Buyer's Remorse?

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 1 p. 595

5.1 miles

sunny (but cold)

 

351 recordings of 40 types. 1 old SVU, 74 CPD, 51 LMS. 24% clear.

 

Tuesday the 16th I went to breakfast with the widows and we had a great time discussing funerals and laughing and laughing. 

 

Then in the afternoon John came over and I showed him pictures and told him about the Camino for two and a half hours. I had a great time.... that was a lot of fun!

 

Vince called and apart from a time when his microphone went out, this week it all worked.  

 

And then I got to looking at the geocaches in Canada, and before I knew it, it was nearly midnight. 

 

 

On Wednesday I went to pick up Padreic for Wee Wednesday. Rob was home, celebrating his birthday with two weeks off. Padreic was OK with leaving today and he was happy to check out the play room and the tot room. He had a little difficulty sharing. I was spelling his name out with the blocks, and of course the C was missing... then he lined all the blocks up in no particular order, and then went to play with something else, but when another kid came to play with the blocks he was possessive... "MINE!" No, you have to share. Tears, real tears, and loud crying. If you keep that up, we're going home. Immediate quiet.  Then when a little girl came over, she wanted to have him play with her... "you can help me put some blocks on." He didn't understand that, so while she built a tower (and kept offering to let him help) he built a triangle wall. The girl was ahead socially, but he was an engineer.  

 

The story was about "happy" and "sad" and then we went up to look at pictures. Then the idea was to show how we could make happy and sad faces. Hey, Padreic was real good down in the tot room with sad when he had to share.  But he really didn't have a clue. Then they were given an oval and lots of shapes to glue on to make a face. Again, he just liked gluing shapes on. He was very very proud of his collage. I saw the black square needed more glue and took it to do that and he clouded up, but he listened when I explained and I gave his creation right back after it was mended. He carefully took it home to give to Mommy to display. (They have a dresser in front of most of the refrigerator display space, but Bernadette found room.)  Then I gave him a Cars sticker book. 

 

After awhile they were having Alexa play songs. Padreic was dancing and spinning and got really over-excited so had a major breakdown just before I left to pick up the kids at school. Needed some cuddle time with Mommy.  "Raining Tacos" is a really silly song.

 

Joanna had a good behavior slip this time, with only one "oops" and again, it was about writing. It's kind of scary that her birthday present, a Boxcar Children themed camp, is going to have writing, but I hope that the different setting will help her, and hey, if she doesn't want to do it, it really won't matter. 

I read more of Betsy and Tacy go over the Big Hill, just one day left of this, which will also include the real story.

 

My name tag wasn't in the raincoat after all, so I wasn't hallucinating putting it somewhere last Friday. But I thought it was in the car and I have turned that inside out, so I have no idea where it is. 

 

I had thought I would go to Yuba City for the geocaching event, but I was really too tired.

 

My Instant Pot came, and I've got a bit (a lot?) of buyer's remorse. It's too big (if I'd bought one off the shelf, I'd have gotten a smaller one), I managed to scald myself during the "this is how to use it" program, and the kicker is the rice cooker feature, one I really wanted it for, was a disaster. I was hoping to replace my Mom's 40+ year old rice cooker.  But I followed the "multigrain" instructions, and about half of the rice stuck to the pan and needed to be scrubbed off. I do have a big, shallow, pan that I've used for rice before on the big burner on my stove, and it works well, so I still have a plan for rice. Certainly not this Instant Pot. I've also looked at the recipes, and there's a lot of prep for each meal. When they say "10 minutes" they don't count the time to soak beans or cut up meat, for instance. 

 

The next day I tried to modify a slow cooker meal for the pressure cooker. Turns out, I don't have corn starch, so I couldn't thicken the gravy, but oh my goodness, the beef cubes were delicious!  So my Buyer's Remorse is still to be decided. I ordered some yogurt cups, and will try making yogurt in it.

 

 

Thursday I made a commissary run.  As I was putting the food away I noted a case of diced tomato cans, and they're from 2008! (I don't remember getting anything like this while Rich was alive, since I avoided the commissary like the plague.) They seem OK. I keep buying diced tomatoes because I use them a lot, so I'll probably be able to get rid of these fairly soon. 

 

I called for Joanna's camp and paid for it all right now. I looked at the map, and it does look like fun. I'll print the page up for her because the information probably won't come until May.  

 

Friday I didn't do much, just stayed home all day, got a call from Food for the Poor so they now have my new credit card number.  I worked on the jigsaw, pretty much finishing the blue sky. I also scratched off the countries in South America for my map, and the flags on that side of the map. (Which I hate, though I've discovered that my thumbnails work better than the idiot guitar pick they gave me.)