OCD. Seriously.

So I went to unload the dishwasher and saw that a little silverware fairy had visited. Everything was again organized according to utensil type and material.

I love my little fairies.

A couple of things I won't miss...

A dryer with a three hour setting. Now that's just wrong.

No hot water in the laundry room. How does anything get clean? It doesn't.

Very few pork products. Did the swine flu arrive here early?

Cheese that goes bad on the way home from the store. And no jack and expensive cheddar.

Long lines and slow checkers at every grocery store. 30 min minimum just for checking out.

HUGE construction vehicles EVERYWHERE!!! Especially when I'm in a hurry.

Not being able to make a coherent argument when I am angry. Crazy Chinese lady alert!!!

Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes. And my physiological over-reaction to bites. (the bee sting last week was nothing in comparison)

Downstairs neighbors and their parties. And their complaints.

Laundry that has accumulated during a week-long vacation taken without the kids because we have a maid and then her getting sick and having to do said laundry because I am out of bras and socks. And pants. And everything else.

Missing tennis because my maid is sick. I will really miss tennis when I don't have a maid. : (

Having a pool on our balcony and not being able to us it because it is infested with mosquitos because the pool guy neglected to tell us that he wasn't going to come any more.

Having a pool guy that comes but not being able to swim because it is too cold. Yes, 75 is too cold!

Sharing an elevator with seven other apartments. And two garages, two entrance levels, a service floor and storage floors.

Intermittent, nonexistent and unreliable telephone and internet service. And poor cell phone coverage.

Windows without nets. And the bugs that enter through said windows.

Yelling at a three-year-old to stop running everywhere. She has that much energy.

Having awful visions of small children falling out of windows and down 13 floors. Thank goodness they never hit the ground in these visions.

Having a toy/play room that is too small to play in. And not enough boxes, shelves and tubbies to hold all the dress-up clothes and Legos.

So that is a little more that just a couple, but I am still totally in love with this place.

Come on! I have a maid! And an awesome view of the city!

OCD a little bit?

Yesterday Belle helped me load the dishwasher. I had her put in the silverware while I rinsed and loaded the big stuff.

She was so excited to be helping.

And I was so excited that she wasn't bugging anyone.

When I went to close the dishwasher, I noticed that Belle had grouped all the silverware. There are 18 slots in our silverware holder and only about seven had anything in it.

There was a slot full of silver spoons. Totally spooning- a no-no in my world.

There was a slot with the plastic spoons for cereal.

There was a slot with the tiny plastic spoons for yogurt.

There was a slot with the silver knives. (I kept the sharp ones for me to put in.)

There was a slot with silver forks.

There was a slot with plastic forks.

And a slot with a plastic knife.

I laughed and then un-spooned the spoons.

I guess OCD goes both ways.

Gotta love it!!

It's an ant!!!

It's a hippopotamus!!!

It's a cootie!!!

It's... it's...

Belle!!!

She returned from school yesterday with this Uniqua hat (from the Backyardigans).

It was part of the give-away bag for a friend's birthday. I think it is totally cute. It's made out of those foam sheets.

I think the blatant disregard for copyrights here is awesome. Birthday parties are so much more festive with non-officially licensed merchandise.

She must be related

In an applauded attempt to avoid going to sleep, I was called into Dancing Princess Leia's room and asked the following question:

Mom, do I look like a four?

Laughing, I replied, "yes sweetie, now go to bed."

A very little while later, I heard this:

And this is a four, too?

SO CUTE!!!

What do I do? I tell her to wait. Go get my camera. Turn on her light and take pictures of her number four poses.

Mission accomplished.

We all use math every day!

I am so proud of me for cutting up a watermelon this morning. Not only because I promised my sweetie that I'd cut it up as soon as we got home from the grocery store (on Saturday) but because of my awesome new method of slicing and dicing.

A few preliminary details:

It was a quarter of a watermelon. Sliced in half the long way, and then sliced again the long way.

It was a watermelon boat.

My kids don't like the seeds (not many do) and refuse to pick them out. So, being the *best mom ever* I do it for them. In times past, I have cut slices (quarters if you will) thin enough to pick out the seeds, or just cubed the whole thing, removing seeds as I went along. Both methods make a big mess and have lots of loose garbage in the end.

This time I did something a little bit different
(and totally awesome, if I do say so myself).

I wish I had pictures because I am afraid that my math geekiness will not allow the general public to understand fully. But, here goes.

First I cut from the red down to the rind all along the melon perpendicularly to the central axis (the corner of the red sides). But I did not cut through said rind. So, now I have non-separated quarters.

Then I cut parallel to one of the flat sides in three/quarter inch increments down to the green, but still not through the rind.

I turned the melon around and cut parallel to the other flat side in the same manner as before.

Now comes the MAGIC!!!

I flipped the whole thing over my rubbermaid bowl and perfect cubes fell out of my watermelon boat. I was left with just enough attached to the rind for my morning snack, so I got myself a spoon and pried out the few remaining cubes.

MMMMmmmm.

AND!

I only had one rind to throw away

One small puddle of watermelon juice

One tiny seed all alone on the counter.

Now, this is not a seedless snack as I have presented to them before, but it sure makes the food much less daunting of a task to prepare.

No knife needed.
No HUGE mess to clean up.

Just a few seeds to pick out, if they haven't fallen to the bottom of the bowl already.

Go me!

Announcement

I guess it is about time. I am past the denial phase and can finally come to grips with reality.

We are moving.

We are being sent "home" from Brazil.

We will be moving to the Doylestown, PA area.

Our last day here will be June 22, 2009.

I am leaving in six weeks.

There. I said it.

I don't want to go. I love it here But I am not the boss, and really, no one asked me. I have been happy everywhere we have gone and expect to enjoy life in Doylestown as well as anywhere else, but I am so sad that my time here is ending. I have learned so much and experienced so much and have enjoyed all the differences that life here has to offer.

I have awesome friends that I will miss horribly.
I will miss the spontaneous adventures with fun friends and the awesome vacations exploring this country with my sweetie and family.
I will miss beans and rice and feijoada.
I will miss the melodic nasality of Portuguese.
I will miss fumbling over the language and learning that I am more fluent than I realize.
I will miss the sweet testimonies given by the Primary kids in Portuguese.
I will miss door to door school transportation.
I will miss date night without having to pay extra for a babysitter.
I will miss my maid, my friend.
I will miss day trips to the beach (but not the sand).
I will miss my cute little car.
I will miss the traffic.
I will miss the fashion.

I will miss Brazil.

Food Rotation

This is not our food storage, nor our most recent charitable donation to the local food bank.

It is the food in our pantry that is WAY expired. We didn't consider 2007 dates as actually expired. Some of these obviously were purchased while we still lived in MINNESOTA!!!

Here are some highlights:

• -Packaged taco shells expired in 2005 (those are usually stale right off the shelf)
• -Supper Bake expired in 2006
• -frosting expired in 2007 (tasted like plastic and sunken to 1/2 the container)
• -solidified garlic salt (no need for expiration date there)
• -boxes of beef broth expired in 2006
• -thanksgiving cranberry cylinder with no date
• -El Pato hot sauce expired in 2004
  

This is a can of Cream of Chicken Soup, Finast brand. I'm not sure if these have long shelf lives. In order for it to expire August 2003, it would probably had been purchased before we moved to Pennsylvania in 2001.
This is from a can of evaporated milk, Finast brand. This was a brand that we bought at Cub Foods in Minnesota. This one expired 09 Dec 02!!! Can you say SIX years past expiration?!?

That can't be good.

We had obviously discovered that the boxed brownie mixes were easier, cheaper and tastier around that time.
This one didn't have a date, but it was a can of Libby's Corn and was dented.
Now this one didn't have a date either, but judging by the condition of the can, it must have been past its prime. And it is a can of sliced new potatoes, which are interesting even before it they are past due.

We didn't judge the macaroni and cheese that expired this February or the cream soups that were good into 2007. We even used two of them for dinner last night. Mmmm chicken and rice using dry cream of spinach soup mix since we didn't have any onion. Much better because no one complained about the onion pieces that never really stop being crisp.

Sorry, I got side tracked.

I felt really bad about having all this expired food (that we don't dare give away) in our pantry when there are so many people starving. I decided to let everyone (or at least the four people who read my blog, you know who you are) know how sorry I am so you can help me remember that if I hoard food instead of using it, it will not do anyone any good.

We will not be in this kind trouble for a while, though, since we will not be moving random pantry food with us again.

Unless it is an unopened bag of Krusteaz pancake mix or #10 can of potato pearls.

Night and Day

There is a kid at church who traditionally drives everyone crazy. He picks fights, runs out of meetings, plays in the parking lot, visits the nursery to bum treats and is basically unruly.

Traditionally.

Due to travel and conference and holidays, I had not seen this little jewel for over a month, but he was back at church today.

On Mother's Day.

I welcomed him to primary, asked if he had been traveling and he told me something about his grandma's house (juvenile Portuguese is still hard for me) and then I helped him complete his foam flower for his mom.

Later, I chased him back to class after letting him finish the cookie he had somehow procured (trip to the nursery, I suppose) and then reminded him not to run when class was let out.

Typical Sunday stuff.

During sacrament meeting there was a special musical number by EVERYONE except the moms (we were the only ones left in the audience) and we all got flowers.

Awww.

Then, on the way out to the car I heard this:

"Tchau, Tia" (bye, aunt)
*Tia is often used as a title of respect for an adult female*

I realized it was my little friend, so I responded, "Tchau, Danillo."

And to my surprise he said, "Feliz Dia Das Maes." (Happy Mother's Day)

I was shocked.

What a sweet kid.

I guess that goes to show you that you get more flies with honey (?).

I think that's how the saying goes, but you know what I mean.

Lizard

Rex is doing his homework this afternoon. The assignment is to draw a picture of his favorite animal and then write a story about it. He chose to draw a lizard. Here is part of the nearly two-hour process of getting him to write his story.

-Mom, I almost wrote liverd. Wouldn't that be funny if it was called a liverd?

-(my response) Do you know what a liver is?

-Yah. A part of the body that makes us live. (totally straight faced)

-Nooooo! (laughing) It is the part that cleans our blood.

I know I didn't teach him that, nor did I have such a concise definition for him if he didn't know. School must be good for him.

Later...

-Mom, did you know that one time Captain Cody (names have been changed to protect the guilty) pulled the tail off a lizard and it kept moving. And then Ms. Nelson said that he will grow a new one. But the tail does not grow a new lizard. Wouldn't it be funny if the tail just wiggled after the lizard chasing it and saying "Hey! Wait for me!!"

Of course none of this got into his story. In fact, the story is much, much shorter than the conversation we had about lizards.

Silly Rex.