Strawberries!

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Somehow I have been too swamped the entire strawberry season to be able to pick strawberries and then have an an entire day to dedicate to putting them up.  A friend let me know the season was quickly winding down thanks to the recent heat wave, but my weekend was completely tied up with soccer.  (Oh soccer, I already have such a long list of reasons why I don’t like you,  to which this got added, but my daughter loves you, which really sort of trumps.  And we won’t get into how I resent motherhood for making me a better person and overlooking these things I hate simply because she loves them.) Monday morning, after I put Edie on the bus, I started calling around the local pick your own spots.  Turns out the season ended Saturday, of course.  The day I spent the entire day on the soccer field.  Grrrr.  I widened my search to a few places “over in the valley”.  The beauty of living 20 minutes from the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley is that they are always little bit behind the growing season from us (And a little cooler in the summer!).   Turns out, their berry picking season is still going, so I packed myself up and hit the road for Middle River Farms. 

It was, in short, the best berry picking experience.  The rows were marked where the last person had left off, so you knew exactly where to start.  They had someone in the field, directing you where to go. The prices were half of what we pay on this side of the mountain.  And all for an extra 15-20 minutes of driving time.  They were still less than 55 miles from my front door, qualifying as local.  The berries were much larger than the ones Edie & I had picked here a few weeks too.  So many things about it to make me happy.

At any rate, I picked a quick not quite 15 pounds, brought them home, sorted and dealt with them.  I froze some whole, chopped and stewed and froze some for yogurt, and kept some for a nice strawberry salad for dinner last night and strawberry shortcake for breakfast this morning. 

No, I don’t make jam.  I’ve tried, several years in a row, and it was a disaster.  I may try again one of these days, but I was not in the mood to fool with it yesterday.   And yes, we enjoy strawberry shortcake for breakfast.  Sub plain yogurt for the whipped cream, and voila, breakfast.

Although the chocolate sponge cake may have been a bit decadent.

My Weekend.

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Every tent needs a disco ball.
This weekend Edie’s soccer team was in the Sunburn Tournament.  She had been to a birthday party the evening before and brought her party bag along, because in her words, you never know when you’re going to need a party bag.  I discovered a disco ball necklace in there, so I hung it up in one of our many team tents.  We like our flair.   
It was warm and sunny and there was lots of soccer.  We had a few hours break between games Saturday, so as a team, we tailgated it, which may have been the highlight of the tournament.  We came darn close to winning the first game on Saturday and after that, lost to teams that were better than us.  Our girls still played their hearts out though and handled it well.   We treated them to many popsicles, and after their last game on Sunday, burgers at Riverside.  We definitely think our team had the most fun.
Sunday afternoon, our friends from Snuggle Acres dropped by for a visit.  We hit the pool, the kiddos picked the first blueberries from our bush for a snack and we had a quick little dinner before they hit the road back home.  It’s always good to see them and I love that we just happen to live on their way to visit Will’s folks in Lynchburg.

Munching Blueberries.

Edie & Abigail getting sunscreened for the pool all by their big girl selves.

Dinner, picnic table style.
Blueberries!
Speaking of blueberries, this morning I went out and picked a pint of berries for blueberry muffins for breakfast.  I love, love, love being able to go pick breakfast, lunch and dinner from our garden.  It just doesn’t get any fresher than that!

It’s Finished and It’s Alive!

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Edie requested I make her a skirt, one of my whimsical tiered skirts.  Of course missthing insisted on approving the design, ie, fabric selection.  I laid one out and had it approved, only to discover I didn’t have enough fabric to make it as promised.  Which led us back to the drawing board.  After going through a few versions that were deemed “Not ‘Alive’ Enough.”, we reached a compromise that would use all the fabrics in the approved ‘ALIVE’ design, but in accordance to the amount of fabric I had on hand, all of which were from the stash.
Apparently “ALIVE” is Edie’s new phrase.  I like it. 
Here is the skirt in question, finished!
The bottom has a small ruffle out of this really great striped seersucker type fabric.  It was supposed to be the bottom tier in a 4 tier skirt, but I realized I didn’t have enough of it, so we compromised and made it the ruffle. The bottom tier is a pale pink, with white raised dots that don’t necessarily like to show up in photos.

The middle tier is a solid purple linen and the top tier is a fun pink striped paisley pattern.  Paisleys were definitely my most favorite part of the 80’s and I still have a fondness for them.  Edie thought this fabric was ‘wild’ and she loved it with the polka dots and stripes at the bottom.

I drafted the pattern myself, something I don’t usually do with success, but I have found with elastic waist skirts, I can do it if I follow a certain formula.  So, I measured her waist and her length between her waist and knees and took it from there.  I made it a little big, so she had room to grow into it, planning to add elastic to the waist as needed.   Pat thought I was making myself a new skirt at first, because it’s not little girl sized anymore.  Then again, our girl is 4’9″, which is getting to be pretty tall.  Her new flip flops are women’s, sized 7/8 and quite frankly, there’s not as much room as I think there should be for her to grow into them.  My baby is no longer a baby, and not so much a little girl anymore.  She is definitely becoming a tween, as evidenced by the list of music she left on my desk this morning that she’d like for me to add to her itunes.  Heavy on the Taylor Swift.  Oh my.

That is as close to modeling the skirt as I’m going to get from her.  For now, it hits her mid-calf and is quite cute.  I’m hoping this will fit her for a few years.  When she was younger, she had a big aversion to anything ‘plain’ which she called boring and demanded I make fancy, by any means necessary. Then she went through a phase where she only wanted me to make her solid colored clothing.  A white linen blouse.  A purple linen dress.  I was quite excited to meet her demands for a skirt that was “ALIVE”. Even more excited to see her pair it with a patterned shirt.  It makes me happy to see her so fearlessly put patterns together with patterns because she pulls it off so well.  For a while there, I thought she’d outgrown that. 

I hadn’t finished a sewing project in what felt like forever.  I have a number of projects halfway done, or laid out,  but never find myself finishing them.  It felt good to finish something.  It’s pointed out to me that I finish lots of other things I set out to do, like gardens and cakes and canning, but it really nags at me that I have such a hard time finishing sewing projects.  I’m trying to be better about this and this was my first step towards it.  It feels good.

Things I’m good and bad at.

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I can’t remember when it became a tradition for me to bake Betty a fabulous chocolate birthday cake.  Part of it was wanting an excuse to bake, but part of it was wanting to give a single mom friend something nice.  Birthdays are meant to be celebrated in my opinion.  At any rate, for I don’t know how many years now, we’ve had a tradition of chocolate cake for Betty’s Birthday, usually something decadent.
I made Martha Stewart’s Moist Devil’s Food Cake for the second year in a row.  It’s a triple layer cake.  I learned the hard way last year the best way to transport a triple layer cake from your house to anywhere else is in pieces and assemble it there. 
See?  It’s tall.   Looking at that picture, I now see that it was going to be dry.  I didn’t bake it as long as the recipe called for and it was still dry. (Not terribly, just enough to bug me.) And the frosting….the frosting takes 2 1/2 hours.  You read that right.  It makes enough to cover 3 layers and any imperfections you have with putting 3 layers of cake together (including the cake being a wee bit on the dry side), plus, it’s really good, so I find it worth it.  However, I followed the recipe to the T and for about an hour and half of that 2 and 1/2 hours, I was worried my frosting wasn’t going to turn out.  While I was slightly freaking out, I googled it and found this. The video of Mrs. Millman making her frosting, which not only is informative, but a fabulous Martha moment.  Really wished I had watched this first.  Oh well.  Next time.

I grabbed some strawberries from everyone’s patches and used them to decorate the top. Another tradition that seems to have sprung up while we weren’t looking.
Happy Birthday Betty. 
I already have next year’s cake in mind.  Pat has suggested a few from the repertoire that I haven’t made in while, like this one. Otherwise known as 2 day cake around here, because it takes 2 days to make.  But worth it.

The weekend wasn’t all baking though.  Spent some time at the pool, trying to get the sun and the pool chemicals to help clear up the poison ivy.  It worked fairly well, I must say.  Took Edie strawberry picking out at Chile’s.  We wanted some strawberry shortcake and our little patch just isn’t producing for that this year.  It was a good mother-daughter field trip.  Once this crazy week full of lots of end of school year events is over, I’ll head back out and pick oodles to put up for the winter. 
We also took our annual Memorial Day canoe trip.  Once upon a time, this was also part of Betty’s birthday celebration.  The ladies of the ‘hood took the children by our lonesomes one year.  We did about a mile stretch of the Rivanna, the nice, little, local river and it took us all day.  We hit every rope swing, had several beer & cupcakes stops and by the time we got home, everyone had had a meltdown.  Since then, we have decided it’s best to have our husbands around for the trip.  If nothing else, they help keep the kiddo meltdowns to a minimum. (Okay, they are good to schelp canoes too.)
This year we did the Rockfish River in Nelson County.  Absolutely Gorgeous.  And we had it all to ourselves, which was even better.  Somehow I ended up steering a canoe with Edie & her pal
Sophia, but that didn’t last long.  I completely and totally suck at steering.  Not only did we run smack into a downed tree that came darn close to throwing me from the boat, we flipped over, all within a few hundred yards of putting in.   I got to go in unexpectedly a second time when I was in Virginia’s boat too.  Good stuff.  Edie says crocs float and I can assure you they do, because I had them kicked off when we went over the second time and had to quick swim downstream to save my shoes.  The only things lost besides my dignity were a few pairs of sunglasses.  Thanks to my Becky Bucket Pat got me for Christmas a few years ago, everything that needed to stay dry, like my camera, did.  So, I might suck at steering a canoe, but I can put a tight enough seal on my bucket to keep it dry under water.  Which really is comforting.
All in all, it was a completely relaxing, rejuvenating weekend.  

Pretty garden pictures and life lessons.

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The most perfect strawberry and my first tomato in the morning light.

I finally got out there and finished the last of my spring planting.  While I was dumping my weed bucket in a far off corner of the yard, I decided to yank out what I know is a weed.  Which lead to pulling out handfuls of roots, as Pat had recently mowed everything down for our big bash. It’s much easier to clear that way you know.   Of course I was barehanded, I only wear gloves when I’m using a shovel or hoe or anything that might callous my hands.  Of course I wrestled a root or two and of course I now have poison ivy on my forearms, behind my knees (where I wrestled the viney root out of the ground) and in between my fingers.  Of course my cold has gotten worse and is being aggravated by allergies, so I’m officially miserable.

One of these days, I will learn to wear gloves when I pull strange things out of the ground.  One of these days I will learn what poison ivy looks like.  At least I’ve learned to resist the urge to scratch the poison…..

What ails ya.

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Last week Edie complained of a sore throat.  She otherwise seemed okay, so I chalked it up to allergies and told her to just drink some water.  Tough kid that she is, she didn’t complain again.  This weekend, Pat & I both woke up with sore throats which has since evolved into a cold that while isn’t horrible, it’s still kicking my butt.  And yes, it is what she had.  And yes, she did mention that she ‘sucked it up’ and we should too.
What goes around, definitely comes around.
Last night I decided we needed a nice, hot pot of soup to make ourselves feel better.  Our family favorite when we are under the weather is miso soup.  It’s quick and tasty and I always have on hand enough things to make a decent little pot of it.  Now, I’m not talking miso soup like you get at any Asian restaurants, this is my homemade, stick to your ribs Americanized version that is inspired by several recipes I’ve read and tried over the years.   I fill it full of everything they say has qualities to kick a cold and boost your immune system – garlic, ginger, chicken stock, miso and a kick of red pepper to help it slide down your throat.  (If you’ve never added a dash of cayenne pepper to your chicken soup when you have a sore throat, I highly recommend it.  It’s magical, I swear.)
There was also carrots for color (we like carrots in everything around here), chives (In lieu of scallions, since I have a ton of those in the garden right now), shitake mushrooms, spinach from the garden, tofu, shrimp and last but not least, I threw some rice vermicelli in to give it some heft.

To serve, I sprinkle it with more chives and red pepper.  Yum.  What I love about miso soup is that in addition to being versatile and quick, is that you can make a pot for one or a pot for 6 by just varying how much of your ingredients you use.

Becky’s Chock Full of Goodness Miso Soup
Saute several minced cloves of garlic, a healthy portion of grated ginger, chives (or scallions or a tiny bit of onion chopped very finely) and chopped carrots in sesame oil over low heat.  When it becomes very fragrant and the carrots are soft, add sliced (shitake) mushrooms. (Regular button mushrooms work well too).  When the mushrooms are slightly cooked, add chicken broth and bring to a boil.  When boiling, add chopped tofu.  Cook for at least 10 minutes, then stir in spinach, chopped shrimp and noodles.  Using a ladle, pull out some broth and combine with miso paste (to taste).  Combine the miso with the pot of soup, being careful to not simmer the miso. When the noodles are cooked, serve, sprinkled with chives and cayenne pepper. 
Feel free to use as many or as little of the above as well as adding your own (chicken might be nice) ingredients, but never leave out the garlic or ginger. I also have a French Provincial inspired version that uses nothing but garlic, onions, potatoes, thyme and miso, sprinkled with cayenne.  Make it as brothy as you desire.  Miso soup rarely keeps well, so only make as much as you and your family will eat in one sitting. My rule of thumb is 1-2 cups of broth per person.  This works as a perfect hot lunch for a kid home from school sick or as dinner when you’re all fighting something off. 
This morning Edie told me that last night’s miso soup definitely made her feel better.  Consider that your seal of approval.

Weekend.

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It’s been a weekend full of impromptu gatherings with friends, new and old, complete with bonfires.

Found a new local cheese, Italian cheddar, that paired with some baguette and a nice, big bottle of red is a meal in itself.

Edie scored her first goal of the season in her team’s victory Saturday morning. She scored from a defensive position, halfway across the field.  It was one of those glorious, slow motion scenes that is in movies.  Every girl on the field just stopped and watched that ball roll, halfway across the field, into the goal box.  And then our girls erupted in cheers.  Definitely proud mama moment.

After a week of rain that took us from a deficit of several inches to a surplus of several inches, the sun came out yesterday and dried everything out.

I’ve managed to get some cherries from our tree this year, while sitting back and watching the robins and the squirrels battle it out for their own shares. That squirrel has done something to really tick off that robin, because that robin divebombs it every chance it gets.  I’ve had way too much fun watching that scene over and over this week.

I took off for a walk down the street with a friend yesterday afternoon, beer in hand, only to wander home with a new found friend and neighbor, who decided that since I walked down the street with an open beer, I must be okay(or something like that).  So I brought him home to meet the family. 

Had another neighbor share cookies that she had acquired at another house on her walk in the neighborhood.  She had made a few new friends on her walk too.  Must have been something in the air yesterday.  Or maybe it’s just our neighborhood is like that.

Edie spent the better part of the afternoon running back & forth between the house and the park. Part of me was sad I didn’t have to tag along and part of me was quite pleased that I no longer have to schlep back & forth between my house and the park.

I’ve had several really great chats with friends, bouncing ideas off people, figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. I am surrounded by so many supportive people, it’s amazing and overwhelming and comforting, all at the same time.

It’s been the kind of weekend that when we crawled into bed at 10 pm Saturday night, exhausted, Pat said it had been a perfect kind of day.

It most certainly has been the kind of weekend that reminds how thankful I am for all the small blessings we have. 

Day 3, Purge.

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Day 2 of being unemployed found me full of anxiety and self doubt.  I’ve had a few interesting offers and I am fighting the feeling that I need to jump on them right away.  I want to take some time, figure out exactly what I want to do with myself and make sure I’m making the right decision.

This is the 4th time in 7 years I’ve been laid off.  I know the part-timer is always the first to go and I really prefer to work part time, so I guess that’s the downside of it.  When Edie was born, I did have plans to go back to work full-time and then just found I couldn’t.  I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else spending all that time with her while I was at the office.  Couldn’t stand the thought of what was I going to miss out on if I wasn’t around her.  I began to look at things in our life as how much would I have to work to pay that bill.  Things like car payments, cell phones, cable tv, were all measured in, do I truly need that?  No, I was quite happy to drive my car until it needed too much money sunk into it to stay on the road, almost 16 years.  While there might be some great shows I’m missing on cable, we just don’t watch that much tv and quite frankly, I didn’t want my child to regularly watch most of the garbage on the Disney Channel.  The fact that she had gotten comfortable turning on the tv and tuning it to that channel by her own toddler self was one of the deciding factors to let go of cable all those years ago.  And you can stream just about everything online these days anyway, so as long as you have a decent internet connection, you can get by.  Honestly, the only time we’ve come close to caving on hooking cable back up has been during college football season.  Thank you ESPN, for streaming so many games online and fixing that dilemma for us. 

I am sick and tired however, of getting laid off.  There is still a blow to the ego, despite knowing everytime that budget cuts have to be made.  There is still a feeling of I’m just not good enough.  I’m a walking textbook on our state unemployment insurance policies.  I am sick and tired of having to reinvent myself, of having to conduct a job search all over again, again wondering how long is this job going to last. 

It seems everytime I’m unemployed, many people around me tell me I should figure out how to make money at just being me.  I cook, I sew, I’m creative, if Martha Stewart can do it, why can’t I?  I made a small effort at it a few years ago and it went nowhere.  It was during Edie’s toddler years, when after getting laid off twice in a year and becoming extremely unsatisfied with my choices, or lack thereof, of decent, affordable, love-my-baby-as-much-as-I-do-options in childcare, I decided to heed what I thought was a message from the Universe. I went back to waiting tables at night, so I could be home during the day and tried to operate a home based business while being a stay at home mom.  When she started school, I went back to having an office job.  Which lasted for 2 years, until I got laid off.  I spent that summer pondering how to not go back to work and while I came up with some great ideas, I just didn’t go anywhere with them.  Instead, I got myself another part time job that has yet again, ended in a budget cut.  A cut of my salary.

I did however, come up with the idea of starting a blog, because I knew whatever creative, self-employed steps I needed to take, a blog would be an essential part of going about it.   I got sidetracked by that whole stomach tumor thing, but once I got through that and started making things again, I started this little blog,  in hopes of just keeping my creative spark alive.  Over the years, I’ve started many things, but not finished them.  I have a huge pile of unfinished projects upstairs, some of them I promised friends years ago. 
Through a good bit of the work I’ve done in therapy, as well as some of the other work,  reading and research I’ve done outside of therapy, I’ve realized that it’s completely par for the course for people who’ve had mothers like mine  to leave a trail of unfinished work, to not try as hard as you could.  To have a good bit of self doubt. To think that you are always going to fail, even when everyone around you thinks you are the greatest thing since sliced bread.  I don’t see the talent I have and I definitely don’t take credit for a good deal of my accomplishments.  I truly am my own worst enemy.  I am working to overcome this, but some days, like yesterday, it’s a struggle.

A few months back, I discovered a new to me blog, thanks to the posting of it on Facebook by a friend.  I immediately loved it.  The last few days, as I have struggled with myself, wondering, what am I doing to do now?  Can I really pull off something where I figure out how to do things without actually having to go to an office several days a week? What exactly is it that others see in me that is so great, this blog  had a few posts that just spoke so directly to me, that I began to think it was a message from the greater Universe.  So, after reading this and then this and finally this, I realized I needed to start by first of all, cleaning ‘the happy corner’ as Edie calls it.  The corner of our bedroom upstairs that is home to all my creative supplies.  I spent the day cleaning, purging and organizing things.  I used to save every cooking & design magazine I subscribed to and while years ago, I realized I turned to Epicurious when I couldn’t remember what old issue of Bon Appetit a certain recipe was in and finally got rid of all those, I still had a good 5 years of House Beautiful, Southern Living, Southern Accents, the old, dear, departed Mary Englebreit’s Home Companion, Martha Stewart Living (and Baby), taking up valuable space.  I went through them all and put them to the test by which I now allow myself to buy a magazine – are there at least 3 articles or projects in there that capture my attention to warrant giving up space?   Two big shelves of magazines, at least 6 stacks of them, have been reduced to half a shelf and 2 stacks.  I also purged a big stack of old craft books that I’ve received as gifts over the years that just didn’t do it for me.  I sorted through all the little bins I toss bits and pieces of things into, I cleaned out and organized the drawers I keep supplies in, I purged things I’ve been hanging onto thinking, oh I’ll use that.  You know what?  I haven’t and I won’t and if I do feel the need to use electric scissors, I’ll just go buy a new pair.

It felt cathartic as hell to do all that.  I feel rejuvenated and just so I wouldn’t reconsider, I dropped all the books and magazines off at the recycling center this afternoon.  (The place where I was going to drop off the craft supplies wasn’t open, so I left that bag in my car.  Hollar if you want a pair of unused, new in the box, vintage electric scissors.  Or any other crafty stuff….).  I spent the day considering my talents.  My current reading list are “The Martha Rules” by Martha herself, “Inspiration Sandwich” by Sark and a little self help book I picked up a while back entitled “It’s Your Life, What Are You Doing With It?”.  I’m making lists of what I think is feasible, I’m setting up coffee and lunch dates with a variety of friends who know or do some of the things I’m considering.  There’s a few of them.  I have a short attention span, I like multi-tasking, it’s really the only way I can think and work to be honest, is by doing 10 things at once.  I fail miserably if I’m only doing one thing at a time.  I also thrive in chaos, thanks to my childhood, so maybe I can make this work this time.  I have the support of my dear husband and many friends.  What do I have to lose?

Thirteen may be my lucky number.

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My last official day of employment was Friday the 13th. Today, my first official day of unemployment also happens to be our 13th wedding anniversary. Today is the first day of the rest of my life, post-job and marks the anniversary of the first day of the rest of my life with my love and both are marked by the number thirteen.  Co-incidence? I’m thinking not.  Thirteen has always been good for me, even the age of thirteen was pretty decent for me, so today I’m wondering if it’s actually my lucky number.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the thrift gods smiled on me today. I went to one store, with one thing in mind – a new white vintage chenille bedspread to replace the one currently disintegrating on top of Edie’s bed. It was a gift, it came with the bed and belonged to a dear friend’s ancestor (I can’t remember now if it was his grandmother or great aunt. At any rate, it’s been around a while). Edie thinks I can repair it, but there are too many spots and some of them are big. I think I just need to cut into what I can of it and make some pillows. Anyway, I came, I saw, I scored exactly what I was looking for, as well as finally finding myself a new round pink rose china butter dish cover that I’ve been seeking since mine broke last summer. And one of those sweet old school screw into the wall pencil sharpeners that is going in my happy corner today. My days of wandering around the house looking for a pencil sharpener are over.

Saturday afternoon, while working on the chicken house with Brian, I discovered this little guy hanging out.  The tiniest praying mantis I’ve ever seen. 
 

It is said they are harbingers of good luck and messengers.  Some cultures associate them with restoring life to the dead.  A praying mantis supposedly guided the pilgrims to Mecca, the holiest spot in the Muslim world.  Some African cultures refer to them as gods.

Either way, I probably should pay attention to messages the Universe is currently trying to send.

Unbridled Creativity

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The other day Edie came home from school and asked if she could take a picture of my toothbrush.  Why for I asked.  “Isabelle and I are working on a short story about a family of toothbrushes and I’m in charge of the pictures.” Sure thing.

Why I imagined this picture to be a simple act of taking a picture of the toothbrushes in a cup,  I don’t know. 

I pointed out the light that time of day was better upstairs in our bathroom and she quite happily took off upstairs with her camera to our bathroom.

A few minutes later, she was back downstairs.  “Do you have food coloring?”  What do you need that for? “Well, in the story, the family is going on vacation and I want to fill up your tub and pretend it’s the pool, but I want the water to be really blue, so I need to use food coloring.”  No, you are not putting food coloring in my bathtub.  How about you use a big bowl and pretend that’s the pool?  Good idea.

Not sure why I didn’t go upstairs to oversee the goings on at that moment, but I didn’t. 

When I did go up a few minutes later, this was the scene I witnessed:

That would be her father’s toothbrush, face down in the blue dyed water.  And that would be her toothbrush, face down on the floor of my tub.  A tub that is admittedly, not exactly clean.

It was clean last week, and then we had a raging party Saturday night and we had a friend who decided that his 3 and 5 year old sons needed a bath, right there and then, and left one heck of a dirt ring that I haven’t had time to clean yet. 

What, you don’t have friends who decide in the middle of raging parties at your house that their kids need a bath in your tub?

At that point, I told her to please bring our toothbrushes downstairs with the bowl so I could soak them in something to disinfect them. Which she did. 

I then walked past her as she was photoshopping her photos she had uploaded and I couldn’t help but notice this:

That would be the entire family of toothbrushes on the floor of my less than clean tub. 

At this juncture I would like to point out that our tub has one of those built-in nonslip bottoms that over the years has taken on a shade a little less than white anyway.  The only way it appears dazzling white  is to pour bleach on it.  And let it soak.  So, I’ve learned to live with a slightly off-white tub bottom, since I don’t always use bleach when I scrub out the tub.  So what you see is for the most part how it usually looks.  Thankfully the big nasty dirt ring wasn’t in the photos.  But the knowledge that not only was my tub bottom photographed, but then photoshopped and printed out and taken to school is slightly unsettling, to say the least.  I wish I could say that she photoshopped the background until it was sparkling white, but alas, that would have taken away from ‘beach’ look she was going for apparently.

I soaked the toothbrushes in vinegar.  I chose to tell her father about the adventure his toothbrush took by just showing him the photos she’d printed out.   We are still laughing about it and we are quite proud of how creative she is.  We just ask that she not put our toothbrushes in any more compromising positions.  We don’t feel this is too much to ask or that we are being too stifling.  Thankfully, she agrees.

And it wouldn’t hurt me to ask what her intentions are next time she asks to use my toothbrush either.