I'm not ready!

Stinky is in the throes of puberty. Yea yea, I don't like it but it's happening. He likes telling me things because he likes the grossed out faces I can't help but make. He thinks it's funny, and Goof just doesn't respond as well. I'm getting tired of him telling me he's got pubes. Yea yea, go ask your dad for a preview of what you'll look like when it's all in.

Bad news is that he's got a girlfriend now. What the hell? He's only 11! A girl in one of his classes told him, she thought he was cute, and asked if he liked her too. His response was pretty good, "I think she's a nice girl." Well that was two weeks ago. He had given up on the crush of the cute girl that lives near us. He actually doesn't know what to do or think about it, why pine for something that won't happen.

This last week, the forward girl asked him to be her boyfriend. So two days later he tells me about this and asks for my opinion. Of course I'm freaking out. What does this mean? Are they gonna hold hands? Kiss? What? He thinks it's a lot of positive gossip. She's a popular girl, and it can only be good for his 'image' God, shoot me now. This hussy only has one class with him, their assigned lunch tables are pretty far from each other. They do ride the bus together, but again assigned seats. She lives in another subdivision.

So the dinner topic was this, and Goof told him no exploration of bodies until 16. I hope that stays true. Yesterday he came home and told me that he accepted her offer. She waited and sat next to him in the gym for their bus. Oh boy. So how long do these things last? A week or two? He thinks she's cute, I don't know how involved this will get. Right now he's been bragging with his friends about having a girlfriend. Perhaps this is all there is. The right to brag. I think I need to watch that series on Discovery Health about puberty again. Gotta refresh my memory.

Thursday I had felt crappy, and had a bit of a headache, came with my period. I took a few Advil and was fine. Friday I woke up feeling crappy too. I dropped Stinky off at school, and went back to bed. It was a drizzly day anyways. Hell happened when I went downstairs to make some coffee and do dishes. The lights made my brain explode. Full on migraine, with nausea and puking. Took a Maxalt, and suffered. I was making a chicken pot pie for dinner. I needed milk. I ended up calling Droopy and she took me to the store to get milk. I couldn't drive while still feeling so nauseous. Bad news she had a bad headache that turned into a migraine also. Her Imitrex shots were misfiring, so she wasn't able to get relief. Her son came over for a Maxalt. I ended up taking another one, and when Stinky came home, he changed and went outside with Whinus to play and stay out of our hair.

I had started to feel a little better, had the fan going, the drapes pulled, all the lights off, house quiet. Then Goof came home. I heard him outside. I had opened the door for him, but he was too slow getting out of the car for me to stand there in the light, so I just closed the front door and went back in my dark kitchen. Goof came in quietly, but then he yells' Hello? Anyone home?' Which made stars blow behind my eyes. I whispered yelled at him to shut up. He was apologetic, and tiptoed around the house for an hour.

I was just exhausted yesterday. But I managed to clean up and make dinner. What I don't get, is that I asked Goof and Stinky to clean up the dinner dishes and all that, so I could go upstairs and sleep some more. Well the dishes are in the sink, and the pie is still on the dining table. Yea that's cleaning up. Especially since Lulu hopped up on the table and helped herself to dinner. She got her teeth brushed for that.

I hate men

Yea, I'm feeling crummy. Well inconvenienced anyways. They are not worth the trouble some days.

So Stinky had his first day at school and he was happy. I was not. Seems he found the a la carte bar. $9 for lunch? Ya wanna know what it consisted of? An individual pan pizza, cupcake, BIG cookie, and HUGE pile of french fries. That's his accounting. So where was the milk? He couldn't find it. Where was the veggies? "Does pizza count?" NO! So he's been told no more, don't care if there is pizza there. You plan for the kids to have a healthy lunch, and they go and chose the wrong things. What the heck?

Two weeks ago, we had gone out to dinner, nothing fancy last minute thing, on the way there listening to the radio we heard a song, that Stinky never heard before, but he liked it so much he was singing along with it. So back home we go, and found out the name and downloaded it. He's been singing it since. Well that song and a few others from guitar hero. He even bookmarked the You Tube videos to watch.



Another song he's been singing is Kansas- Carry on wayward son. He seems quite enamored with the footage. Granted he felt the guy with the big hair was scary. Well as I reminded him that was when Egg was born, hippies and all that.



Those are just two of his songs of the moment. Another one happens to be Trogdar. WTF? Boys are strange. They get annoying like adult men.

Speaking of annoying. Fred is not in any of Stinky's classes this quarter. Let's hope it continues through the rest of the school year. Stinky overheard a couple of classmates mentioning Fred. It seems Fred was just as obnoxious at his old school as he was this last year. The sympathy card really worked for him also the fact that the teacher has a wet spot for his aunt. Of course I'm not above being petty against someone that hurt my son. So I was watching out for Stinky at the door, and I saw Fred about 5 feet behind, I run out the door, yelling, "I missed you! I had you all summer, and I wanted to make lunch and you weren't there to share it with me!" Grabbed Stinky and gave him a big hug. Yea I know, that does not make the jealous shit behave better. Too bad, but Stinky is my kid, I gotta make him feel like the sun rises out of his ass.

Long day

Okay Goof sucks. I swear men have pms. It occurs every 3 months and they just have one hell of a snit for any little thing. So, me being me. I get mad at him pointing out all my little faults, then if I respond back and point out his faults, he accuses me of pulling out thngs from the past. Huh? WTF are you doing? So this will be my new attitude about it all. Whatever he says is fine, he's right. He's gotta be right about something I guess. And all bets are off on not smoking. Yea, yea bad me. As he says, "It's your 16 year old self, holding that middle finger up, rebelling at everything." Fine, it's my almost 35 year old self, holding my middle finger up at you, letting your tirade go in one ear and out the other.

Marriage is hard. It takes a lot of work on both parts. I understand his point of view, but damn it I want my point of view to be taken seriously also. So, I leave it at that.

I am in an irritated mood also, because I'm sneezing. Hell if I know why. I've been sneezing on and off for the last 2 hours. It's not just one sneeze every so often, but at least 5 in a row. Am I the only one that gets annoyed at myself for sneezing? I hate it, it takes my concentration away from something I'm doing, driving, cooking, cutting up stuff.

I wanna know why Lucy always manages to get peed on. Or if Mingy is doing it for the fun of it all. She will be doing her stuff and he walks up and decides this is a good spot, and gets her. Or she will walk right in his aim. What is up with that? More baths for her I guess she likes it. Weird little dog.

cuatro dulce de leche cake

I was surfing through the food blogs and found this recipe from a bakery in Texas. Now I admit I have never eaten a tres leche cake, so I have no frame of reference. This cake just sounded so yummy especially since my uterus is hating all men.

So a quick perusal of the ingredients, and I realized I had most of the stuff. After work I headed to Wally world to grab some diary and pizza for a sleep over. I spent my evening chatting with friends on yahoo, watching pre-pre-teen boys and boiling cans of condensed milk. Yes, boiling UNOPENED cans of condensed milk. This is the easy way to make dulce de leche. It is so not a west coast thing. Ask a native Californian who is not a foodie and they will look at you weird. So 5 cans of condensed milk in a strainer in a 12qt stockpot with water 4 inches above the cans, on med high heat to a slow boil flipping the cans every 45 min for 4 hours. Then I got tired and I turned off the heat, and let it cool for 8 hours in the water bath. What did I get? Well I learned I could also just let the cans lay on their side and not worry about flipping them. But I did get nice extra thick pudding consistency golden brown dulce de leche.

The next morning it was cake baking time. 2 lbs of butter for 4 cakes were softening at room temp, 4 cups of sugar and 8 eggs. The cakes were nice and dense, smelling heavenly of vanilla and sugar. I did pick up some magi-baking strips and the cakes came out very level and evenly browned. Wohoo! I love me some BillySan. Of course it's an SF company!

So while the cakes cooled I made all the other stuff. The tres leche combo turned into a quatro mixture. I accidently added whole milk,so me not paying attention now have a milk mixture consisting of condensed, evaporated, whole milk, and whipping cream. I did use some for my coffee, yummy.

Using the dulce de leche I mixed 1 c of this thick stuff with 1/2c of warmed whole milk. This is supposed to be a thin caramel sauce from what it looks like. That went into the fridge too.

The carmelized meringue... I'm not sure that turned out right. My torch was low on fuel, so I used a something of Goof's that gave me a nice browning element. The egg whites were room temp since it was a cold day and they had been out all day. The kitchenaid rocks! My candy thermometer met an untimely death, at the hands of Goof, who swears he didn't do it. So what's a girl to do? Use the digital thermomter attached to our handy dandy timer. Gosh, that's one of the best items for $30 I every bought. So I got sugar and a little water on the boil with the temp probe hanging in it waiting for the soft boil stage of 240*. I measure my cup of egg whites and wait. I'm not whipping whites until it's almost time. Well the probe reads 200*, okay time to start whipping. I did it timed it just right, as I got the whites to soft peaks stage the sugar mixture hit 240* I kept a steady thin stream going while the mixer when to work. When it was done I had lovely stiff peak italian meringue.

So finally I had the meringue done and the cakes were completely cooled, so I sliced the cakes only in half, I'm not that talented to do thirds neatly. I may have used too much of my 'tres leche' mixture between the layers, but it was nice, it held the liquid. Frosting is a bitch. I hardly every frost. Well for one, it seems no one can wait for the cakes to cool to add frosting, and another reason, it's hard! I'm not so steady with that darn spatula, offset or straight.

So here I am trying to frost a cake not on a cake pedestal, (yea, another wish item) nor on a proper cakeboard, with this thick meringue. It works but at the same time, it's not as pretty as I would like. I try for the peaks, but remember I hardly ever frost a cake. I really have no experience. It came out okay. Like I said torching is fun. It's neat watching the sugar brown. I drizzled a little of the caramel sauce after I browned the meringue. Slicing the cake was easy. I plated it and did a little dribbling of the caramel sauce, and put some strawberries on the plate too.


I think it turned out quite nicely. Stinky says he loves frosting, but he never finishes a slice that's been properly frosted, he's like me not a true frosting fan. Goof ate his piece and shared some with Lucy too. She seems to enjoy the little licks of frosting.

Will I make this cake again? Yes, but I think I'll avoid the tres leche soaking. I'm gonna try it with a thicker caramel sauce as the filling. A nice caramel cake is just fine. Oh and the massive quanities of dulce de leche? I am told one can of that stuff makes a very nice caramel pie in cookie crumb crust. Hmm now imagine that same pie with pecan pralines in there too!