Pragmatic Compendium

We’re going to have to tell her.

Soon.

We’re going to have to tell my sweet 7 year old something that will cause her to grieve. It will prompt a sadness in her that I won’t be able drive away with hugs or snuggles. I won’t be able to distract her, to make it better or fix it. It’s a loss she won’t understand. It’s a loss I don’t understand. It just is.

Thank you to Jenn at Mommy Needs Coffee for sharing this amazing post from Breed ‘Em and Weep. It was only after I selected these paragraphs to highlight that I realized Jenn had chosen some of the same words to quote:

Tomorrow we will tell the girls about a difficult loss. It is a peculiar thing to sit on the edge of your child’s bed, watching her sleep, knowing that tomorrow you will say something that will stop her heart briefly and force her through a door she would not have chosen herself. Children do not take kindly to loss, and why should they? As adults we can barely stand it, barely have the ability to comprehend the who-was-who-now-isn’t, the what-was-that-now-is-lost . . .

. . . I rock some more. I think: Loss is loss; there is rarely recovery. Recovery is a myth; change is what comes after a loss, not recovery. There is merely change . . .

. . . I would stand between them and the losses of the world if I could. This is why I cry. Because I am clever; I know well how to create secret compartments and tuck away unpleasantries as needed. It has not served me well over time, not really, but I have a talent for it.

My parent’s divorce is final as of today. My father will continue to live in the home they shared for the last 30 years, twenty minutes away. My mother is retiring and moving to a new home, which is a two day drive from us. She will be leaving on May 11th. Yes. That is Mother’s Day.

11 days from today.

FavoriteSon already knows. But, we are going to have to tell PinkGirl.

soon.

I’m disappointed. She’s embarrassed. But at least she apologized. I still had to talk to my 7 year old about it.

I began the conversation by telling PinkGirl that “Miley let a photographer take a picture of her holding a blanket in front of her - but she wasn’t wearing a shirt.”

PinkGirl’s response?

“Why?”

Can’t answer that one. But we talked about the possibilities.

Miley issued a statement apologizing to her fans, but what’s done is done.

I’m just as uncomfortable with the photos Bill Reilly talks about. There’s no “art” to “misinterpret” (Annie Leibovitz’s response). These are a glimpse into her personal life. Her personal, private life. In this age of cell phone cameras and digital photography, personal privacy is much more difficult to maintain and demands the highest level of discretion.

PinkGirl and I have a LOT more talking to do.

We went to EPCOT yesterday for the 2008 Flower and Garden Festival. It was BEAUTIFUL, but, I must admit, a little disappointing. There just wasn’t as much diversity of color as in past years. We went in June of 2006 and (although I didn’t take lots of pictures), I remember it being much more elaborate. I really loved these in 2006 (made entirely out of flowers):

We REALLY missed the “Hidden Mickeys” too! When we’ve gone before, there have been Mickey heads hidden in the flowers and it’s always fun to find them. (The guide book gave hints.) We were very disappointed that they didn’t do that this year.

All in all, we had a very nice family day. Check out these PHOTOS from yesterday’s visit!

Want an EPCOT “little known fact” from the Mickey Freaks? If you are leaving EPCOT after dark, look for the sparkling lights! We always walk on the RIGHT side of Spaceship Earth and the walkway is covered with squares that light up and sparkle like stars. My daughter loves to run and jump on them as they move around. They look even better without the flash from the camera! Click on the image to see it better. (I’m not sure if they are on the left side too.)

Life’s a little busy this week, so I’m going to combine my posts for Kitchen Tip Tuesdays and Works for Me Wednesdays .

I mentioned before - I LOVE my Vidalia Chop Wizard! Last time I showcased this wonderful little gadget, someone commented that they were surprised that it could handle tougher veggies, like onions and carrots, so I thought I’d show how the chop wizard handles onions. Notice that I’m using the smaller chopping grate this time and check out the time on the little red clock.

Again, I PROMISE you - I did NOT touch that little red clock! I just LOVE this thing! Chopped onions really are a breeze!

But you probably noticed I didn’t finish all three onions. I actually filled up the chop wizard and had to stop to complete my “onion chopping ritual,” so I thought I’d go ahead and include it in this post as well. I usually chop onions in bulk to freeze, but I only had three today. Here’s what I do:

I chop all the onions I’ve got, either using the chop wizard OR, when I’m really in a hurry, I use my Oster food processor attachment. (I have a 1990 Oster Kitchen Center, but for smaller jobs, I keep my 2003 Oster blender on the counter because it takes most of the same attachments. Isn’t it cool that the attachments are interchangeable?) Anyway, I had an extra 5 minutes today and I really prefer the onions chopped in nice little squares - they’re just prettier than the shredded onion that the food processor produces.

Then, I lay out the chopped onions on a large metal cookie sheet for flash freezing. Flash freezing refers to the freezing technique where you lay out something individually, best on a metal cookie sheet (it gets colder much faster than a cutting board), and freeze it quickly. It keeps the food from sticking together in a big frozen ball of goo. REALLY great for freezing any kind of berry!

Then, I sit here for about a half an hour and write this post. (besides, I need my coffee.) I usually leave the onions in longer because I forget about them. If you can leave them for an hour or two, that’s actually better. I once left them in overnight with no problems. At a minimum, you want ice crystals to form.

When the onions are frozen, I move them from the cookie sheet into something better for freezer storage, such as a Ziploc bag. I stack the bags in the freezer and because they are flat, they take up very little space. (I was going to include a photo of the frozen onions on the cookie sheet, but you can’t see the ice crystals, so it just looks the same as the pre-frozen cookie sheet photo.)

Later, when a recipe calls for onion, I’m ready! They defrost really fast! I leave the bag on the counter for a few minutes and when I take the slab of onion out of the the Ziploc, it just crumbles.

It Works for Me!

Don’t forget to enter this week’s clean sweep(stakes)!

$1,100.17

and three days.

In case you missed it, we had a little problem with our truck. To be a little more specific, here’s the voice mail message from our mechanic:

Hello Mr. and Mrs. Mills, this is HardWorkingMechanic. I just got off the phone with Mr. Mills, and told him that I had found a steering column for him in California, which I had, but by the time I called, it was sold. (pause) There are no others in the country that I know of. (pause) There are no others that I have been able to find at this time. (pause) I don’t really know what to say at this time. But I uh, cannot find a steering column for this vehicle and unless a miracle happens, we cannot fix this vehicle at this time. (long pause) So, call us back at . . .

FirstHusband was on travel, so I called back. HardWorkingMechanic went through even more details. It turns out there’s a nationwide network of junkyards. The first steering column he found was in Jacksonville, Florida, but when he called, it had sold 4 hours earlier. The second column, the one he was referring to in the voice mail, sold right out from under him. The next day, a new resource led him to a third column, located in Clearwater, Florida, and he jumped on it! Unfortunately, when they went to pull it from the vehicle (in a junkyard), they discovered it had been stolen.

So I asked, “Is there any other column that could be fitted or modified?” (the optimism stemming from incredulous disbelief at this situation)

Maybe. There were more than a few configurations of this steering column. Ours had no airbag, it had tilt and it had cruise control. Finding a steering column with an airbag was easy. Unfortunately, the airbag wouldn’t fit inside the steering column casing on our truck, so that was out. HardWorking Mechanic thought he might be able to find a non-airbag steering column without tilt or cruise control.

no cruise control? For me? I am 5 feet 4 inches tall and this is a Ford F250. My feet don’t touch the floor when I sit on the couch in my living room. So, no cruise control would be . . . inconvenient when I drive the truck. For FirstHusband? It’s about comfort and gas mileage. He gets better gas mileage when he uses the cruise control.

tilt? I don’t need no stinking tilt.

So, the searching begins again. I find three rebuilt steering columns (with no tilt) on ebay with a “Buy it Now” of $250. HardWorkingMechanic reminds me that if HE finds one and it doesn’t work, he can send it back. ebay? Not so much. We agree that he should exhaust his sources before we buy one of the ebay steering columns.

Wednesday passes. Thursday. At 4:30 the phone rings:

I say, “How ya doing?

HardWorkingMechanic: pretty good.

Me: “How are we doing?”

HardWorkingMechanic: “Do you want your truck back? It’s ready.”

Me: “NO WAY!”

HardWorkingMechanic: “Yep. We got a steering column with an airbag and used the parts from it to rebuild yours. It doesn’t have tilt, but it does have cruise.”

So, we don’t have to replace the truck. We don’t have to sell our boat to buy another vehicle and take on a payment. We picked up the truck this morning.

Not that we need it this weekend, mind you, because we are going boating. The truck’s last trip before “steering column death” was to take the boat to dry storage in the marina at Cape Canaveral. We call, they put it in the water for us by the time we get there, and we spend the day on the Banana River, getting to know our new boat.

Thanks to everyone who asked their husbands about this! Thanks for the good wishes, the sympathy and the prayers.

it is what it is and “it” isn’t so bad.

On Monday, March 17th! What a nice surprise!

That’s a personal high here at Pragmatic Compendium! That’s not 273 visitors.  Rather, all the visitors combined viewed a total of 273 pages.  There were over 100 visitors, though!

Where did everybody come from? WordPress says some of you came from:

Proverbs 31 Ministries
Mocha with Linda
Mommy Brain

and the rest arrived through search engines and readers.

273 VIEWS in ONE day!

but only two people gave me “snow” advice. that’s cold, people. i’m going to freeze.

But after borrowing some really great clothes from a friend today, at least I will be a very stylish popsicle.