Jello TAP-ee-OCA pudding

It may (or may not) surprise you to know that I have a serious weakness for commercial-grade pudding. I love pudding packs, and tapioca is my favorite. (On a side note, I really love homemade tapioca pudding. For some reason, my mom used to always put red food coloring in to turn it a pale shade of pink. I was an adult with my own children before I knew that tapioca is not really pink.)

Our small, limited-selection store, Aldi, usually only carries chocolate and vanilla packs. As I was gearing up for school lunches at the grocery store last week, I noticed they had a special purchase of both tapioca and butterscotch pudding. So I totally stocked up. Today as I made lunches for the first day of school, I proudly slipped a tapioca pudding and spoon into each lunch box, thinking what a fun treat it would be for the girls (and surreptitiously tucking the 4th snack pack in the fridge for my afternoon snack....)

Imagine my horror when one by one, each daughter came home from school, and told me, "Mom, that pudding you gave me was all rotten and curdled. I had to throw the whole thing away." Oh, the waste...
And oh, the sadness, when I told them they missed out on tapioca pudding. I sure enjoyed mine.

I think it might actually be okay...

One good friend took the older girls to the beach for a few days. Another good friend offered to keep Bea all day and overnight. (Don't I have the best friends, really?) That left Rob and me a little over 24 hours to make a quick trip down to Athens. He got his office keys, chose furniture and paint, finalized new computer details, and got his official University of Georgia ID. I committed myself to this move by buying a "Bulldogs" sweatshirt at the UGA bookstore, not a step to be taken lightly. As we drove to Georgia, I hoped I'd have better feeling about Athens than I had last time (when I cried on and off all weekend, and sobbed on the way home). I had a better feeling this time. MUCH better.

• It was interesting to walk through campus and absorb the energy of a big university and the history of "the oldest public university in the country" --as Rob reminded me several times, trying to impress me, I think :)

• It was encouraging to meet with a realtor who understood us and to narrow our search down to a manageable area of town with good schools and proximity to church and work. We still need to sell our house here before we can commit to anything there, but I was happy with our options and saw lots of neighborhoods that looked likely.

• After the past few busy weeks, it was lovely to have my husband to myself for a whole day. It's been a while since just the two of us have taken a road trip and it was fun just to be together and explore our new life without distraction. Simple pleasures like browsing in the bookstore, sleeping in, and sharing a diet vanilla Pepsi from the gas station just don't happen in our regular life.

We ate a really late dinner at The Grit, a little hipster, vegetarian college hangout type of restaurant. It was awesome and exactly the kind of place they DON'T have in Charlotte, but seems to abound in Athens. We had the best chocolate cake that I've ever had in my life, and I've really tried a lot of chocolate cake. I find myself looking on the bright side of things.

Everyday Food

With our house for sale and the pressure to keep it clean all the time (Boo, hiss....), I've pretty much stopped sewing altogether. It's just not worth it to get out all my stuff, set it up, work for a few minutes, and then clean it all up again. I like to sew for long stretches and make a big huge mess with several projects going at once and that doesn't work so well with our lifestyle right now.

So, I've turned to cooking in my need for a creative outlet and hobby. It still makes a mess, but it's also a *necessity* to feed my family, so I might as well experiment a little with some fun new recipes.

My new best friend is my subscription to Everyday Food magazine. My new obsessions: 1) ricotta cheese, 2) getting creative in using up our food storage.

Here are some of our favorites. The french dip is an old standby, but the rest are new found treasures.

French Dip Sandwiches I used London broil for the last batch and they were the best ever--so flavorful and hardly any fat. Use leftover meat in chimichangas or burritos.

Whole wheat flatbreads with lamb and yogurt (I used ground beef with great success. This was an instant mega hit. Make extra flatbreads to serve with hummus!)

Thai Beef with Chiles and Basil over coconut rice (I have made with ground beef, sausage, and chicken--all tasty. Great way to use lots of that yummy basil from your garden!)

Zucchini Pasta with Ricotta: very light and summery.

Roasted Potatoes with Ricotta (this one is newly published, so it's not on her website yet. It's a fantastic way to use up the other half of the ricotta from the zucchini pasta. You can also roast the zucchini and potatoes at the same time to cut down on your work later!)

Preheat oven to 450. Place 1 1/2 lbs. small new potatoes in center of a 3-ft. long piece of foil. Drizzle with 1 tsp. olive oil and season with coarse salt and ground pepper. Bring long sides of foil together and fold edges over, then tightly crimp ends to create a packet.

Roast on a baking sheet until cooked through, 35 to 40 minutes. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup ricotta, 2 Tbsp. finely grated Parmesan, and finely grated zest from 1/2 lemon; season with salt and pepper. When potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut a small X on top of each with a paring knife and gently squeeze open. Dollop about 1 tsp. ricotta mixture into each. Drizzle 1 Tbsp. olive oil over potatoes. Serves 4.

Finally!

One more dawn.
One more day.
One day more!

These words from Les Miserables keep running through my head.

Tomorrow is the last day of school and I'm ridiculously happy about it. I know a week from now I'll be complaining about the lack of routine, the messy house, and bored kids. But for now I'm so ready to stop making lunches, trying to catch the bus, and managing homework and projects. I'm going to sleep in on Friday just because I can.

It's still too early to tell if this is the summer where I'm incredibly organized and have fun activities and healthy snacks planned for my children each day.

And speaking of "The End", I recently read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy--an apocolypse novel about the end of the world. Totally depressing and disturbing, but so interesting. I hope the end of the school year holds more promise than the novel.

I've still got my groove

Today I chaperoned Maddie's 7th grade end-of-year party at the skating rink. It was the consummate middle school social experience, complete with lots of awkward moments from "the sevvies". It was fun to see them gain in confidence and momentum as the party wore on and I'm continually impressed with the quality of kids at Maddie's school.

I was, however, unprepared for the flood of memories that came rushing back when I first walked in to the rink today. Bad memories: The sweaty foot smell, the nasty black carpets with squiggly neon designs, the truly horrible pizza, and the annoying DJ voice-overs. Good memories: the huge wooden floor, disco lights, watching awesome wipeouts and talented skaters/dancers, and the feeling of doing something really fun with my friends.

As 100+ middle schoolers circled the floor, I thought back through my roller skating history-- from learning to skate in our driveway on my white skates with noisy metal wheels, to birthday parties and field trips to the 49th Street Galleria, to college disco skating parties at Classic Skating. And then it all came to a screeching halt about 15 years ago.

The loud, beat-filled music wore on and I began to feel so old. I didn't recognize any of the songs, except the Old Faithful of all dance parties, "Forever Young". But even that had been remixed and pumped up. I idly wondered what it would be like to skate again, then wondered if I could still do it, then longed for an excuse to try it again. No adults were skating at this point, but as soon as I saw a few teachers and parents drift over to the skate rental counter, I made my move and snagged the very last pair of traditional skates in my size. I surprised myself and Maddie too. I'm no roller derby queen, but I can still go round and round.

De-personalized

I've recently read several articles on "depersonalizing" your home before selling it--the object being to let potential buyers imagine their own belongings in your home. They are supposed to be able to focus on your home, not your possessions.

Although I've been working on this for several weeks, yesterday was the big day to remove final portraits from the wall, including my favorite pictures of the girls in the entryway.

It made me really sad and I felt emotional all day long. Obviously, the personal things are what make our house our home and packing these things away make it feel so, well, depersonalized. Even though it's still our home, I can feel the tide turning toward a time when it will no longer be ours.
Many of you have asked about our progress. We are meeting with a couple of different realtors tomorrow and hope to have our house listed within the next 7-10 days. We are all decluttered and are working on painting touch-ups and last minute cleaning. I'm wondering if anyone would even notice if we abandoned our recently acquired storage unit and everything in it. In some ways, this feels like a much simpler way to live (without all our stuff).

A Moment of Loveliness

I noted this today in the book I'm reading--Gilead by Marilynne Robinson--as an old, dying father writes a memoir to his young son.

"I wish I could give you the memory I have of your mother that day. I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve."

I had one of those lovely mortal moments the other night when Bea snuck into our bed in the middle of the night. She quickly fell asleep nestled between Rob and me, and I was drifting off again, when suddenly Bea began to laugh in her sleep. It was a prolonged giggle of pure joy. I stayed awake a while longer, hoping to hear it again and wondering what in her dreams could make her laugh with such unrestrained delight. I will never know what tickled her so in her sleep, but I'm so glad I was there to hear it; a "gracious reprieve" indeed.