I Heart My Drain Cover

Here is what I received from my dear husband today in celebration of St Valentine’s Day.  It was just what I wanted!

A new drain cover for the drain in the garage!  Score!

I must quickly add that he also gave me orchids, chocolate covered pretzels and Cuties (clementines) for his cutie.

For the past 6 months, every time I parked the car in the garage, I saw the rusting drain cover that had served faithfully since the Revolutionary War, and imagined myself dropping my keys, my phone, my glasses into that hole, which clearly led to the first circle of hell.  A week before Valentine’s Day, I thought, I know! I’ll ask my Dear Husband for a new drain cover for Valentine’s Day.

And then I promptly forgot to mention it at all.  On Friday I was just about to bring it up, when he said, “I went to two big box hardware stores and couldn’t find a new drain cover.  They told me to go to Tiny Independently Owned and Operated Hardware.  The guy there told me he was out of that size.  I had to order it from ‘Hard to Find Items’.”

My Valentine’s Day gift to you, Dear Reader, is to tell you that Hard to Find Items is a business that actually exists.  I don’t know if they can sell you Aunt Rose’s necklace that fell behind the radiator twenty years ago, or a signed copy of the Gutenberg Bible, or my older daughter’s passport*, or the mustard bottle that was last used in July, but if you want a cast-iron drain cover for your True Love, this is the business for you.

In fact there are several such businesses.  But only online.  Gone are the days when you can hold the drain cover in your own hand and consider its weight, color, and beauty before you purchase.    

Family valentine's gifts.  

My gifts to DH and to Younger Daughter included dark chocolate, Dictator Valentine cards,  homemade Lobster Bisque soup (recipe at the end of my post for Valentine's Day 2011), and Scottish-style smoked salmon (a celebration of both my ethnic heritage and my husband's).  

My gift to Older Daughter was to send her a photo of her passport, which she needed in order to apply to go overseas after graduation, because why get a job right away?  Alas, I did not give my son anything for Valentine's Day.  I will have to bake him a pie when he comes home.

I also want to ask, Dear Reader, if there is any item which you have discovered is hard to find.  What causes you to raise your lamp, like Diogenes in search of an honest man?

*I found the passport, because I have the superpower of finding things belonging to my family which they have misplaced.  That includes the mustard which was last used in July.

And Happy Chinese New Year, too!
I am not sure it is pointed in the right direction.  

Newsworthy Achievement

I have been doing a lot of shopping lately, despite shopping not being in my nature. It’s birthday season in the Common Household, so there’s birthday present shopping.  My jeans got a hole in them so I had to buy another pair.  We’re going to the beach later on this summer, so I had to buy an SPF-50 shirt to protect my skin.  I had to buy, return, and buy bathroom rugs (but that's really another story).  We keep running out of spoons, so I bought more.   In short, I’ve been like Blondie in the comics, coming home with package after package.

Hence this recent conversation:

Me:  Today I went to Big Department Store again, and I saw this thing, which, by the way, I did not buy, and –  ”

Husband:  Whoa!

Son:  Is that a newsworthy achievement?

Husband: Yes, it is!  That is definitely newsworthy.  The staff meeting at Big Department Store tomorrow will focus entirely on the fact that Carolyn The Common Household Mom came into the store and saw something she did not buy.  There will be cries of alarming exclamation of disbelief.  A task force will be formed; markets will rise and fall…. You will learn in time, Son.

Me:  (Sigh.)

But the real newsworthy event this week is that tomorrow is the last day of school for Younger Daughter.  There have been some real challenges for her this year, and I am very proud of her for meeting those challenges with vigor.  On Friday morning, she finally gets to sleep in! (And then, get started on learning that driving manual.)

Unemployment stats

The national unemployment rate for teenagers is 22.5%.  On Monday the Common Household unemployment rate for teenagers was 100%.  In their defense, the two household teenagers eligible for summer jobs have been concentrating on taking exams, and that is as it should be.  They did make some effort to find jobs in early April, before all this test-taking started, but without success. 

From my completely unbiased perspective, local businesses should be fighting to hire these two worthy individuals.  Hey, Local Businesses, these are hard-working, trustworthy kids.  Please hire them for the next two months.  You could even get a two-fer – hire both of them at the same time.  A sibling package!

On April 15, I expressed my frustration that neither kid had been able to line up a summer job yet.  I said to my son, “I don’t understand it.  You and Oldest Daughter should be highly employable.”  He said, “Well, at least I’m tax deductible.”

The next day, he was planning to go out hunting for a summer job.  I was hoping he was finding the right method to follow on this task.  I asked, philosophically, “Have you found your path?”  Son said, “I can find the length of a path using integrals…”

He had applied to Subway sandwich shops.  I asked him why he wanted to work there, and he said he hoped they would give him free sandwiches.  He made it sound like all we fed him was hardtack and gruel, like he should wear a sign that says “Will Work For Food.”  (Actually that could save me quite a bit of money.) He also applied to the local ice cream shop, probably for a similar reason.

 He was very disappointed to find out recently that the ice cream shop was not hiring anybody else for the summer.

His latest thought: “Maybe I could get a summer job at the Ski Shop.”

On Wednesday we brought Oldest Daughter home from college.  By Thursday afternoon she had been hired on the spot as an aide at a local nursing home. Thanks, Local Business!  The Common Household unemployment rate is dropping fast.  Demand for the family car will be increasing accordingly.

Fresh and Local, Small and Large

Here is our garden produce!  

Common Household Tomato

Every few days we harvest one or two of these, but this one was just the latest and most beautiful.  They have a rather tough skin, but taste oh, so sweet, like candy.  

Here is the same item, but from the farmer’s market.

Farmer's Market Tomato

And for size comparison, here they are together.  Our tomatoes are about ½ inch in diameter.  Cute, eh?

Bob the Tomato (on the right), and Bobbie the Tomato-ette

Despite our busy summer, I have been trying to visit the farmer’s market when I can.  Last Wednesday, I wanted vegetables, and needed to pull Youngest Daughter away from the tv/computer mind suck.  So I insisted on taking her to the farmer’s market with me, although she doubted there could be anything for her there.  

As we were driving along, I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an ice cream truck that would drive around the neighborhoods, only instead of selling ice cream, it would sell fresh vegetables!”  YD said, “But Mommy, who would ever want to buy vegetables?!”

Well, me.  I want to buy fresh vegetables, but there is no such vegetable truck.  At the beginning of this summer, I almost signed up to join a farmer’s coop.  My brother’s family does this, and every week they go to pick up an assortment of veggies, fruit, meat, and cheese, all fresh and in season for their local New England area.  In my never-ending quest, which my family views as my evil plot, to reduce our meat consumption and increase our vegetable consumption, I thought this might be a way to inspire (force?) the family to participate more fully.

But I decided that I’m not ready to be tied down to picking something up at a specific time on a specific day.  Also, what my brother and sister-in-law get in their coop box is a surprise each week.  While we were visiting them they received a bunch of good stuff, and gooseberries or some such thing that my brother warned against.  It could be that we just require some edification on how to cook gooseberries, but I don’t have time to learn that this summer.

So in May I found out about a nearby farmer’s market.  This market is a new one, just down the street from my church, and it turns out it is run by my hairdresser and her boyfriend, who owns a local farm. There are other vendors too – one guy sells just garlic, but at least two kinds (one is for roasting, another for other kinds of cooking – be sure to ask).  Another guy sells fresh kettle corn.  There are sausages and cheese, Amish bakery items, Greek-style food, home made pizza and marinara sauce.  Youngest Daughter really enjoyed the fresh lemonade, with the lemons squeezed right in front of us.  We bought some pizza shells and sauce to use at her sleepover. 

One of the best things about it is that the vendors’ fees go directly to the local food bank. 

Here are the other vegetables I got at the farmer’s market.   

The vegetables were also useful as a weight to press the tofu.
Usually I use the peanut butter jar, but we were out.

Yum!  I put most of the vegetables in a stir-fry.  And Youngest Daughter was inspired enough to make a sauce for the stir-fry!   And she even tried the vegetables!

So... what's your favorite fresh vegetable?  Do you go to a farmer's market?

Common Household Youngest Daughter’s Recipe for

       Stir-Fry Sauce

Ingredients:

1 16 oz. jar of pineapples

Fresh ginger root

Onion powder

Ground thyme

Ground cinnamon

Lite soy sauce

Corn starch

Cold water

Directions: Pour pineapple juice into a mug. Using a ginger grater, grate up ¼ tsp. ginger root. Stir it in. Sprinkle in onion powder until it lightly covers the juice. Sprinkle in some thyme. Sprinkle in some cinnamon. Add 3 good shakes of soy sauce. Stir it all in.

Sprinkle in a little more thyme, and a little more cinnamon. Also add 1 more tbsp. of soy sauce. Stir until dark brown. Taste should be sweet.

Wait until it’s time to add the sauce. Put the sauce in a pan and bring it to a boil.  In a separate small bowl, add 1 tbsp. corn starch to ¼ cup of cold water and stir it in. Add it to the sauce. It should now be light brown. Pour it on to the vegetables. Serve.

(You can serve the pineapple fruit separately.)

Capitalist opportunity

Dear Fellow Capitalists,

I have discovered a glaring gap in the greeting card industry.

Here’s the story. One of the adult scout leaders in my son’s troop was ill. As a part of my ongoing project to raise my children to be polite and respectable adults, I suggested to my son that it would be appropriate to send the scout leader some get-well wishes.  My son’s idea was this:

1.Type on the computer:

                        Dear Mr. B,

                               Get well soon.

                        From,

                        Common Household Son

2. Print it out on a plain white 8.5x11 sheet of paper. 

3. Hand it to me to put in an envelope and mail.

4. Play on the Wii.

But I insisted that he had to send an actual card.  I got out my stash of Get Well cards and found some with lovely pastels, flowers, and swirly words of cheer:

Those clearly wouldn’t do for a Boy Scout.  I looked some more and found this one, without flowers:

I handed it to my son.  He looked at me, and said, “Ducks?!  Mom!”

I tried this one:

“CHICKENS?!” he guffawed.  “Don’t they make cards with pictures of people hiking, or tents in a campground?  I can’t send a card with ducks or chickens to Mr. B.”

I spent a few hours and the grocery store, the drug store, and the Hallmark store, looking for masculine get well cards.  I found ONE get well card labeled, “For Him” with a portrayal of tools and gears on it.  I bought it, and every other get well card I found that did not look feminine or crude.

So, capitalists, here is a market niche that you can fill.  Because there has got to be a huge untapped market, worth millions, of Boy Scouts and other manly men out there looking for respectable masculine get well cards to send to their male friends.

I asked my husband about this, and he said he doesn’t believe in greeting cards.  Sigh.