Giving Auntie Anne a Run for her Money

I made soft pretzels wrapped around hot dogs for dinner last night. Picky Brad raved. Actually raved. He's never done that before. I am now officially a successful homemaker.

Here is the recipe (which is obviously from the back of a flour bag):


To make the pretzel-dogs, I wrapped the 16-inch rope around the hot dog and proceeded with all the rest of the instructions (rising, boiling in baking soda-water for ten seconds, salting, baking, buttering and baking again). This recipe isn't as hard as it sounds. And it's worth it, man!

I replaced the shortening with an equal amount of butter and used much less water and baking soda for boiling since I had a smaller saucepan.

A friend of mine came over the other day to help me bake pies for Thanksgiving. She brought her son to keep Grace entertained while we were elbow-deep in apples. The arrangement was working well when Brad came home and went to Grace's room to claim his welcome home hug. I heard him laugh while I sat at the table, peeling an apple in one long spiral. It was a nice moment: enjoying his big belly laugh while making pie... It was also a brief moment because then I heard him ask, "Uh, Grace, why did you and Trey take off your clothes?" My friend rushed from the table to no doubt reclothe her little imp, while I was still musing over whether Grace had merely taken her shirt off or stripped all the way to her diaper. She had, in fact, stripped entirely. And she had apparently persuaded her little friend to do the same (he was not quite yet entirely nude).

If my life were a book, my English training would prompt me to view this incident as a foreshadowing. Happily, my life is not a book. Which means this occurrence is not evidence of neglectful parenting, nor an indication of problems she will have as a teenager.

.... Right?

Catching Up

Last week I became the proud owner of a Maytag Portable Dishwasher. This black beauty sits against my pantry wall, adding a generous 2 cubic feet of counter space. (I now have a place to roll out dough which I have enthusiastically already done twice.) It has saved me at least one hour each day, spared me recurring arguments with my husband over dish responsibilities (which I always lost), given my scaled and bloody hands time to heal, and ended my angry thoughts toward people using glasses and silverware instead of paper products. Had I known happiness could be delivered from Sears in one afternoon, I might have conned my parents into buying it for me sooner.

But I digress. More than appliances has happened since my last post. I have too much to write. In fact, I was not planning on ever typing again until I found a link to my page on the Bunnell's blog. So now I feel an obligation. Here's a quick fill-in on the events of the past year:

• We moved to Hickville for a job in the Neville family business.
• We bought our first home and proceeded to rip out the bathrooms in full (which made living there sort of inconvenient).
• We started loving Hickville.
• I birthed baby numero dos in Alientown (making for a torturously long drive to the hospital).

Now, about loving Hickville. We do not want to leave. We love living three hours from the nearest shopping center in a place where half of the population live in trailers and use double negatives. Our biggest complaint is that the traffic lights on the main drag have no sensors. It's annoying to be late to church and have the light turn red and to wait 2 minutes for absolutely no cross traffic. Other than that, we could stay here forever. And maybe we will.
On another interesting note: Grace has started calling me Mamma. Doesn't that seem a bit Little House on the Prairie?