At Least I Don't Burn the Beer

So, Phil sent just me this picture.

Some people would probably be offended, but I just had to laugh because that is pretty much a good representation of my cooking skills. I also had to laugh because not two minutes before getting this in my email I had been fishing a piece of burning toast out of the toaster with a huge plastic serving spoon that just happened to be the closest thing to me at the time. I came about two inches shy of hurling the toaster off the counter when I pulled the plug out of the wall. It's a good cooking experience for me when whatever I'm making doesn't set off the smoke detector, so today was actually not a complete failure.

My breakfast, plus "EW, time to scrub the sink with bleach!"

Stuff I can't make:

• Chili. This one only partially counts. I have this awesome vegetarian chili recipe that is one of the only things I make that turns out half-way decent. I always (seriously ALWAYS, like every! single! time!) end up scorching some of it to the bottom of the pot, but I've learned that I can ladle off the unburnt part and generally salvage most of it. 
• Toast. See above. I like to blame this on our $6 toaster.
• Toasted tree nuts of any kind. Almonds seem to be particularly problematic. They say that "a watched pot never boils." Take my word on it, a watched pan of toasting almonds totally burns... really quickly... like one second they are raw, and then a beautiful light brown color, and then, between the time it takes to turn off the heat and pull the pan away, they are black and smoking. 
• Hard boiled eggs. You'd think this would be an easy one, but did you know that eggs will actually EXPLODE if you forget to turn off the burner and then leave it the pot on the stove long enough that all of the water evaporates?! You do now! In fact, they explode with such force that some of it will end up on the ceiling. They also make a loud POP noise when they blow up.
• Margaritas. Well, really, anything involving a blender. When we moved out of our old house and were taking the furniture out, we found strawberry margarita on the family room wall, which was like 30 feet from the kitchen. Apparently that's how far strawberries fly when you forgot to put the lid on the blender.  

I can make macaroni and cheese, veggie burgers (in the microwave only), spaghetti with jarred sauce, and salad. I also serve a mean bowl of canned peaches.

I'm also really good at ordering take-out and putting it on plates.

Finally, just like the fifties housewife in the meme Phil sent me, I'm good at opening a nice, tall, bottle of beer. Thank goodness for that.

Blizzard Bags, the Bane of Parents Everywhere

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this winter has been ridiculously cold and snowy, and we've had more than our fair share of missed school because of it. Yesterday was our eighth calamity day, which took our grand total for the year (so far) up to five days more than the school had allotted. Anything over those three days planned days, and the children are supposed to make them up at the end of the school year.

In an attempt to get around this, there has been legislation in Ohio to add extra allowed calamity days "just this once" since it has been such an unusual winter and it's screwing up everyone's schedules something fierce. At first, it looked as if this might be the solution we (parents, teachers, and students) had all been hoping for. It passed the Senate but then it got stuck in the House and hasn't moved anywhere for nearly three weeks. I'm sure there are legitimate reasons people oppose it, but one of the reasons I read claimed that teachers would be paid for work they are not doing. Ha! You have GOT to be kidding me. Don't even get me started on underpaid, underappreciated teachers!

So, moving on to Plan B. Apparently, in 2011 someone proposed the idea of the Blizzard Bag, and it passed legislation. It is basically a packet of schoolwork for students to do at home when there is another canceled day of school. We can use up to three of them and have each one count as a make-up day instead of having to tack on extra days at the end of the year. The children have two weeks to complete each packet. Sounds like a wonderful idea, right?

WRONG!

Blizzard Bag #3 -- a.k.a. Mommy Torture!

Clearly, the person who proposed the Blizzard Bag idea never had children. Quite possibly, they have never tried to teach a child. Certainly, they have never tried to teach MY children, especially when they'd rather be outside building forts and throwing snowballs at each other.

Each Blizzard Bag packet is about nine pages long. Each page requires approximately three questions from each child. That's three Blizzard Bags, times nine pages each, times three questions per page, times two children. That's approximately 162 Blizzard-Bag-related questions. That doesn't even count the 500 times they each asked if they could take a break, or go to the bathroom, or get a drink of water, or one of a million other things they came up with just to get out of doing their work. That's like 1,162 questions! Snow days are exhausting.

Here's an idea. How about we take that money that we're saving by not paying those horrible, undeserving, free-loading teachers, and write every parent a Blizzard Bag check instead. Believe me, we've certainly earned it.