Long-term vacation items that I have on my plate include:

• Yokohama for lunch on Wednesday. Sushi!
• Thursday stroll downtown with Ada. Sidewalk sale! I’m always working, and have never thought it worth the cost of a vacation day. I get to go this year!
• Painting outside of the house starts tomorrow. Orange! My house is going to look like a Dreamcicle.
• Putting on new front and deck door. Ours are a non-standard size. Joy.
• Pulling all of the weeds from the front and back planters. OMG, it is amazing how the weeds took over in the one week I was in South Dakota.
• Cleaning the house for the party on Saturday. Mac and Charity’s birthday is the 17th!
• Removing all the stuff in my photography room. It was clean once, and at some point, a bunch of junk got moved in there.
• Painting the kid’s bathroom. Probably blue and green. First I need to peel off that terrible wallpaper. I’ll let Ada help paint. That will be fun. Or something.
• Get rid of all age inappropriate toys and non-fitting kids clothes.

There are about 50 other tasks whirling through my head. I need to get them all into Things and organized.

Also on my task is to get Squanto into shape. Well, at least for the time that I have him. He came to stay at our house while I was in SD. I’m going to keep him until I guess I arrange to take him back to KC. He’s a fatty! I couldn’t believe it when I saw him. It didn’t take long for him to bond with me again. He now follows me around everywhere and does his little happy dance when he sees me after I’ve been out of his sight for, oh, 5 minutes.

We only have one problem with Squanto. James DOES NOT WANT. The scenario goes like this:

Squanto’s Version
Lift head to look at Jay. Why is he pointing and screaming? Is he going to give me food? No? Okay, I’m going back to sleep.

Jay’s Version
Dog just looked at me. No!!!! I can see it in his eyes! He’s plotting to attack me, rip open my gut and wear my intestines as a medal of his conquest and a warning to all other 2-year olds!!!!! I’m too young to die!!! WAHHHHH!!!!!!!

Squanto is a good sport, and is taking Jay’s freak-outs with almost no interest at all. This turbulent Squanto-Jay relationship has come in handy for one issue: Jay’s bedtime. I have a terrible time getting Jay to stay in bed. Now, I open the bedroom door, with Squanto right beside me as always, and say to Jay, “If you get out of bed once, I’m letting the dog in the room.” It’s worked beautifully. He stays in bed.

I hope to get some photos of The Squanto soon.

Spearfish Canyon

For my adventures out this business trip, folks pointed me to Spearfish Canyon. After work today, I headed to the hotel to change and then hit the road for a drive. I went through Spearfish Canyon in Black Hills National Forrest. On the way back, I wound my way through Lead and Deadwood.

Just a little after getting back to my room, I had a small allergy attack–red, swollen, itchy eyes and red splotches all over my legs. Benedryl tamed it.

Now, bed. Working tomorrow morning, flying home late afternoon. I won’t be back here again unless I bring my family up for a vacation. Which we probably will at some point.

Rapid

This is the my last business trip to South Dakota. I really, really wish I had the option of this suite for all my trips. Look what I have! I have pans and plates and utensils as well. The fridge even has an ice maker. And they have a hotel pantry. Awesome. I do not need to eat out^*!! Of course, I will be making a trip to The Chinese Restaurant of The Gods while I’m here, but all other eating out is completely optional. They have a free Gourmet Express Breakfast^TM in the morning. I will try it out, but if it is typical continental hotel breakfast, I can make myself a freakin’ omelette every morning. Because I have a stove. And a chef’s knife, a paring knife and a cutting board.

The wireless in this place is 100-gazillion times better than my normal lodging, where it is slow and terribly disconnecty. The wireless here is faster than my home speeds. I can actually Skype in my hotel rather than staying late in the office. Sweet.

I sound crazy, yes? I’m on a trip, and I’m excited that I have options to cook instead of eating out. Aside from the Chinese place, the other places that has food that I find divine is a little out of the daily budget for allowable food expenses. Everything else is your typical fast food or Chili’s, Outback, Red Lobster, and Other Typical Family Restaurant place. The places you find everywhere. Blech. Now, if I can cook or prepare two of my meals from grocery items, then my daily allowable food expenses is incredibly small, meaning I could go to one of the divine places and still expense it. And not feel all bloated and tired and generally crappy from eating all the other restaurant meals. As long as I don’t use one meal to attend a meeting of the Martini Club that I became a card-carrying member of last year, then I won’t feel generally crappy.

Mac: So, where are we going?
Me: Ada, what do you want to eat this morning for breakfast?
Ada: Rabbits!
Me: Did you say you want to eat rabbits?
Ada: Yeah!
Mac,laughing: I guess I don’t need to get repellent for the yard. I just need to send Ada outside.
Ada: Daddy, that’s not funny.

I’ve been slacking on posting weekly menus. That’s because I’ve been slacking on planning weekly menus. This week will involve the following based on what I took out of my freezer: Hobo Burgers; Chicken, Lettuce, Bacon and Tomato wraps^*; Italian sausage pizza and one more thing with chicken breasts. I also desire to try this salad.

Also, my mixer has been repaired and is ready for pick-up. We are doing that today. Yippee!

*Darn, my migraine made me miss going to the market. That means I’ll have to settle for super market tomatoes. Blech.

I have been getting more frequent headaches as well. I’m hoping those will subside once I remove some stress. I’ve been getting them quite a bit, and last week, one did turn into a full blown migraine that disabled be from doing anything useful for most of the day. Jay woke up vomiting on Monday. Today was my turn, so I lost yet another day of useful work.

The sickness had an impact on No Knead Bread, ver 1.1. The inside texture was much better, but the bottom crust was still burned. It is not as bad as the first time. I’m going to try two sheets of parchment next time and adjust the heat a little. My illness increased my rising time to 19 hours. Wow, that made a difference in flavor, but I’m not sure if it is a 100% good one. It tastes almost salty. I used whole wheat and high gluten in this one as well.

I scared Jay this evening. I was sitting on the kids’ bedroom floor playing when this gigantimous spider darted out from between some toys, heading straight for Jay. I grabbed a book and slapped it down on top of it. When I lifted the book up to collect the carcass, it resumed its mission to attack and eat the brains of my only son. It got to his leg when I swooped Jay up over my shoulder with one arm while I grabbed a toy and successfully smashed it with the other. After I sat him down, he stared at me in wide-eyed silence with what I assumed was awe over his mother’s heroic act. That lasted about 10 seconds before the tears flowed and he started crying that he wanted his daddy. I’m not sure what is up, but the spider population seems to have increased around here. What spider predator got removed? My deck is constantly being used as the frame for spider luxury condos.

My searching ended when I found these OXO storage containers. They are plastic, but more solid than the really cheap ones. They were less expensive than my stainless steel ones. What really sold me was the pop-top lid. Press the button into the locked position, and the seal is really tight. You can pick the container up by the lid. Pop the button to the unlocked position and the lid comes off with ease. No pulling or prying to get the seal lose like my stainless steel ones. I ended up picking up a ton of them. I put almost all of my baking items in them. They stack well, and tetris nicely into my pull-out shelf in my pantry. I picked up a few new ones a couple of weekends ago. One so I can add yet another flour to my line-up. And another because the seal isn’t working on my stainless steel container for my sugar. With the humidity here, I need that seal so it doesn’t turn into one gigantic lump of sugar. I may pick up another big one to replace the AP flour stainless steel container. The seal on that one still works, but I can’t stack it and I have to really pull to get the lid off.

Plus, I love these so much that they are bound to stop making them. I must collect a few back-ups just in case.

I started another No-Knead bread tonight. I’ll bake it tomorrow early afternoon. I’ll see if slight adjustment in the water helps, and I’m going to try to slip parchment paper into the mix to see if it will ease the burning on the bottom of the bread.

Ada pool side

We’ve had a busy weekend, but most of it was relaxing. Ada spent some pool time with her cousin. It was my first opportunity to use my new camera body. Today we headed to Wisler’s Cove at Perry Lake. Mac said he was going to wake us up early today so we could all go to breakfast, but he didn’t. I did make his requested cupcakes, and even bought hot dogs for the lake. That’s how much I love Mac. I bought hot dogs. I picked up some vege dogs so I didn’t have to eat one.

Here is where people are going to mark me as crazy, but the summer weather has hit my favorite time of year. It is still 83 outside and humid at 1:00am. I love nighttime in summer. When I was on maternity leave with Ada, anytime she requested feeding from midnight – 4:00am, I’d sit on the deck with her^*. The weather report did change. It was suppose to be 101 and very humid. It has since changed to 99 and very humid.

Vacation Countdown: 24 days. This is the number of days until I am going to have time to get used to my new camera body. This is the number of days until Ada and I can go swimming in the afternoons. This is the number of days until I get a break from working or even thinking about working. At least for a little while. At least until I’m excited about working again.

*With Jay, not so much. However, he and I played the 360 and watched The Cartoon Network during the really early hours of the morning.

The status of my repair as of today is that there is a part on order than could take another 2 – 4 weeks. Am I so special that someone in a far off land is forging a part just for me? It doesn’t take 6 weeks for anything to arrive these days. The longest I’ve had to wait for something to arrive where my children.

I will anxiously wait. I will not buy a KitchenAid 600 to fill the black void in my heart and countertop that my 5 Plus once occupied.

I can still make pizza dough with the food processor, cookies with my hand held, and my brownies with just a spoon and a whisk. No Knead Bread will fill in until it gets back.

My pasta and ground meat experiments will have to wait. Hopefully it will get back right around July 15th. That would make me a Very Happy MellyStu.