Miscellanea

So it’s fairly early on a Saturday morning, and I’m the first one up.  Of course the first thing I did was to try to catch up on reading some of my favorite blogs that I’ve been too busy to read lately.  (I’ll be sad when school starts back up because I’ll be lonely and I’ll miss my boys, but my consolation is that I’ll have a lot more time for keeping up with my blog reading!)

My first random thought involves this blog.  I’m kind of a newcomer to the whole food blogging thing, so I’m always trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.  For instance, have you ever noticed that I comment on your blog all the time, but I don’t have you on my blogroll?  And a lot of the people I *do* have on my blogroll haven’t updated their blogs in months?  That, my friends, is a pretty good indication that I can’t remember how to update my blogroll.  I’m sure I could figure it out if I played around for a while, but that would cut into my precious blog reading time.  (Heck, I just figured out how to set up a reader so I no longer have to go through my bookmarks and click on each blog that I like.)  I promise that as soon as the boys are back in school, I’ll figure it out and fix it.  I’m also trying to figure out how to better organize my recipes on here so you can find them if you ever come back and want one.  That would be yet another one of those things that will require me to spend quality time poking around the WordPress site, which isn’t my favorite thing to do when I have internet time.

A few days ago, Cathy at Noble Pig wrote a post asking What Bothers You Most About Certain Blogs? Some of the comments she got were fascinating.  It also makes me feel a little better about my blog.  I don’t have any obnoxious music that starts playing as soon as you open my site.  It isn’t cluttered with all kinds of extra stuff.  I tell little anecdotes about my life, but if you want the long (TMI) versions you have to go to my non-food blog.  I try to post decent pictures with each of my recipes, and I try to post any extra instructions I can think of for the benefit of the people who don’t cook as much.  I don’t scream at my kids across the lawn, and I don’t leave my dog out to bark all night.  (Wait, that’s MY pet peeve about my neighbors.  Sorry.)  I do tend to rant occasionally about things like stupid people and processed food, but I try to keep it under control.  I’ll also concede that I probably use parenthesis and italics too much, but I like them and it’s my blog.    (Oh, and I use cheesy winky-faced emoticons.  At LEAST I don’t use things like lol…much.)

Did I tell you that I’ve been teaching Simon about non sequiturs?

Speaking of Simon, I’ve also been thinking a lot about upcoming school lunches.  (If you lived through the whole lunch box thing on my non-food blog last year, I’m truly sorry.  Let’s just chalk it up to the fact that I was going through a lot of stress right then.)    I’ve been the worst June-Cleaver-wannabee ever this summer.  My poor child has been forced to live on whole lot of the foods he’s able to make for breakfast and lunch.  (That includes sandwiches, cold cereal, and fresh fruit.)  One one hand, I don’t feel too guilty about it because I don’t cook breakfast for people who don’t get out of bed before 9:30.  On the other hand I feel guilty because summer is almost over and all of my grand ideas of having all kinds of great snacks on hand are out the window.  EXCEPT, for that lovely do-over we like to call the beginning of the school year!  It’s like New Year’s resolutions, only different!  And I’m much better at school-year resolutions because I actually have more free time after school starts to lovingly prepare these wonderful snacks and foods that my beloved child will consume for breakfast and lunch!  I’ve already been practicing while they’ve been at Music, Arts & Drama Camp this week.  We’ve suddenly been getting oatmeal for breakfast, and there are suddenly extra things like boiled eggs and string cheese in the fridge to grab when you want a snack!  I also pulled out the yogurt maker, and I’ve pulled out some higher protein muffin recipes to try out.  I still don’t think I’ll be one of those bento lunch making moms, but my hope is that his lunches don’t deteriorate into all pb&j all the time by the end of the year like they did last year…and the year before.

Also, Simon’s birthday is this week, so his party is next weekend.  He requested the banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, so I’ll actually take a real picture this time!  I might even replace the cupcake drawing I made with a picture of the real thing!