My husband loves to make analogies. They’re usually really bad, too, and they make me roll my eyes and snort. In fact, he made one just the other day and I thought to myself, I need to remember this one so I can use it as an example of his analogy badness, but it was so bad that I can’t even remember it now.

However, the one he made two weeks ago is not quite as easy to forget because he got injured in the process.

I wasn’t home for the moment of reckoning, and he didn’t say anything to me about it when I got back. It wasn’t until I noticed he was limping and flat-out demanded an explanation that I found out just how bad his analogies can be.

Apparently, my youngest son was driving him batty, running around helter-skelter, bothering people and doing a bunch of things that would only serve get him in trouble. This was the day before the pie party, so there was lots of work to get done and deviant behavior was not cool. So finally my fed-up-to-his-eyeballs husband launched into a lecture around the theme “Shooting Yourself In The Foot.” In his noble efforts to help his five-year-old son grasp the concept of how totally stupid it is to shoot yourself in the foot, my husband kicked himself in the ankle.

His goal was to knock his left foot off the ground with his right so he’d end up sprawled on the floor, but instead his left foot stayed firmly planted and he jammed his right foot something fierce. It really, really hurt, he reported.

For the next couple hours he was mostly okay, but as the day progressed, the pain worsened so that by mid afternoon he was fully laid up on the couch, his foot elevated, and with a bunch of painkillers coursing through his veins. He was researching foot injuries, and I was fretting about when we should go to the hospital.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” he’d whine. “What am I going to say? That I kicked myself? They’ll think I’m an idiot!” And then we’d howl with laughter.

I wasn’t always laughing though, seeing as the remaining mountain of cleaning was mine to climb alone. I flew around the house mumbling, I can’t believe it. And, Of all the times to injure yourself. And, If you can’t work for several weeks because of this—oh, good grief!

He crawled upstairs to bed that night. I stood at the top and just shook my head.

The next morning, he was considerably better. He was even able to vacuum the floors and clean the bathrooms. I had to drive to church.

“Don’t you dare tell anyone about this,” he said.

“Okay, but I am going to blog about it.” I giggled wickedly. “Just you wait.”

Note: no husband was taken advantage of in the writing of this post. He read it, made corrections, and despite his injured pride and a few lingering twinges of humiliation, approved it for publication. What a man.

(Also, his foot is fine.)

This same time, years previous: cinnamon flop, on homeschooling and socialization

My kids don’t see their great grandparents all that often, but whenever they do, there is an immediate connection.

When they came for a visit last week, the children wasted no time claiming them as personal entertainment makers, plying them with books and board games, and showing off their newly learned piano songs.

The Greats jumped right in with remarkable gusto, reading book after book, playing multiple games of chess, explaining the purpose of each of the pills they had to take, and telling stories.

This time around, my grandmother brought her childhood Bible school books, yellowed but in excellent condition, for my kids. She gave my youngest girl a lesson out of it, reading the story to her and quizzing her with the follow-up questions. My girl basked in the one-on-one attention—grandma all to herself!

Soaking them up, that’s what my children did while they were here. When grandpa was sitting by the fire working on the crossword puzzle, my daughter silently pulled a wooden chair alongside his soft one and quietly worked on her (rediscovered) knitting. The kids wanted to sit beside them at the table and ride with them in their car on the evening outing. They wondered where the grandparents went when they disappeared for naps, and how long till they’d come back downstairs.

But my children also exhibited an uncharacteristic reserve, too. A bit in awe of these folks with the wrinkles and white hair and walking cane, they didn’t argue too loudly or crowd them too roughly. They watched their grandparents closely, occasionally coming to me with little whispered reports: I was talking to grandpa but he never said anything because he didn’t hear me!

When I was tucking my daughter into bed the evening they arrived, she asked me their age, which I didn’t know. She didn’t say all that much after that, but I could tell she was both impressed and saddened by my guessed number—it was high. They won’t be around forever and she knows that.

This same time, years previous: a boy book, my apple lineup, chicken and white bean chili, peanut butter cream pie, horseback riding, my year of homeschool torture, chicken salad, Chinese cabbage and apple salad, why I homeschool

“I’m not spoiled, I’m primitive!”

That’s what my older daughter yelled at me after I had a hissy fit about my children having the nerve—the nerve!—to thumb their noses at the food I serve.

I busted up laughing, of course, which stopped her short and prompted her to ask, “What’s primitive mean?”

That’s my girl, the primitive spoiled one. Or the primitively spoiled one. Or the spoiled primate.

Whatever.

My son has been playing with his MP3 player. So far he’s already deleted all the music he put on it. Smart move, sonny.

And he’s discovered it has a webcam and that he can hook it up to the computer and then take pictures of the computer screen which makes the screen go on into infinity, like those three-way mirrors in dressing rooms.

I’m intrigued with the pictures he comes with. Like of me turning my head:

Or of me writing:

Don’t I look tortured?

It’s already come in handy, too.

I sent him out on a six-mile, round-trip bike ride with orders to take pictures of the agreed upon destination spot as proof he got there.

He also took a nauseatingly wobbly video of the trees and road and garbage cans, his voice in the background saying, “You believe me, Mom? You believe me now?”

Here’s a novel way to peel garlic. It really does work! (I entertained the family with a demonstration. My husband was sufficiently impressed.)

I have another little non-recipe to share with you. It’s my method of choice for preparing sweet potatoes in quantity.

I stuff my oven with sweet potatoes and bake them potatoes until they’re fork tender. (I’ve always pricked my potatoes with a knife, because that’s what I do with the white ones, but I recently read that you’re not supposed to prick sweet potatoes. Which makes sense, considering that my baked sweet potatoes ooze lots of juices that turn to balls of char when they hit the stove floor. I’m eager to see if no-prick baking equals a cleaner oven.)

Once the potatoes have cooled a bit, I tear off the peels with my fingers. The skins go to the chickens and the soft potato pieces plop into my large mixing bowl where I give them a thorough beating with my handheld mixer.

Now, at this point I have two options. I can either refrigerate or freeze the potato puree for later (think sweet potato pie!), or I can proceed with the mashed sweet potato recipe. I usually just work up to this step and then refrigerate the whole kit and caboodle. The mashed potatoes tend to disappear over the course of the next several days, usually before I can even get around to making a pie. The kids love to eat it by the bowlful.

But if I want to make this into an official side dish, I stir in a little salt, scoop the mashed sweet potatoes into a greased baking dish, dot the top with butter, and then bake them in a hot oven.

And that, my dears, is about as simple as simple gets.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

sweet potatoes
salt
a little butter

Roast the sweet potatoes, scoop out the soft flesh, and beat it until it’s creamy smooth. Stir in some salt to taste. Spoon the potatoes into a greased baking dish, dot with butter, and bake at 350 degrees till the top gets slightly caramelized and the potatoes are hot the whole way through.