Back From the Depths of Obscurity

Rejoice, all ye connoisseurs of blogs: I have a sudden urge to thrill you all with a post. Isn't that nice?

I proved to myself today that I am not just an ordinary cook, nor am I just a good one. I am, to be precise, exceptional. How so? I made a recipe BY TASTE! Sauce à fraise d'Aaron, I call it. (That's French for Aaron's strawberry sauce.) Here's what I did: I heated up frozen strawberries with sugar and water, cut the berries up, and continued to heat until the sauce thickened. And guess what, mon ami? It was a success!!!! Je suis un génie, n'est-ce pas?

Oh, yes, I almost forgot: the blueberry pancakes were good, too, boy howdy!

(I'm not sure of the origin of "boy howdy," but I know a bunch of cool people who say it, and I wanted to show that I am cool as well as exceptional.)

Anyhow, cooking has not been my primary pursuit this summer. (Would that it were!) The cold fact is that I have been working, working, working, and not all of it for pay. I have to finish Saxon Calculus by the end of the summer (16 lessons to go), I have to fill out my transcript, and I have to earn money on top of all of that. From this flurry of industry comes my lack of recent posts. I have been slaving, slaving, slaving.

Much as I hate to admit it, I am exaggerating here. Busy I am, but I have not been without my idle moments, nor without my hobby-consumed moments. Blogging takes fourth place in my list of hobbies, so the extra work has had the effect of bumping it off my schedule.

One of the more interesting things I have been doing is redecorating the upstairs apartment at my grandfather's house. I have spent a good amount of time the past week or two painting, sanding, scrubbing, and washing. The bathroom has basically become Cara's and my project, and it needed work desperately. The thing that made it hardest to fix was that the brownish linoleum floor with the geometric patterns did NOT match the yellow and blue tile walls, and the floor and lower walls were not going to be replaced. Along with our knowledgeable-in-graphic-design mother, though, Cara and I managed to work around them. After Cara removed the blue and white wallpaper (which didn't match either) and picked a new paint color, I sanded the bathtub (it was covered with some sort of epoxy to hold the now-removed glass doors), washed wallpaper paste off the walls, primed, reprimed, painted, and repainted. Then, yesterday I spent about six hours on two separate shopping trips, looking for necessary accessories. I bought curtains, curtain rods, shower hooks, shower curtains, trash baskets, and drain plugs, and it was all so much fun. Redecorating can be a very fulfilling activity.

One thing I found amusing today was that a clock Mama and I bought at Wal-mart for $3 broke. Hahahahahahaha!

Just kidding, the funny part is that the back said, "If this clock breaks before the warranty runs out, send postage paid with $5 for handling and we will send you a new one." Any child can see the thrilling logic there: pay $6.50 for a $3 clock so that you can wait for the long, slow shipments to and from the company warehouse. Riiiiight.

The other amusing thing was Daddy asking me to place the butter in "neutral territory" so that he could reach it, too.

Well, there's a brief update on my life. It was fun. I should do it again some time. Just don't hold your breath...

Aaron and Me

Well, I'm back from Guys' week and the Fairwood youth convention. It was terrific fun. We camped, hiked, swam, had "special activities," watched Facing the Giants, played volleyball, sang, and worked. We played ping pong and volleyball. The food was delicious. Not all my friends were there, but I made some new ones and had a great time anyway. The meetings were excellent, with subjects ranging from putting on the armor of God and being clothed in humility to revival to being in the White Cavalry. That's about all I'm willing to tell you for now. There's just way too much to recap.

A few days before I left for the time at Fairwood, a little blogworthy incident came my way but did not make it to the internet...until now!!!!!!!!!!

I was sitting at the piano playing some classical piece when a little dark object on the carpet caught my eye. I glanced over to the left, and what should running around in little circles but an eensy weensy mousy!

I jumped up and tried to find a way to capture the little rodent without harming it. There were no jars or containers around, so I grabbed a tennis racket that was handy and half-heartedly tried to scoop up the little varmint. To my delight, the critter clung to my racket with a vehemence, even trying to crawl through the strings. I took him over to where I knew I could find a jar of some kind and made him a little house. I soon moved him into a much larger and more mouse-proof vase. He had everything a mouse could want: paper towel, cardboard, seeds, water... but it was not long before we noticed that he was not eating.

"Aha!" I said, "This mouse is not yet weaned!" So we fed him milk from an eyedropper. He crawled in a baby-mousish way across my hand, lapping up his dinner, and often sitting in it as well. It was great fun.

I had great dreams of the mouse becoming a sort of adviser and bosom companion, like the famous mouse Ben of "Ben and Me." Unfortunately, the mouse would not eat enough, or we did not feed him enough. The cold truth is that he died after a short two days of happiness. We hadn't even named him! We had discussed what we should name him, to be sure, but nothing was agreed on by all sides. Now that he's dead, it doesn't really matter. I think I'll name him Walter anyway.

This is Walter: