We Grew Carrots...But Not Good Ones

The title pretty much says what happened. On a bit of a whim I planted some carrot seeds and when nothing came up I replanted the row with cucumbers. So halfway through the summer, in between all the cucumber vines, here come these carrot greens growing strong and healthy. My mother-in-law gave me the seeds and told me that when she went to harvest her carrots, they were tiny stumpy nubs, so to leave mine in the ground, which I did. I finally brought them in after Halloween. Here's the entire carrot harvest, from largest to smallest. I was just pleased something grew at all. We...didn't eat the little guys.

Oh, and that IS my big fat old belly there, at the bottom of the picture. Sometimes I think I'm not that huge-looking, and then something will happen like this picture, and I'll know for sure that, yep, I'm tremendous in size. Anyway, here's to a better carrot harvest next year! Cheers!

Tomato Harvest After All

I was really disappointed when it got all frosty one night many weeks ago, so I had Seth go on out to the garden and just retrieve all the tomatoes that were on the bushes, green though they were. He brought them in all in a big bucket and just left the bucket on the kitchen floor. Not too much faith they would actually do much, eh? A couple days later I had a party in here, so I had to clean up stuff. There's not a real good way to make a big old bucket of green tomatoes look party-ish, so I used my Design Sense and lined them all up on the windowsills in the kitchen, living room, and my room. They looked pretty cute, I thought.

So but they sat there, very green and very hard for many many days. And then a couple of them began to blush, just a wee bit. And then the blushers got red. And then MORE started to blush! And it went from there, to where we had some getting actually ripe. My idea in planting five tomato bushes was that we would have an abundant harvest and process them into canning jars or whatnot. But obviously, with that plan dashed, we were still able to have an abundant harvest! I am still pretty pleased with this. Some went the way of all the earth before we were able to consume them, may they rest in pieces out by the tree where Seth chucks bad fruit. Some I made into a colossal batch of homemade tomato soup, which took me SO LONG that I had to put it away for several days before I got up the gumption to get it out and finish making it. Eric actually dug it pretty well and asked for seconds and asked to have it again. Seth said it was really strong, which it was.

Some we were able to use in salad or tacos. And the last of them I ingeniously used to make homemade spaghetti sauce, which when mixed with a can of regular sauce, was not too strong. Pretty good, actually. There was a ton of it and we had it for dinner two times in four days.

So Tomato Bounty after all that worry! It wasn't a nine-dollar salad tomato after all! With all these other brothers and sisters going ripe long after the fact, the average price-per tomato actually went down to where I would consider it a tomato bargain! And, sorry Seth, next year I'm planning to plant the same number of tomato plants, but suck it up and go get them MUCH earlier in the season, and coddle them and poultry-manure them and reap an even more abundant harvest!!!

Sometimes I Make Stuff that's Ugly

The idea was that it would be a football. It's the third or fourth cake I baked in my P-Chef batter bowl. It came out far, far uglier than the others. It stuck to the bowl and turned into a stupid pile of crumbs when I took it out. And then, to make it even doofier, when I cut it in half, I missed the line of symmetry and ended up with a very lumpy , terrible, lopsided footballish-type thing. After that I was all, Seth I love you, but I am not loving this cake, so Sorry! I just slapped on some homegrown brownish frosting and this is the end result. I even forgot to bring candles to Dorothy's for the party so that's a tealight up top. Delightful smell, though! I believe we were all calling it The Turd Cake. Me especially. Next year, Seth, you'll get a decent, respectable cake. Next year.

Modern Maternity Clothes

When I was pregnant with Eric I got me some super-comfy fun maternity clothes. I still have the shirts but the one beloved pants and the other not-as-beloved pants had to go, for style reasons. They were really comfy clothes, with lots of stretch and forgiveness.

So I'm more moderner now and with Russell I was blessed to be able to go in and buy some modern-day maternity clothes, mostly from Target. So Liz Lange, bless her heart, has these maternity clothes and they're supposed to be all stylish but mom-friendly. I will now review her work.

This isn't going to be a positive review. Liz apparently thinks modern and stylish pregnant moms don't care about a) comfort, b)wedgies, or c)their gut hanging out. I have had problems with all these things while wearing Liz's "maternity" clothes. One big thing is the stretchy panel up front. I avoided this altogether on my first maternities, with Eric. I thought, ewww! stretchy panel! So Liz Lange must think that also, because most of her maternities have a big fat stretchy waist-band that's designed to sit at your actual waist. That's pretty ok when you're not very pregnant. But once you hit actual pregnancy size and shape, it's STUPID!! My main problem with this waistband option is that it's super-uncomfortable having stuff right there all over your already uncomfortable fatty old belly. Then you have a contraction and boop! the whole thing slides right down to your crotch. This is Lame. So I give these pants a thumbs up for style and early-pregnancy comfort, but a thumbs down for late-pregnancy everything. They're great for going home from the hospital, though, when you're still all fatty but not pregnant.

Then the other style of pants Liz does is the "below the belly" waistband. I have one pair of these, that was on sale for like $5.41 or so. They are great, in that they don't give you a wedgie all day nearly as bad as stretchy-panel maternity jeans. BUT the downside is that if you don't want your gut hanging right out from under your shirt, these are not the pants for you. Mostly they just slip right down to the crotch pretty much all the time. So, not that comfy out in public or modest. So bless their heart, these pants were a good attempt to keep that big stretchy waistband off your uncomfortable "belly" but don't turn out to solve the problems.

And shirts. Traditional maternity shirts are big and wide and long and comfy. But they do make you look big and wide and huge and enormous. So modern-day maternity clothes involve little shirts. Little stretchy shirts. Oooh, so cute, look at her little pregnant belly. I despise the word belly and all attempts to make your baby gut something cute. It's really not attractive, people. It's just something you have to do and Look Like for a few months in order to score the real bonanza. So, like the pants, little stretchy maternity shirts are cute and flattering early in pregnancy, when regular clothes are too tight but regular maternity shirts are WAY too big. And then you get to the "actually big and pregnant" stage and they become RIDICULOUS. First, if you do have pants or jeans with a stretchy panel, whop! Here it is right out in everybody's face, because little stretchy modern maternity shirts aren't long enough to cover that fun stretchy ugly panel. It's not good looking and I for one, want it covered. Second, even if there were something cute about a pregnant baby-gut, and it were great to wear a little tight stretchy shirt over it, the shirt should at least COVER the baby-gut. Sweet old Liz Lange wants her modern-day maternity shirts to be short. For lack of a better word. She feels it's more stylish and flattering, which may be true when you're not that pregnant. But when you're big and fatty, like me right now, longer is INFINITELY more flattering. I tried on a modern shirt the other day and it was so ludicrously short and stupid-looking that I took it off instantaneously. I didn't even want Russell to see it on me. Really dumb. Plus I am super uncomfortable all the time, if my shirt is sticking a) on my butt or b) on my tummy. I feel like Big Edna in the movie "UHF" adjusting my shirt down constantly all day. These shorty little shirts are murder for a person like me, adjusting and pulling constantly, all day, all day.

Finally, I have something to say about stretchy panels. Nothing will ever be as comfortable as my first un-stylish maternity pants that I don't have anymore. I now have and wear pants with the stretchy panel. They might-well work for some ladies. Me, myself? I am in a state of constant Wedgie-ness. In my attempt to be cute and stylish, and wear modern-day clothes, I have succumbed to vanity at the expense of comfort. Is having a wedgie all the time comfortable? No. But then almost nothing about being pregnant is comfortable. That sounds like whining and it might be. Proto-whining, maybe. So either I can have a wedgie literally all the time, except right after a wedgie-pick and before moving a muscle, or else I can wear the waistband-down-to-the-crotch Liz Lange pants and have my gut hanging out all the time. I feel justified in a little tiny dash of whining. I do get into my jammies as early in the evenings as I can. They are regular clothes, but nice and stretchy and comfy. They make me look really tubby and I don't care. I rave about their comfort. Two thumbs up for comfort, if only for 9 or 10 hours all in the night.

I Rocked the Vote

Yeah, I voted. Jealous!?

Everyone was all worried that it would be three-hour lines out the door and hassles til Tuesday because of fever-pitch excitement with this election. Seth voted by mail because he would be working in The Springs all this week, over the entire time the polls were open. People waited in line during the last couple weeks for early voting, for hours some of them. I was ready to stand in line, because I didn't want to bring my own little folding chair to sit in line. And I'm SO GLAD I didn't bother.

I walked Jules to school, which is also our polling place. I walked into the special gym-door marked "Voter Entrance." I showed my card, signed my name, and stepped into my computer-voting-booth pretty much instantaneously. I am leery of computer ballots with no paper trail; BUT there was a paper trail on this. Just my name and voter ID stuff, but there was the stack of papers relating to those who had voted on this machine, right there. So, more confident. Everyone was all, there are so many initiatives and amendments on our ballots, voting will be so slow. But instead, I took a little cheat sheet I made up beforehand, after researching the candidates and issues. So that made it go really quickly. I had Russell with me. He just sat on the floor eating a peanut butter sandwich, being so good. I had him come in my little booth and push my "vote" button for me. And then we went home. It was SO FAST. No waiting. No lengthy ballot-reading. Plus a sister from our ward was in the booth right next to ours when I left.

No fuss, not really a lot of muss. During the John Kerry/ W. election, I sat up all night, just chewing my fingernails watching the "coverage" and then the next day I had a humongous headache, because of the stress that had been building up for weeks and months. This time I am determined not to get that headache, even though I live in a 50/50 battleground state. My goal is just not to watch very much of the "coverage." Weren't there any fabulous car-crashes or kidnappings or business-closings today you guys can report on?