Yesterday was day  4 of no voice and day 9 of this cold, which seemingly gets worse every day it lingers.  The sun was shining and from inside, it looked like a beautiful fall day.  In reality, temperatures lingered in the 40’s.  It was one of those days where I knew when I got out of bed was yet another one of our marathon days, where it’s go-go-go until bedtime, but I had neither the energy nor the inclination to hurl myself through the way I generally can.  It was the kind of day where I ended up with enchilada sauce all over the inside of my purse in a most unexplainable manner, other than, I’m Becky and things like this regularly happen to me.

There was no outsourcing, as Pat was at a conference and I’d already ‘taken it easy’ the better part of the last 9 days.  No, it was time to just pull up my big girl pants and get on with it already.  That’s just how life is sometimes.

The last agenda item for the day before calling it quits was Bingo Night at school, something Edie was very much looking forward to. When we first arrived, my daughter got her bingo card, her plate of pizza and proceeded to find herself a spot at a table full of 10 year old girls, giving me a look that pretty much said, ‘You’re on your own Mom’.  Yeh, that day just kept on trucking….

Truth be told, I like bingo because I always seem to win. Which I did last night.  And Edie pretty much beat me to the table in the front to claim my bingo prize, suddenly deciding I was worth acknowledging again now that I was a winner.  There weren’t really any good adult prizes, so I didn’t mind.  When I would visit my Granny in the nursing home and play bingo with her, I always let her claim my prizes – it’s the thrill of the win for me, not the goodies.

Winning definitely helped turn the day around, but you know what really did it?  This delightful treat called a cookies and cream bar that was part of the bake sale.  After convincing two children that were not my own to share theirs with me as well as one of their parents, I finally got up and bought my own.  It was an oreo cookie version of a rice krispie treat. Despite her pretending I wasn’t with her, I did stop and give some to my child, mostly so that she could help me figure out the recipe, which turned out wasn’t necessary, because the recipe was making the rounds of parent conversation.  When I got home, the original blog link was emailed to me, which I’m sharing right there with you all, because it’s worth sharing just as much as the simple no-bake recipe.  These are perfect for the next bake sale you are expected to bring something to and bonus, there’s no baking.  I’m pretty sure you don’t want to make these and just have them around, as they won’t last long – they are definitely better in a sharing environment, unless of course you want to eat the entire pan.  I babbled about these on Facebook last night and someone suggested trying it with homemade marshmellows, but as I said there, I’m not sure you’d want to touch the junk food integrity of these with something wholesome like a homemade marshmellow, but hey, go for it if you want to.  Personally, if I’m going to eat junk food, I’m going all in.

Also discussed on that Facebook thread was my mad skillz in being able to get two children not my own AND a parent to share their candy with me.  I’d like to think that even on an off day I’m that good, but mostly I think there is something about those bars that’s so good and so unhealthy that you just feel the need to share.  Try them and see.

 No bake cookies & cream bars.