The Reason Portions Of My Dissertation Won't Contain The Letters "q," "w," "a," "s," "z," x," and "c"

Bleh

I've been really tired all day. I didn't sleep well last night and I haven't taken a nap. At this point in time, I don't want to, either. Regardless, my brain just isn't functioning anymore. So, this picture (taken by my niece last week) of Chewie pretty much sums up how I feel about this tired rainy gloomy excuse of a day.

Does A Happy Dance

That would be one Cherokee Purple tomato on the left and one Old German tomato on the right. And yes, they are very good!!!

A Short Tale From Yesterday

I spent yesterday afternoon with my niece and nephew, and later had dinner with the family. It was a gorgeous day - somewhat overcast, nice breeze, about 70 F. We were at my parents, who live about 1/4 mile from a soft serve ice cream place.
So, I suggested that we put Chewie on a leash, walk to Dairy Freeze, and have a treat. My mother thought we were being a little "adventurous" since there isn't a sidewalk (oh, the horror and danger of walking where there are no sidewalks!!!), but we went anyway and she even came along.

As you can see, a large part of the walk can be taken on a cart path at the golf course along the way. This isn't exactly dangerous. Anyway, we had our ice cream and the guy working there even gave Chewie a little treat - a small cup of ice cream with a dog biscuit on top. He enjoyed his treat.




Behind the Dairy Freeze is a small cemetery. I decided that I'd like to take a picture of a statue in it, so my niece came along with me while my mom, my nephew, and Chewie waited outside the gate. Nephew gets a little freaked out by cemeteries and my mother thought it would be improper to take Chewie. It isn't like I was planning to go off the pathways and let him "mark" someone's grave, but she didn't think it would be "right" so he stayed outside the grounds with them. (fwiw, this cemetery is so small that we could easily see that there was no one there to be offended - except, perhaps, for the dead folks).

Anyway, while we were there, we also took a quick look at a small mausoleum.
My niece liked it and decided that she wanted one. I told her to tell her mother and thought that was the end of the conversation. It wasn't, but we'll get to that in a bit.

As I mentioned, there is a golf course along the way. Next to the cemetery is a shed that belongs to the golf course. As we passed it, my nephew (age 9) asked, "Is that where they take out the heart and lungs and brain before they bury people?" We all looked at him with surprise. Apparently, he's getting his information from movies with aliens in them. He wasn't very clear, but he got this idea from either Independence Day or Men in Black. Note to self: kids this age probably won't understand everything that's going on in pg-13 films, especially in terms of what's real and what's not when it comes to the difference between the way dead alien bodies and dead human bodies are treated. We tried to set him straight, but I'm not sure how much of the truth actually sunk in.

Cemetery and dead body talk ended, we arrived back at the house and the kids played for most of the afternoon.
I shucked corn, my mom picked sugar snap peas from the garden, and the kids played with bubble stuff. A fairly calm afternoon.

Dinner was excellent. However, while we were eating, my niece said, "Mom, I have something to tell you." I suddenly thought, "Uh oh!" She told her mother that when she dies, she wants a mausoleum. Also, could her mom please pay for it since niece doesn't have the money for that sort of thing (she's 12).

I'm pretty sure my sister blames me for this. There was definitely a glare directed at me. I could barely keep myself from laughing. I couldn't bring myself to tell her about the conversation we had with her son about removing organs from dead bodies. Perhaps I should have, though. Just another normal dinner conversation with the family.

Progress - Fourth of July Food Edition

So far today I have:

• Completed the grocery shopping. At 9:30 am the supermarket was already packed.
• Went to the butcher shop. Meats have been purchased, as well as several pickled eggs for my father.
  
• Soaked dry beans overnight.
  
• Boiled the soaked beans this morning.
• Cooking beans with other ingredients in the crock pot for the next 9 hours.
  
• Fried bacon bits for the broccoli-bacon salad.
  

What I still need to do today:

• Make salsa.
• Cut pork into kabob-size pieces.
  
• Make marinade for pork (later tonight) and combine with pork.
• Clean!!!!!
• Furminate the cats.
• Figure out what I'm going to put all of this food in/on

Tomorrow I need to:

• Cut peppers and onions for the skewers.
• Wash cherry tomatoes for the skewers
  
• Prepare the skewers.
• Squeeze 2 cups of lemon juice out of lemons for homemade lemonade.
• Prepare broccoli-bacon salad
• Get ice for the coolers
• Place beer and soda in freshly iced coolers.
• Table-top prep.

And probably a bunch of other stuff that I'll remember at the last minute.