7-Quick Takes

  Join Jen and the other Quicktakers over at the Conversion Diary.

1.  After we buried our stillborn son back in 2002, we bought a beautiful angel statue to put on his grave.  It was particularly relavent to or child because this statue was of a young baby posing restfully on his side with his little hand under his face – the exact position our child assumed at death and the way he was laid to rest. So I was shocked and hurt when I went out to the cemetery one day and found that the angel statue had been taken! I have never seen one like it since.

So my eyes really perked up this morning when I found this story about an Ohio woman who got caught on camera taking a stuffed animal from a baby’s grave.  Turns out, it’s illegal to do so!

 I think I’ll print that out and tape it to anything else we ever dare to leave out at the grave site!   Glad they caught her!

2.  My nephew outed me as a bad cook this morning on Facebook!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way in life. It’s that it is a mortal sin to think poorly of your mother’s/wife’s cooking. Even if it is bad, you don’t say so or even think so if you don’t want to suffer the consequences. This is one of the reason’s I may be called to be a priest because I have a knack for being too honest and I refuse to tell a white lie even it means staying in my mother’s good books. I don’t know how my uncle and step dad walk the tight rope at dinner time every night. Must be by the grace of God lol

What the heck??!!!!

So I immediately called up Mr. Pete to tell him about it and to ask him if he really has to choke down the things I fix him every night for dinner. He assured me that he loves almost everything I prepare- except for peanut chicken – and that’s a story that deserves to be told as it has entered the realm of family lore.

3.  When I was a new bride on a very, very, very limited budget, I found a recipe for “Peanut chicken.”  It looked interesting so I decided to give it a whirl.  It’s just that it called for a certain kind of liquor, and a special ingredient here and there, and I didn’t have any of that stuff.

So I used what I had.

When Mr. Pete came home that night we sat down to my creation, and he started to eat it heartily.  But I couldn’t.  It was awful and when I admitted it, so did he.  We ended up throwing it all out.

Fast forward about 15 years, and I find a recipe in the paper for a different version of peanut chicken.  This time I followed the directions to the letter and used all of the ingredients it called for.  And I truly thought it was delicious.

The problem was that Mr. Pete had told the peanut chicken story so often to our kids, that when I served this version of it, none of them would touch it! Noah and Izzy go on and on about how horrible it was although I’m pretty sure Noah was still a nursing infant when I made it the second time, and Izzy wasn’t even born yet.  And to this day “Peanut chicken” is synonymous with terrible food or a recipe that doesn’t turn out. Every disaster is compared with Peanut chicken… i.e., “Is it better or worse than peanut chicken.”

4.  I know a certain nephew who will be bringing his own food for dinner from now on!!!

5.  I am losing my math tutor.  I’m pretty sure.  He is changing jobs and moving and I’m pretty sure that after the summer he won’t be willing to teach any more.  This terrifies me in ways I can’t even explain.  Math has never been my thing.  I can get my kids through 8th grade with Saxon math, but I have relied heavily on my tutor to get the kids through high school.

But maybe I’m getting better.   I took this math quiz the other day and got 12 out of 15.

6.  My right-brained daughter is doing well in math. I read the text to her, and then try to figure out what the $&*# I just read, while she just looks at the sample problems and figures out what the text was trying to say.  Right brain – looks for patterns – great in algebra!
I’m glad it works for her.

BTW, I’m gonna check out Teaching Textbooks for next year.

7.