Small Victories

School holiday is dragging on and things continue to be slow here. My jobs is still tied up in HR limbo so I am hanging out at home, or ferrying K from playdate to playdate, our scouring the local grocery stores for supplies to make things with all of our fresh tomatoes. I also spend a lot of time at the gym mostly to get out of the house and let the poor nanny and housekeeper have a beak from me. I have no doubt my being around all day is totally cramping their style.

There have been, however, a few exciting goings on. For instance I spent three days going to ever grocery store or market I could think of to try to and find horseradish so I could make homemade Bloody Mary mix with yet another huge pile of tomatoes from our garden, having already done two vats of pasta sauce and one experiment with salsa. My failure to find horseradish was particularly depressing because at one store I found the place on the shelf where it was supposed to be, but there was none, and at a second store when I asked about it I was told it was "finished." I love this particular response to a query. I also heard it a couple of weeks ago regarding my attempt to find a humidifier for the girls' room. Those too were "finished." What does that mean? They are gone for now but there will be more? You won't have it again until some more fall off a truck? You have some in back but are too lazy to go and get them? Who knows, but the horseradish was finished and I was sad. I even purchased fresh a white root called "white radish" in the foolish hope that perhaps it was horseradish (forgive me, I have never seen fresh horseradish so did not really know what I was looking for. Wikipedia told me that I was the proud owner of some daikon root. Not exactly what I was hoping for. But then the ever helpful Wikipedia told me that horseradish is frequently dyed green and used in cheap versions of wasabi paste. I had seen wasabi paste several time sin the course of my vain quest! Sure enough, I got my hands on some "wasabi" paste and the first ingredient: horseradish! Huzzah! Bloody Mary mix successfully concocted. so I feel like me week was fairly productive.

And I am not alone in my accomplishments:

T learned not only to take off her socks but also to shove them into her mouth. So proud!

K made some good progress learning to ride her new bike once we got her out in a nice empty parking lot for practice.

This is one of the best photos I have managed to get of the squirmy worms. As usual, K looks ever so slightly like she might be about to eat T.

The girls reading together... or at least in the general vicinity of one another.

T is successfully removing the rings from the ring stack. Not so much putting them back on as flinging them about gleefully but we will take what we can get.

Gratuitous sleepy spiky haired chunky baby!