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Every year I put snow globes in my Varmint and Critter’s Valentine’s Baskets.

The same stinkin’ snow globes.

I think I bought them back in 2003 at CVS.  They were on sale after Valentine’s day for around a buck a piece.  (I’ll buy just about anything if it’s a buck.  All I have to do is think, “Meh, it’s a buck.  So what if I don’t need a plastic-handled ninnyhammer, it’s only a buck!”)

Every year I’ve lined the same two heart-shaped, red, plastic baskets with the same tissue paper, the same snow globes, and the same candy hearts. (No, seriously, the SAME candy hearts.  They never get eaten!)  And I’ve done it since they were toddlers.  I just add fresh chocolate, a new valentine card that I made, and maybe a toy or two.  And then I strew all the valentines we’ve exchanged over the years around the table so we can revisit our sweet valentine’s memories.

This year is the first year that the kids noticed the snow globes are the same as last year’s.   Varmint, upon discovering that I’ve been regifting the same snow globes for an entire decade was appalled that I was so cheap.  But hey, she didn’t notice for a decade!  Seriously, could it have meant so much to her?

I tried to point out that the sentiment of Valentine’s day has nothing to do with spending money on new toys, and everything to do with love and affection and loyalty.   I would think that tradition….like getting given the same gift year after year after year….might spark a little sentimentality!

She wasn’t buying it.

I didn’t have the courage to tell her about the candy hearts….

I promise this won’t take long.  I’m just going to cry on your shoulder a little bit.  Just go with it.

See these girls? Varmint and her friends from years ago…

Here they are just this weekend, learning to become self-sufficient.  Learning to fly.  Learning to navigate the dangerous rapids in the river of life.

Okay, okay.  They were just learning how to make egg noodles from scratch.  But dammit, egg noodles are in the river of life!

The point of this post is that instead of feeling joy at the growth and change in these beautiful souls, I find myself crying.  No, seriously.  I’m crying.

Time and I, we’re not on the best of terms.

We have issues.

Varmint and I are in Valentine’s Day Mode, Baby!

Tonight we made tarts for dessert!

Call me hokey.  Call me sappy.  Call me pre-diabetic.

Just don’t call me late for her yummy tarts!

“Fine,”  you say.  “Where are the finished products?”

er….

We ate ’em before we thought to take a picture.  We didn’t even take a picture of the pretty white glaze we zig-zagged all over them.

What do you expect from a woman who uses her husband’s cell phone to take her blog photos?

Amateur, I know.  I’m a complete amateur.

But…uh… I got to eat the tart.

Last weekend, I made some egg-noodles in preparation for a “Mama Boe Cooking Class” for Varmint’s friends.

I hopped out of bed before anyone else and, still in my ultra-feminine (not), 800-thread count (not), Egyptian Cotton (not) Pajamas, began what I like to call “An Un-holy Mess.”

And without a drop of common sense, I worked the noodle dough without my trusty apron.

Neither did I roll up my sleeves, apparently.

And frankly, I looked like my children….after art class….when they were freaking TODDLERS.

I didn’t miss a single scalloped ribbon edge on my jammies.  I hit every blooming part of my mid-section.  And the dishwasher…

And the kitchen rug…

I know, I know…planning, forethought, pro-action…all of these things are essential for any organized cook.   But let me ask you this…

When was the last time you pushed back from an amazing meal, rubbed your tummy, undid your belt, belched an un-Godly belch and exclaimed, “THAT was the MOST ORGANIZED meal I have ever eaten!”

The Defense rests.

If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen with a mop….

This is a picture story about ‘keeping it real.’

It started when I was reading a foodie blog, and was thinking, “Aw, hell, even I could do that.”

So I thought I’d test that theory and create a picture tutorial for you about making fresh lemonade with nothing but My Captain’s Android Phone’s Camera, my scarred kitchen counter, and a few tools I’ve had forever….

…including my plastic juicing cup, a decade old, from The Dollar Tree.

I even decided to be ‘real’ and show how I put my homemade lemonade concentrate in an old pickle jar.  At least I think it used to hold pickles.  To be honest, I have no idea what its origin was.  Let’s just hope it wasn’t pig knuckles or something….

I started to zest my citrus, when I scraped my hand on the dagnab zester.   I was trying to take the photos one-handed because I don’t have a tripod for My Captain’s phone, and I clearly have no idea what I’m doing.

Panicking, I  checked myself for abrasions, contusions, lacerations, or warts.  Because I realized that this was going on the INTERNET where I wouldn’t want something to come back and haunt me.  …like that OTHER thing ….

And then I was distracted with the fact that the human thumb is really such an amazing tool for communicating.  “A-Okay,” says this little guy!  And then I realized that my ‘naturalistic french manicure’ is about as completely natural as the very chemicals they used to create it and vowed never to spend money on it again.  Until my Varmint asks me to.  And then I’ll immediately cave in because she has me wrapped around her finger.

But I finally zested all of my citrus and thought the bowl of zest sure was pretty.

And since I’d finished zesting, I thought I’d better prove that truly the only thing in the zest bowl WAS zest…see?  All the skin on my highly communicative digit is still intact and free of hemorrhage.  Though it is strangely pink.  Why do they call Caucasians ‘white?’  We’re not white.  We’re more often pink…and in my case, freakishly carnation colored.

Moving on, I began to slice the fruit…again, very hard to do with one hand.  I’m lucky my freaky carnation-colored fingers are all still intact.

And then my scary vulture-like claw came into view and began doing rather violent things to the poor lemon halves.  It scared me, and I’m ATTACHED to the dingdang thing.

I surveyed the corpses, and wondered if I should show evidence of the sheer force and magnitude of my Carnation Claw.

And the entrails were caught in my dollar-valued juicing cup.  MmmMmmMM.

But baby, look at this.  PURE GOLD.  Lemon and Lime juice, fresh from it’s origin.

And the carcasses?  I wasn’t done with them.  Their scent in the sink’s disposal sure covered up the smell of canned cat food beautifully.

I took a picture of my sugar substitute of choice: Xylitol.  A naturally occurring sugar alcohol…it has the look, the texture, the taste of sugar.  I use it often.  It’s only downfall?  It’s a natural sugar alcohol, which means it is digested in the small intestine, and too much of it can cause explosive diarrhea.  Please don’t ask me how I know this.

So I mixed Xylitol in with the zest.

And thought it looked awfully purty.

And added my freshly squeezed juice.

And made a beautiful slurry.

But then, I tasted it.  It needed some of the real deal.  I have to be honest.  I don’t want to lie to you.  Once our trust is broken, how could you ever read anything else from me with a straight face?  (Ahem.)

So I added a little bit of naughty sugar.  Forgive me.  If I really truly could, I would behave gastronomically.  But if you’ve ever seen my figure, you’ll know I can’t.  Don’t judge.

Here we add our lucky pickle jar to the photographs.  It’s handy to keep your pickle jars, you know.  They are truly the unsung workhorses to any real woman’s kitchen.  Unless it’s a pig’s knuckle jar, in which case THEY are truly the unsung…oh never mind.

In the concentrate went.

And I thought this shot of the concentrate looking down from above was lovely….until Critter informed me that it made him think of something he’d hacked up once…which made me wonder exactly where that thing he may have hacked up is now….

And I grabbed a completely clean and sterile bottle from the recycling bin.

And, after washing the bejeezus out of it, I filled it with Ice, Filtered Water, and about an eighth of a cup of my concentrate.   And I shook it, and I shook it, and I shook it.  My entire body was jiggling, which is how I know I was doing it right.

And then I gave it to my Beloved, who had just happened to come upstairs from working on the project in the basement.  He had his work hat on.  How do I know it’s specifically his work hat?

Because it has a flashlight on its bill.  Very handy, eh?  I wish I had a camera like that.  If I did, I could take pictures constantly, no matter what I was doing.  Think of the tutorials I could do with that!  Think of the volume of posts!  Think of the shock value of true reality blogging!  Think of the lawsuits!

Anyway, I took a picture of My Captain’s happy thirst-quenched face, when he decided I had had his phone long enough.

Which, of course, ended my tutorial.

I hope you all got everything you needed from it.  I hope my efforts are not in vain, and my teachings have somehow helped you achieve a higher form of enlightenment.

Otherwise you’ve just wasted several minutes of your life you can never have back…and that is very, very sad.