VeganMom...stumbling through life

M won first place in the chili cookoff again. He actually tied for first, but he likes to think of himself as the only winner. I’m pretty sure his secret lay in the fact that since he only cooks twice a year (also on St. Patricks’s Day for the “Irish meal”), he has lots of cooking mojo that builds up. He tantalizingly mentioned to me that he could see himself really getting into cooking when he retires. Why wait? I would be happy to retire from the kitchen and would gleefully turn it over to anyone who doesn’t cook with body parts from living creatures!

We had a good time at the chili cookoff, and we all ate enough chili that we paid for it later! L & H came, but Dej had to work and couldn’t make it. My parents came, and we stopped to pick up my friend, Em, on the way. We filled up a whole table, and ate lots of chili. Of course AFA had provided their usual selection of delicious vegan desserts, which I enjoyed immensely. I always look forward to the desserts!

I’m still a lonely plant-sale widow for another week. While I’d like to think it will be better now for a little bit—at least until the light show construction starts—I doubt it. There’s still the 8 zillion speaking events he has on nights and weekends year round.

Yesterday was a bit of a cluster for me. Every single thing I touched, I dropped/broke/spilled. My future computer genius, Hunter, managed to accidentally install several nasty, nasty pieces of malware on my old XP machine. I have to keep this one old XP machine, because our food buying club still lives in the dark ages, and their clunky software only runs on XP. Until our group decides to move into the century and use the web application that’s available, I have to keep my old dinosaur limping along. Since orders are due this week, this machine has to be up and running if I want to get food, and I do. I spent 7 hours working on that crap yesterday. Computer issues really, really piss me off.

H sat next to me for several hours of my frustrating computer work, talking. And talking, and talking, non-stop! He always has billions of questions about how things work and what this item does and what that component does. So I’m working in the registry (never fun), and he’s asking about every single entry and key. “What is that one for?” “What does that do?” I love the curiosity and would hate to break his desire to learn, but in my head, I was just screaming, “SHUT UP!! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!” I managed to restrain myself, as I do when L gets me to that point: “Honey, I love that you’re asking good questions right now, but I cannot answer questions right now. This work makes me very crabby, and I need to not hear anything for a while.” That helped, for about 15 minutes.

Saturday afternoon, I spent a good portion of the day helping the children to negotiate who would have which type of privileges on the computers they use. L decided to change the rights of the machine she now works on. She logged in as me, granted herself administrative privileges and granted Hunter user privileges only. To pay her back, he got on the other machine and did the same. They then decided to go in with their administrative roles and invoke extremely strict parental controls on each other. We finally came to an agreement that I would be the ONLY administrator, and they could each be power users with the less strict parental controls that I had initially set up for them. They are 9 and 8, and fighting over roles. I love my unique little geeks!

Due to a major miscommunication, I was unable to take L to her Bharatanatyam class Sunday afternoon for the first time. I hated missing her class! M was actually working the plant sale, and had to take off a few hours to take her to class. It was nice for her, in that it gave her a little extra time to see him, and she hasn’t had much of that lately. I was especially sorry that I missed it, though, after hearing him whinge about the indignity he suffered there. Poor, poor M was recruited to help with some Dassera decorations for next Sunday. He was given the ignominius task of wrapping wooden dowels with shiny purple and silver decorative paper. He had to use tape. And glue. And as he’s describing the horrific experience of kneeling on the floor with some of the other mom’s, working on this project, I am rudely laughing my ass off. He was just so distraught over the whole thing, and worst of all, the kneeling hurt his knees. I asked what seemed to me to be a logical question, “If the kneeling was so painful, why didn’t you just sit on your tush?” His answer, preceded with an icy glare that conveyed instantly that I, who was so inexperienced in dowel decoration, could never understand the logistics involved, was simply, “The logistics—it just needed to be that way.”

What are the odds that the one class I don’t attend, is the one at which parental involvement is needed? I so wish I could have watched the whole thing! Of course if I had been there to watch, he certainly wouldn’t be doing it! Every time I think about it, it makes me giggle a little!

This sign is hanging out Luciana's bedroom window (on the 2nd floor). It says "Break a leg". I have no idea why she put a sign out her bedroom window that says that. I asked her why, and she replied, "Because I wanted to." I guess that makes sense. Why else would one put a sign out one's bedroom window?