Today is our little 2 year old GC's B-Day. She is a most cute, most bright, most engaging little character. Born to Aimee and Joe she has her Mum's good looks and the energy of both of them.
Her sister, Kaylee, loves her dearly. She just about didn't visit this world though as her Mum developed Preeclampsia and it was progressing rapidly about 7 weeks from her Real B-Day to be. They used to call this condition something else but I've forgotten that too, precious...aging, just precious. Anyway here's a link to get the real low down on this most dangerous and potential killer of new Mum's and babies.
http://pregnancy.emedtv.com/preeclampsia/preclampsia.html
So they took the baby by C section and though small at 3lbs and with the effects of the preclampsia, hospital bound for several weeks, she is a wonderful gift today!
Anyhow we will all eat Pizza at Mary's Pizza Shack and have a cake and all the mess that means. Great for kids and fun for us too.
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The rest of the few days I've paused from the blog have been spent reading about sourdough bread, the starter in trivial detail and modifying what I am doing somewhat. I sent a self-stamped envelop to Carl' in Maryland and he's returned to me a small package of his live starter. It looked pretty flat in the clear plastic bag but once freed and into a small bowl, warmed a bit and with a tablespoon of flour and a slightly shyer amount of H2O added and mixed well it came to life, burp! That was 5 days ago. I've divided the Mum Starter in two, forming a working starter that will actually become bread while preserving the original Mum, it's safer that way and less likely to end up getting polluted with some other ingredient. Mum stays a virgin, get it?
The Baby gets played with and will become a loaf, not today but probably tomorrow after I feed it two more times. To get Carl's famous starter stuff here's what you do; go to his site, read the blurb and ship off your SSAE, you won't be disappointed. Here's the link:
http://home.att.net/~carlsfriends/
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Then yesterday...Audrey came over as Kelly left as I needed the help of a strong woman with the mattress swap onto "my" man-bed (HA!) to try out our old marriage-bed mattress instead of the one that came with the bed frame. Audrey dragged and I pushed, Ooof, up the stairs we went with it and plopped it down on the box springs and wow, what a difference! A decent bed! Any you know...I didn't wake up once last night! Not once! And that had gotten to be a regular thing. Mattresses make a difference. Then in an ultimate step-father - step-daughter bonding moment we took on the task of changing the oil in her Toyota Echo some 13,000 miles since it was changed last...by guess who? Yes, me. 13,000 miles no less! Synthetic oil it was but ever so black and well contaminated now. I found the drain again (it was a year ago since I climbed under the beast, cute as it is) and proceeded to use a breaker bar to get enough leverage to pull the damned thing loose again! Grrrrrr. Loose, I unscrewed it and placed the old black lid from a boat battery box underneath to catch the black goo in all it's glory. Soon it was well draining and...what's that? Oh no! A FLOOD of oily mess...EXON VALDIZ!!! In our driveway!!! Shit! Merde! Something! A bag? Audrey rushed off to get some plastic bags, the mess continued to pour out onto the concrete of our previously clean driveway. Another container (no), rags? (no), paper towels (no), damnit...what a mess...and it has to be stopped before it gets into the drain system and reeks havoc with the local sewer system! (Think EPA, Corps of Engineers, State Lands Commission, City Hall, Barrack Obama!) Oh my God, this IS a disaster. So cat litter to the rescue! Having moved the car down the driveway and into the street...yes,yes with the plug IN and the filter changed and new oil added, the now thoroughly blackened driveway is fully exposed for my dear wife and Republican neighbors to see! So for the next two hours we scrubbed (more bonding), power-washed, soaped, scraped and removed MOST (but not all) of the slimy black goo. Such fun on a Sunday afternoon. And along comes my sweetie Kelly, all cheerful and pert, took no notice of the dark stain and pulled her car right in and covered the 20 foot long spot. Nice. And she's not even mad. Bonding activities are so very rewarding.
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