Please! Thank you!

At Wacky House, we need more bandwidth specifically to accommodate my YouTube and ABC downloads obsession. My readers! I love you! And I am expending much bandwidth to fulfill your needs.

Are you wondering how Hockey God’s game went tonight? SO FRICKIN’ GREAT. They won 3-2. (Hockey Fact #1: You always want to get the puck in the net more times than the other team.)

“That team,” my husband says to one of the other guys, after the game, “they had trouble standing up. They were falling down pretty easily.” His teammate nods in agreement.

Yeah, especially when their feet got in the way of our teams’ sticks.

I met some of the other hockey wives from the team and really, they could not be sweeter. Especially when their husbands are kicking ass and not getting any ribs broken. (Hockey Fact #2: They don’t tape ribs anymore. And they take about two months to heal.)

(Hockey Fact #3: You can break a rib just from coughing, say, from a bad case of the flu. One of the hockey wives herself experienced this. So bwaaa — hockey, dangerous?)

(Hockey Fact #4: Most of us rabid hockey fans have come to the conclusion that other sports — soccer is the sport most frequently mentioned — are way more dangerous than hockey. In hockey you wear pads, see? And a helmet. In soccer you do not. My uncle, for example, broke his leg twice playing soccer and did not realize it until he broke it a third time.)

One of the other hockey wives, in the parking lot as we were leaving, was giving me evil eye and shaking her head. I’m like, what the hell’s up with her? My husband says, “You’re wearing my jersey…” (a clean one! thank you) “…and they lost to us.” Oh, right!

(Hockey Fact #5: Hockey wives sometimes mix it up. I will sidestep any brawls.)

love,

WM

I always forget about our hoard of food in the basement. That’s right. Since we’re talking about moving (not for awhile — a loooooong while, but still!) it got me thinking about all the green beans and marinara sauce in our downstairs freezer. Because that stash, it is not moving with us cross-country. (We had a bumper crop of roma tomatoes last summer, and bush beans. This year we’re going back to pole beans — easier pickin’.)

A shelf of green beans, a shelf of marinara… and then there are the bananas. I, the girl who loves bananas but does not particularly care for banana bread, will not compost overripe bananas. They get peeled, then thrown into a freezer bag (there are always three bananas. Never two, or four — just three) and into the freezer.

Where I mistake them for frozen breadsticks, which they are not. It’s always a shocker.

But I’m saving them for banana bread. Which I mostly refuse to bake. (I also freeze shredded zucchini, which I am better about using up — I love zucchini bread.) New solution: Banana-Zucchini Bread. Easy. Does this give you any insight into how my mind works? Geesh, that’s a little weird.

Once on a trip to Mexico, Hockey God discovered Tortitas de Ejotes (Green Bean Fritters). He was craving them one night and came up with this recipe:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 egg, well-beaten
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup milk
2 cups cooked & diced green beans
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Mix olive oil, vinegar & mustard in a medium bowl.

In another bowl, combine the egg, flour, milk, salt & pepper.

Add the vinaigrette.

Add the milk a little at a time, stirring in. Add the beans.

Heat oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat. Place the tortitas de ejotes, in patties two-inches in diameter, in the skillet. Cook until browned on both sides. To serve: top with mole, sprinkle with cojita (queso seco — dry cheese), and serve with sides of black beans and rice.

Bon appetit!

WM

…I owe you these.

Every day I read Rockstar Mommy, Miss Zoot, Dooce and Amalah and no, not always in that order.

I really have grown fond of the lovely Suzanne, at DearReader. I log on every morning and like magic! Three new chapters for me. (I subscribe to one fiction and two non-fiction clubs.) I delete some, read some, devour some, and if I really love a book I put it on reserve at the library.

And… more favorites: Mrs. Flinger; Planet Nomad (whose husband, a photographer, has a couple of sites, too — go look at his photos. They are fantastic); I read my husband, but of course; and my girl Leslie Gould (note to both of you: update more!); and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! I just lost the rest of this post.

Here I am again with a handful more of my favorites. And I promise I’ll do this again soon to include some of you who I read often, but haven’t included today:

* Terrible Mother (because we all need a little more poetry, prose and angst)
* Monkey Disaster
* Gallivanting Monkey
* Breed ’em and Weep
* Moxie!
* the lyfe so short, the Craft so long to lerne
* DotMoms
* MamaToo
* Dear Prudence
* Exceedingly Mundane and… last but not least…
* Overheard in PDX

And that’s all for now.

(Except for Plain Jane Mom and Mrs. Mogul.)

(And Pass the Torch.)

Is my daughter, Wacky Girl, the world’s youngest blogger? According to the Internet she is. I can’t find anyone 7 or younger who blogs, other than her. (She’ll be 8 in September.)

Sometimes she types her own stuff (blogging, fiction and e-mails); sometimes she dictates to me and I type. (If we’re in a hurry.) She’s been typing up her own stuff for awhile now and started writing stories when she was wee tiny lass.

Until two years ago her typing looked like this:
urytghfjknvjhjmsam,f zynbujxbnxmb
nyiurndytbhdrsummicnybu

Then it looked like this:
dear wacky boy I love you. I am glad you are my borther. Did you like that waffle? We are going shopping, and then comeing home to play, and giting back into the car to go iceskating.

Now it looks like this:
THE FOUR MONSTERS
by Wacky Girl
There lived two monsters who lived in a creaky old house, with spooky old trees aound them. Their names were Jill and Fred. They each had only one friend, Liz and Peter. They were the only four monsters. They were all five, but one was six – that was Jill. She was the oldest. She was glad, becase she could swim and the other three could not…

Anyway. We have her site password-protected, until she is a teen and discovers MySpace, at which point I will lock myself in the bathroom and sob. If you come across any kid blogs we might like, please leave the addresses in comments or send an e. Mercy bouquet.

xxox

Wacky Mommy

Hello, Thirteeners!

Would you like to move away? Would you like to stay where you are? Does the Caribbean sound good? How about Paris? Yeah, same here. However, we are stuck in River City, Ore. (aka The Other Portland) for at least a year due to circumstances beyond my (our) control. So I am wracking my brain to come up with:

THIRTEEN REASONS I AM HAPPY, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW:

13. The weather is okay at the moment. Even though it’s spring break and this usually means seven days of rain in this part of the country. It was sunny and clear today — the kids even colored with chalk on the sidewalk and played with the neighbor kids.

12. My husband and kids are happy, thus I am happy. I am happy where they are.

11. Chocolate chip pancakes.

10. Good friends, a good community, a women’s group I just joined and already love, and goodness — my yard looks great.

9. I mowed the lawn, the cherry tree and dogwoods are blossoming, the iris and peonies are ready to make an appearance, the hazelnut tree is out of control, the daffodils are still blooming away, and the yellow tulips (that I forgot I had planted) reappeared. This weekend I’ll go and get all my hanging baskets.

8. Midnight at the Dragon Cafe, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (the book I referred to here), The Long Approach, The Little Book of Prayers and this, my favorite poem ever. So much good writing and reading, so little time. And I’ve been writing in my journal again and getting acupuncture. (Always two sure-fire cures for stress and blues.)

7. Waiting to move cross-country gives us more time to work on the little projects we need to do to sell the house (paint the interior, fix up the scenery Wacky Dog spent a lot of time chewing up, all that).

6. Speaking of woof — I miss my dog a lot still, every day, but I am getting over the regrets. (Maybe if we’d tried this, done that, figured out if…) No regrets. Only love and memories.

5. Wherever you go there you are.

4. The kids are on spring break and we’ve been having a lot of fun — movie nights, playing games, Chuck E. Cheese (which, you know, while I don’t always enjoy the large rodent, they always always always love it. And if you go in the morning it’s not too crazeee. This was news to me). (Also, Chuck E. was not present. “Maybe he’s sick,” Wacky Boy offered up. Oh, son — how right you are.) Hockey God is taking the next couple of days off, I can’t wait. We’re going to go swimming, and to the movies. And like I said earlier, sunshine and tulips: a winning combination.

3. Wacky Boy’s birthday is coming up (five?????? What???), and my sister’s, too. (I am not at liberty to disclose her age.) And my in-laws are coming to town, yay! so we can all celebrate.

2. I can handle four more seasons here. Well, five seasons, technically. Spring just started, so I guess that would be spring-summer-fall-winter-spring again and then move in the summer of 2008. Which is not that far away. (Doesn’t 2010 sound so space age, though?)

1. I am applying for jobs here and hoping to go back to work soon. Keep myself busy and all. And I found a great daycare today for both kids. (Keeping fingers crossed — this is a huge deal.)

Byeeeeeeeee! Happy Thursday, y’all!

If you would like our family’s excellent homemade bread recipe, you’ll find it here.

Aw, she’s just scrapping.

A song, from Wacky Boy (do you think it will scar my kids, the way I follow them around with a notebook? I hope not):

“I’m a little person/
walking and flying/
I’m a little person/
that flies around/
I’m the one/
that is an airplane/
I’m the one/
that is a dog’s belly/
I’m the one/
that is a tomato/
I’m the one/
that likes to turn into a tomato/
a lizard/
on your head…”

Denny, you rock.

I know, I know, I KNOW, okay? Other people’s lives are none of my business. And Mary-Louise Parker is not my “real” girlfriend, it just feels like it. But when she was eight months pregnant with her son, and it was right after I was pregnant with my son? And then Billy Crudup, who I formerly had such a hott crush on, from “Almost Famous,” LEFT HER? Honestly, I do not give a rip what a pregnant woman is doing to piss you off — insisting on Orange Crush, demanding foot rubs with peppermint lotion, wanting you to fix her french fries at 10 p.m. — short of trying to kill you, there is no excuse for leaving the mother of your child in her hour of need.

Honestly.

I mean, Billy, what the hell? You have a career to think about. Who’s going to want you, once you pull a stunt like that? Oh, right. Claire Danes. But supposedly they’re on the outs, and now he’s seeing… who cares.

My point is — their son has guess who now for a stepdad-to-be? That’s right, Denny Duquette. The world is a just place, after all.

My favorite actress this month: Brit Charlotte Rampling. (I’m always a little late to the game — everyone else has known about her for ages.)