Bethanie's Brain

Did you know you can make S'mores in the microwave? Me neither. At least, not until I had the happy accident of noticing instructions for making S'mores in the microwave on the back of the graham cracker box when we went camping (not bringing S'mores when camping is like not bringing water). It's shockingly easy and takes less than 10 seconds: Place 1/2 of a graham cracker on a microwave-safe plate. Place 1/4 of a Hershey's chocolate bar on top of the graham cracker. Place one regular-sized marshmellow on top of the chocolate. Place the other 1/2 of the graham cracker on top of the marshmellow. Place the entire contraption in the microwave, being careful not to upset it. Nuke for 4 seconds - WATCHING CAREFULLY. As soon as the marshmellow begins to swell up, open the microwave door and squish the contraption so the top graham cracker doesn't fall off. Rotate contraption a 1/4 turn, close microwave door and nuke another 4 or 5 seconds. Remove from microwave, s...

My heart has rooms that sigh with dust And ashes in the hearth. They must be cleaned and blown away By daylight's breath. But I cannot essay the task, For even dust to me is dear; For dust and ashes still recall, My love was here. I know not how to say farewell, When farewell is the word That stays alone for me to say Or will be heard. But I cannot speak out that word Or ever let my loved one go. How can I bear it that these rooms Are empty so? I sit among the dust and hope That dust will cover me. I stir the ashes in the hearth, Though cold they be. I cannot bear to close the door, To seal my lonliness away While dust and ashes yet remain Of my love's day. -Stephen R. Donaldson ~~White Gold Wielder~~

Living in The South is Hell for me. No surprise there, right? And aside from the few things I do like about it (the food, the family (well, most of the time), the music, the very lovely springs with their awesome, and sometimes frightful, thunderstorms), it doesn't have much that would keep me here if I actually had a choice about leaving. I can, however, comfort myself with the knowledge that at least, if I must remain trapped here, I am trapped in a relatively liberal part of The South. (Relatively.) As proof of this, I offer up the following two facts: 1) The metro area I live near voted against W. and 2) I saw the following bumper sticker the other day and was much comforted: Republicans for Voldemort I must have one.

Thunder, lightening and rain started up around 4AM - no getting back to sleep for this mama (I did try). Why do storms like this come at such odd hours around here? It wasn't even hot outside or anything... weird... We did end up getting nailed yesterday - no tornados, but lots of rain, wind and some quarter-sized hail at the house. Got to the parking lot at work around 10AM and just as I was getting out of the car the sky cracked open practically over my head. The resulting noise was deafening, reverberating through my body like some kind of mega subwoofer. Decided to take the shuttle bus. I don't normally do that - I usually walk the mile or so to the cube, that being my only real opportunity for exercise during a workday - but something told me I'd better not try it. Good choice, as it turned out. Sky started spitting rain as soon as I reached the shuttle stop. More cracks in the clouds right overhead, more booming super subwoofer pounding through me. I could see ...

The sun came up, a fireball, then disappeared behind a blanket of clouds. Now everything is a flat grey-green. The rain patters inconsistently, and thunder rumbles on and on and on.

The sky is turning red now, red like Hell is rising, and the thunder is thrashing about like it's trying to get comfortable and can't. The birds sound frantic and cars drive by, all in a hurry to get somewhere. Lightening pulls color from the ascending sun and makes things pink instead of techni-glow bright. The rain has scampered off and is nowhere to be seen.

Woke up between 3 and 4AM this morning, finally gave up and got up at 5:30 to watch thunderstorms approaching - didn't want to miss the show. Watched out the bedroom window for a while then opened the door to the deck and stood listening. The sky was flashing and silent. Then rain started plinking the deck, almost hesitantly, like it was just testing it out, seeing if it really wanted to fall there. A few seconds later the first hints of thunder rumbled by on the edge of the horizon and the lightening started getting serious. No longer a vague flashing in the clouds, now it began to light things up, not enough to show color in that millisecond way that you see in the middle of a storm, but enough to remind you it could if it wanted to. The rain moved on to test out somebody else's deck and I went to make "coffee" (decaf, of course, which you wouldn't think is worth it, but when that's all you're allowed to have, you'll take it). I'm sipping it...

Woke up early-early this morning, which isn’t terribly unusual for me. I don’t sleep much anyway and pregnancy means sleeping less at a time (though naps are more frequent). Went through all the motions of “getting back to sleep”, which is usually futile and proved to be again this morning – although not for the usual reasons. April participates in the rare few weeks in The South when you can have your windows open at night. (The rest of the time they have to be locked tight against “cold” or suffocating heat.) Consequently, our windows were open in the early-early as I stumbled around piles of laundry and various toys to the bathroom and back. The sky was lightening, but still mostly grey-black, and there were lots and lots of birds starting up with their morning sing-a-long. Hoping to fool myself into another hour or so of rest, I lay down and attempted to get comfortable (this proves more impossible every day, but one must try). I snuggled the husband, closed my eyes, pulled t...

So this story on abcnews.com caught my eye today and it’s got me all amused. The story is about the accuracy of genetic paternity testing and how often men are actually raising their own, biological children. One of the factoids discussed is as follows: men who seek out genetic testing to prove they’re not the biological father of some child are only right 30% of the time. In other words, 70% of the time, these men are wrong. Even more interesting from my point of view, the story also states that “98% of men raising children they believe to be their biological offspring are right to think so”. If you look at this another way, women – who have presumably made some sort of declaration or guess about who the father of their children is – are almost always right (i.e., 98% of the time). Hmmm… 30% accuracy versus 98% accuracy… Sounds about right to me…

It’s green here. Trees, shrubs, grass. It’s everywhere, in every shade from dark-shadow to newborn-leaf. It’s beautiful, though it makes me sad. All that gorgeous, drinkable green, see, it blots out the blue, closes up the edges of the sky and brings them close around my head like a veil to keep wide-open spaces from prying eyes. It's shade is welcome, sure. But when your heart beats to the wilderness of blue, all that green feels a bit like a prison.

Once again, She has answered our prayers and pleas for mercy. Yes, the Great White Goddess of the Porcelain Bowl has appeared in a vision (apparently) to Ms. Three-Years-Old (OK, OK - Ms. Almost-Four-Years-Old) and shown her The Way. The way to the potty, that is, at long, fucking last. It happened almost entirely by accident, but it has happened and I will not question Her Wisdom. See, Ms. Three-Years-Old decided to do that literal anal retentive thing again and so we started stuffing her with that laxative her doctor prescribed, because the alternative (forcibly holding her down and administering a suppository) just isn’t fun for anyone. I think we overdid it just a bit and Ms. Three-Years-Old ended up having about 7 BMs one evening. Around about BM #2, I had her sit on her potty chair while I went to get a diaper for her to do her business into. I had barely made it to the super-secret diaper stash, when I heard some very distressed whining from the vicinity of the bathroom. So...

We went “camping” last weekend – CAR camping, that is (hence the quotes). “Real” camping, to me, means hauling everything you need on your back though black-fly-infested woods uphill in the rain until you’re a minimum of 10 miles from the nearest road, at which point you set up your 4 pound tent, attempt to squeeze your 1 pound sleeping bag into it, pull out your super-light-weight stove and boil water to reconstitute your freeze-dried dinner. I think most people call that backpacking. But I’m not sure because until I met the husband, it never occurred to me that you could do “camping” any other way. Anyways. We went camping last weekend. And we took the handy-dandy pop-up camper that my parents gave us when they moved to Florida (gatta love the fringe benefits of having retired parents). It’s pretty cool, this pop-up thingy, and much as I hate to admit it, probably a whole lot more fun than backpacking-camping with a three year old. It’s like playing house to her, only with a re...