Animals

I was in the kitchen, using the faucet, which is a single handle style. I pushed down on the handle, like I always have, and it kind of made a snapping noise. NOW the handle doesn't turn the water off. You have to push down on the stem with the faucet turned to a 90 degree angle and the stars have to be aligned, and... no it isn't really that hard to turn off the water, but it just doesn't work like it should. Whereas I used to just push the handle down, now I have to concentrate and twist and push at the same time. We are working on getting it fixed, but until then, I forget that the faucet is broken until I hear water running, and realize that I didn't get it turned off all the way. Bother.

Katie can now jump. Not really high or anything, but she has the concept down. She can also say, "pleeessssse", "There you are!", "Thank you", "Who is that?", "Here I am", and "Peek-A-Boo!" (as shown in the picture below). She loves to hide behind doors and wait for us to find her. A couple of times it almost scares me because I don't hear her, and she won't answer me, because that would give her location away.
She also has the other words already in her vocabulary. Funnily enough, she hasn't quite figured out words like water, or drink, or hungry. Maybe she has, but I haven't heard them in a context I understand.

She has been terrified of sitting on her potty chair. When we first got it (4 months ago) I put her on it, and it scared her and she screams anytime I try to even suggest that she sit on it. All that to say that yesterday, in the morning, she still objected, even though there was candy involved. Throughout the day, we put one of her dolls on it, and then Katie sat on it! She had all her clothes on, but still, I felt that was real progress. Then, she agreed to take off her diaper and sit on her potty. Very exciting! I'm realizing how funny it is that I'm excited about such trivial things. Oh well.




I have a friend that loaned me a Baby Einstein DVD of animals, and Katie absolutely loves it! She just sat through the whole 1/2 hour watching it. It has 3 animals for each part of the video. The first part is "Animals in my house". As we were watching it, it introduces cat, dogs, and I would assume, birds, but no, it chooses mice. Now, wouldn't most homes NOT have mice?
One, for cleanliness factors, and Two, because there was a cat living there?



The other day, Katie and I opened the garage door and saw a plastic-looking snake on the driveway. Of course, it wasn't fake, and started moving. I was worried because I didn't know what kind of snake it was, or what to do with it. As Katie and I were watching it, Josh rode by on his scooter. We called him over, and he kept Katie away from the snake while I found a bucket to put it in. By the time we got the snake to a house that had raised snakes in the past, we had about 12 kids running around trying to see the snake, and then, after it had been determined to be safe, catch it also. Poor snake.


In my quest to be more economical, I decided to buy a pork shoulder roast, with the bone-in. I figured I would be putting it in the crockpot, so it was a good buy to get the roast with the bone-in, because it was cheaper. I picked a fairly large-sized one, with what looked like lots of fat on it. Looking back at the purchase, I'm not sure why I got one with lots of fat on it. I knew I would just be cutting the fat off before I cooked it. Well, I get it home, and open the package. I went to put it in the crockpot, and realize the fat feels kinda weird. Like leather. Oh wait. It probably IS leather. Like the pig's skin. Ugh!

So, not wanting to be squeamish I try to cut the skin off. Which isn't very easy, let me tell you. I finally got it off, seriously after at least 30 minutes, and put it in the crockpot. And guess what? Yep, it was too big. So I pulled it out AGAIN, and try to cut through the bone with my knife. I'm sure you are laughing at this point, but I was pretty frustrated. Cutting through a bone isn't as easy as it looks like. Well, it might be if you had a good knife. But, I didn't. After 10 minutes of that, I realize that this is a SHOULDER roast. Oh, so I can cut through the joint, right? Well, it mostly worked. The hardest part was when I realized it was a shoulder, and I could actually visualize where it would be on the pig. You know, the foot would go down here, and the rest of it's body goes here... That was about the clincher. I like meat, but I do NOT want to associate it with animals. They should be distinctly different things, and never remind me of the other.
After this distraction, I ended up with it scrunched into the crockpot, with a heavy glass bowl overturned on top, holding the lid down until it cooked enough to settle in the pot. Not my finest hour and a half, I can tell you. All this to say that I am planning on spending the 20 cents more a pound for a roast without a bone-in.

I just clicked on the "More Shortcuts" link on the blogger page, and noticed the bottom shortcut is for the Hindi transliteration feature. What? Are there that many people out there that need to have the feature? For those that aren't sure what transliteration means, this is a quote from the page:
"Note that this is not the same as translation -- it is the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning. For example, typing "hamesha" transliterates into Hindi as:
End Quote. I mean, it goes into how to use the on screen keyboard and everything. I was just blown away. Apparently there is a whole "feature" out there that needs a shortcut, and I'm fairly positive I will NEVER use it.