Clow-us is close
Ow-ut is out
Hur-ut is hurt
Cay-at is cat.
She needs a doctor’s kit for her birthday I think, too. Unrelated to the above.
She’s totally not obedient. I know some of it is her age and some of it is just her. And she does not do well with reproof or correction. I’m trying to keep her right next to me for much of the day so i can encourage the formation of new habits that don’t involve squishing the cat or socking her siblings. Or taunting them until they sock her. Today was the first day of the new routine and she doesn’t exactly like it. She was fine until she realized she HAD to stay with me. Then the screaming began.
New year, new URL
Welcome to feebeeglee.com, your source for feebeeglee and feebeeglee accessories.
We’ve had quite a time of it the last few weeks. We now have all new plumbing throughout the house and three kids almost recovered from strep throat, impetigo, and scarlet fever, with bonus meningitis scare. Not a good scene.
The good news of the last few weeks is: we are moving this year. To a yet-to-be built house, even.
The lot we want is in Mustang, about ten miles from here. They say the house will be done by June. The builder is the premier [green builder in Oklahoma](http://www.ideal-homes.com/) so my crunchy heart is happy. Since it’s not built yet, we got to pick a floorplan, and we will get to pick everything else too. Massively exciting! The monthly amount to live in the new house will be the same as we pay to rent here, if not a little less.
So far I’m leaning toward laminate flooring everywhere but the bathrooms. I despise carpet.
My first blog post
Beatrice Anna
Alarmingly Buttery Brown Sugar Cookies
We made these today. Bede loves rolling the little dough balls in sugar (we used red, green and white) and we have now eaten enough to be faintly ill. Oof. He got so into it though, the whole process of dough ball to sugar to sheet, and patiently waited his turn between the other kids. Good times.
Brown Sugar Sugar Cookies – Large Family Edition
5.5 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups butter
2.5 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
Small amount of white sugar for garnish, optional
Make sure the butter is really soft. Cream the butter and the brown sugar, then add the eggs. Add the flour a cup or two at a time, and add the baking soda and powder along the way. Roll the dough in tablespoon-sized balls, then roll in sugar if you like. Place on baking sheet and bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Makes a lot, but we ate too many to get an accurate count, sorry. 80 cookies? 90?
heart attack
One day at a time
Having a rough time around here these days. I don’t post much about the extremely difficult times parenting an autistic child can bring, in large part out of fear that I am invading Bede’s privacy, but I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking that it is all roses here all the time.
In the last month Bede has had difficulty regulating his sensory needs and has been mentally and emotionally inflexible. It started with the toilet woes we experienced. I thought it would improve once it was fixed (ish) but it has gotten worse. He is having meltdowns several times a day and sensory seeking in very problematic ways. He’s biting the skin off of the soles of his feet. He’s unable to move past things without a lot of upset for all.
I’m really worn out.
Usually, he goes through a period of dysregulation and then has an enormous developmental gain. Kind of an autistic quantum leap. The last time this happened he learned to use the toilet consistently, began wearing clothes and taught himself to transliterate Arabic and Hebrew. I told a friend today that he was in safe mode, where none of the network settings are right and the resolution is all weird. But soon he’d reboot and be a whole new version of his OS! She said I was a nerd. I don’t know what will happen this time. I have a feeling it will be a good thing overall for Bede but is so hard for him right now.
When you live this life that I live you have to learn to let go of your expectations. To be pleased when something changes in a positive way and not dismayed by it remaining the same or regressing. I’d say it’s very Zen if I knew what that meant. But I don’t.
I’m still learning to let go of expectations. A while back I let go of the one that said my oldest son would do anything more than what he can do today. I try to be just fine with Bede as he is right this very minute; if he doesn’t change I’m okay with that.
That took a long time to be okay with.
Now I have to learn to let go of another expectation, ironic in light of the first: that Bede will always be the way he is today. Because the other side of that first expectation is the assumption that there will only be stasis or forward motion, no backsliding. We’re backsliding here. I knew intellectually that that’s very common in autistic children but I wasn’t ready for it.
So anyway, that’s where we are, and why I’m quiet. Trudging the road of happy destiny and loving my beautiful kids where they are, all of them.
0675
The Drifters – White Christmas
Love this! Enjoy.
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more about "The Drifters – White Christmas", posted with vodpod
My dad and his grandson, Gilbert
The cat who came for Christmas
This is a cat. She came to our porch and cried, and it was very cold, and we let her in.
Faith immediately fell deeply in love with her. Before she was here ten minutes I knew she would be here for the rest of her life. She lets Gloria lug her about and doesn’t flicker a whisker at Bede moaning and running back and forth.
Her name is Mistyfoot.
Also. I love Sean. I went and told him about the new addition, waking him from a sound sleep in the process.
“Sean.”
“mnhf…”
“Sean, there’s a cat in our kitchen.”
“What?”
“There’s a cat. In our kitchen. She’s staying.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Do I need to go to the store for anything?”
What a guy.
Complicated Gallifreyan Bede
cookie conquerors
We baked chocolate chip cookies today with MY NEW COOKIE SCOOP WOOT and they are fan dan tastic. Gilbert helped me put them on the sheet and in true Little Red Hen fashion everyone helped eat them.
I know I keep promising pictures of mittens. I promise I’ll post some. Soon. In the meantime here is Faith holding Gloria who fell asleep in her lap with bonus Christmas tree.
AWW.
furnace
It’s been pretty chilly here, 30s and 20s. We have an old house, built before such modern contrivances as insulation or central heat and air, and our systems are very much a kluge. The air conditioners are temperamental and Sean has to baby them all summer. They reward us by giving us marginally cooler air and exorbitant electric bills.
In winter we have the two furnaces to cozen along. The upstairs unit that heats our bedrooms is pretty decent and has given us little trouble, but the basement furnace is a prima donna that works when it feels like it. Our basement is a horrible place, full of cave spiders, moldy dank darkness and grues. Sean is understandably reluctant to venture there, but will if he has to.
“But Fee,” you are thinking. “Don’t you rent?”
Yes, yes we do. However the plumbing caused our landlord so damn much expense in November that we are loath to bother him. In the past we have had furnace repairmen out, they have tinkered with the contraption, gotten it to work, and left. Then three days later we have a warm spell of 40s and it doesn’t run for twelve hours… or ever again. Repeat.
We had been pretending that winter didn’t really exist but when the temperature downstairs hit 55F even Sean admitted that it was a bit cold. So this year we gave up on the basement furnace and got two little portable radiators for the downstairs. It’s just the living room that gets really cold; the kitchen cookstove heats the kitchen and dining room nicely.
Anyway, my point is, it is a toasty, reliable, 70 degrees in here now. Aaah.
food dye: why, again?
We’ve had a rough day. It may be confirmation bias showing to say what I think is the reason why: food coloring. Today, for the first time is a long time, the kids had copious amounts of your friends and mine: FDC Red 40, Blue 1 and Yellows 5 and 6. And Gilbert and Bede were, ah, difficult to parent today.
So there’s that. Or they could be coming down with something. Or maybe they’re just Little Boys 5 and 6.
Ah, Gloria wants to nurse. Perhaps I’ll write more later. Project: Mittens 2009 is coming along nicely, for those playing along at home. I’ll get pictures tomorrow when the light is nicer.
Abby reads to the littles
full day
Whew, long day. Visited by another plumber, Sophia and Josh and their friend Jess. Planned visit from other niece and her kids on Thursday. Fixed turkey enchiladas for dinner, kissed Sean goodbye as he ran out the door to his night class, fed the children who didn’t care for the enchiladas (pbjs). Knit on Abby’s mittens, take 2, as the mitten I completed last night does not fit an actual human (maybe the Librarian) (ook.) Teach me to knit without measuring the recipient.
Jess was just delightful. She listened to Faith and Abby talk about their drawings, played with Gilbert, and admired all the other wee Glees. We hope to see her again, soon!
Now nursing the G-Lo, and this one-handed typing is for the birds. Over and out.