Last month I joined a group of bloggers who post a monthly “Fly on the Wall” blog. We share little tidbits of our lives – stuff you would see and hear in our homes if you were a fly on the wall and we didn’t know you were there!  I loved writing it, and especially loved snooping through the other bloggers’ posts – some funny, some serious. You’ll find links to the other participating bloggers below. Make sure to check them out, because the February Fly on the Wall starts………..NOW!

Valentine’s Day was yesterday. I’m sure we’re all licking the empty cups from the box of Godiva chocolates and re-arranging our roses, right? Uh huh.

Why am I sitting at the computer at 11:30 pm (three hours past my old-lady bedtime) grinning like a maniac? Grandbaby #3 was just born, and my happy cup overflows. Our daughter lives in California, and I’ll be headed there in a couple of weeks to help out, but for now I’m at the mercy of e-mails and Facebook for updates and photos. He’s beautiful, our Mack. She had him naturally, only an hour and a half after hitting the hospital – and they’re both healthy and happy. Well…Mack wasn’t too happy in this picture, but once he got to cuddle with Mommy and Daddy he was content.

Put me baaaaaack!

His big sisters were there during labor, and the youngest had a question for the doctor: “Um. Mr. Dentist? Are you going to pull the baby out of my mommy’s body now?” (Complete with hand motions.) I sure wish they had that on video!

The cat war rages on. Some people fight about kids, in-laws, money, sex. We fight about the cats. The obvious solution would be to simply not HAVE cats, but that would mean I lost the war, and I really hate losing.  After 34 years of marriage, you’d think we would have this worked out, but it may go down in history as “The 50 Year Feline War.”

The Man says he hates cats, but he’s a sucker for kittens, and forgets that they turn into cats. Once they’re no longer cute, these arguments surface:

• My two cats are not allowed to stay in the house at night because he’s sure they will run around using every corner as a litter box. (Litter boxes are NOT acceptable.)
• They leave hair all over the couch, and he makes a big point of grumbling and sticky-rollering when he sees visitors coming up our driveway.  Our Lab and German Shorthaired Pointer are also allowed on the couch, but apparently they don’t  deposit fur.
• The cats are covered with germs because they eat rodents. (The Lab eats cat, chicken, and deer poop. Kissy-kissy.)
• Most importantly, once the temperature rises above 20, they don’t NEED to be in the house. (The dogs do.) Can you see why the fur flies around here?

Pretend you can’t hear him!

If you’re looking around for a nice piece of meat to land on, you’re in the wrong home. We are experimenting, and have switched to a plant-based diet. Which basically means vegan, only we slip now and then and put a little meat in the beans and rice to add some interest. I am shocked to say I don’t crave sweets – for the first time in my life! This is going to play hell with the whole Rowdy Baker thing, isn’t it?  It’s kind of scary…if I’m not The Rowdy Baker, then who am I?

For now I’m sitting squarely on the fence, practicing my new multiple personality disorder. Since I doubt my brown rice miso mushroom dish will go viral on Pinterest, I’ll be baking just as usual…but freezing the goodies for when if I cave in and bail on the healthy stuff. You may see more whole grains and coconut oil in my recipes though. You can’t say I didn’t warn you!

I’m wondering what a fly is doing on my wall in February! We have a foot of snow on the ground – aren’t you supposed to be hybernating or turning into maggots or something? Oh…I’m guessing you found the big sticky mess that is supposed to be my kitchen.  What a month! Valentine’s Day is HUGE when you write a baking blog. There were so many ideas swirling around in my head – all involving chocolate, berries, cream, nuts, and butter. Some of them even made it to my Facebook page and blog. The rest will have to wait until next year. My energy and enthusiasm were damped by a festive case of sciatica, which was compounded by a case of shingles – competing with each other to see which could cause the most nerve pain. That’s why you saw me sitting in the recliner with a heating pad on my back slugging down with a medicinal dose of Jack Daniels.

Our youngest son (aka: “he who shall not be named on social media sites”) came for a visit during this trying time and was shocked to find that Mom was not cooking. There were no goodies to be had! He and The Man had to rough it, which they did quite well, if not cheerfully. Did I milk it a little? Maybe. 😉
I’m happy to say I’ve recuperated now and am planning ahead for St. Patrick’s Day. Yes, there will be a lot of green pastry coming your way!

You may have to visit someone else next month, because I’ll be in California for a few weeks, getting my grandchildren fix. If you have any relatives buzzing around Redding, let them know they’re welcome at my daughter’s house, but they’d better stay out of swatting range – she hates things that fly!

Now, buzzz off and visit:

Baking In a Tornado
Stacy Sews and Schools
My Brain on Kids
Just a Little Nutty
Menopausal Mother
The Sadder But Wiser Girl
The Momisodes
Follow Me Home
Big A Little a
The Insomniac’s Dream
Don’t Chew On The Dinner Table
Black Sheep Mom
Raising Reagan
Moore Organized Mayhem
Finding Felicity

For those of you with voyeuristic tendencies, or who just want to see if someone else has a home that is more dysfunctional than yours, wouldn’t it be fun to be a fly on the wall – to see how their household rolls when they think no one is looking?

A group of bloggers gets together every month to give you an “up close and personal” glimpse of their lives, and this month I’m joining them – so put on your sticky shoes and goggles and enjoy!

But first, I’ve just got to say…I’m having a hard time getting past the whole concept of you being a fly on my wall. I hate the damn things! Did you know they vomit in your food before they eat it? If that isn’t bad enough, they also quickly lay eggs and poop in your meal too. So…we have a vomiting, egg-laying, pooping, buzzing creature with its sticky feet on MY WALL watching me do things that will certainly blow my credibility as a clean, cheerful, fun baker??

Sounds good…I’m in!

The first thing you will see today is dishes. Lots of dishes, pans, utensils. Ugh. That’s the problem with having a baking addiction – unless you’re married to someone who is willing to run behind you tidying up, it piles up quickly. Everything comes to a screeching halt when the clean equipment runs out, and that’s when you’ll see me drinking a cup of coffee, glaring at the bowls and pans that are “soaking” in the sink. Eventually I get them done, but right now you have a nice sticky mess to go buzz around, and I am relaxing with a cup of coffee…studiously ignoring the mess.

So I just heard that in New Guinea a woman is measured by how many pigs she’s worth! Well, I’ll tell you what – bring on the pigs! I am at least a 10 pig woman today. I made homemade raspberry turnovers, which was a much bigger project that I expected (involving most of the day), cleaned up after myself, and still served up a lovely meatloaf dinner. That should be worth 10 of those little buggers, right?

The Man has been ill. I’m not allowed to discuss “his business” on public sites, so suffice it to say the crisis has thankfully evolved from a serious life-threatening situation to a he’s-not-an-invalid-but-trying-to-achieve-tenure status because of the perks involved. He loves being coddled (as do all of us) and is milking it for all it’s worth. After being scared to death, I’m a willing enabler. I will regret this soon, I know.

I watched “The Secret” tonight. At first I thought it was new-age BS, but the more I thought about it the more possible the concept seemed. It would explain why an old friend would call out of the blue right after I was thinking about her. I always assumed it was a psychic experience – knowing what was going to happen beforehand. But maybe it’s a matter of your mind/desire/want attracting the communication. I liked the idea that people need to focus on what they want, need, or desire and try not to think about everything else. If you think about good things, you will attract good things. If you think about bad things, you will attract bad things. Sounds perfect to me; I’m definitely a head-in-the-sand person and am thrilled to have an excuse for ignoring the news. That’s why you are watching me sit here with my eyes closed, visualizing a mailbox full of checks!

My Facebook page hit 300 likes the other day, so I threw my first party – with a little hand holding by Karen (Baking in a Tornado), who basically confirmed what my mother had taught me: Invite everyone so feelings aren’t hurt, make sure things look nice, see that everyone feels welcome, be appreciative of gifts, and thank everyone sincerely for coming. Oh, and let the booze flow freely. Well…that didn’t apply in this case, but in the real world (as in, not my alter-ego blogging world) it’s still an important factor. I’ve had some very bad parties. Some real stinkers, where I put a lot of thought into the food, drinks, and decorations and didn’t consider what people would actually DO at the party. I remember one Halloween party we threw where everyone left early and went to a bar! (I still think the whole crisis could have been averted if I’d just cranked the music up.) Another parallel between a real party and a Facebook party is pretty basic: to enthusiastically return the favor and go to other people’s parties when you’re invited (or to crash them when you’re not.)

Here I am, lying curled up on the loveseat with a major backache. I am wishing I had the heating pad that is, at this very minute, underneath the cat. He has discovered its soothing warmth and appropriated it for himself, and I’m too big of a sucker to go steal it out from underneath him. Stop laughing – flies can’t laugh. Can they?

If flies CAN laugh, you might get a giggle out of this joke: Two flies are sitting on a piece of shit, one of them cuts a fart and the other one says, “Hey! I’m eating here”

I unfriended someone today. I won’t go into details, but I guess it was for the same reasons I would back away from someone in the real world…our beliefs and opinions were incompatible. Unlike the real world, it’s pretty hard on Facebook to say “hey, let’s just not talk about that, okay?” which led to a lot of eyebrow raising and eye-rolling on my part; probably on hers, too.
I didn’t understand that I could just “ignore” her, so I made that very final decision that led to a tirade of hurt/angry/accusatory personal messages. I can’t undo it, and wish I had handled it differently, and hate feeling guilty. But…I don’t have to roll my eyes as often now!

Speaking of rolling my eyes (and no, this has nothing whatsoever to do with 50 Shades of Grey) if you had your sticky feet on my wall right now and were spying on me, you would see a wonky-eyed woman trying to read her laptop screen with the help of a pair of Walmart reading glasses that only have a lens on the right side. That’s because I have one nearsighted eye and one farsighted eye, and I ran out of contacts six months ago. Since my vision coverage only covers an exam every two years, I’ve been stubbornly doing without. Usually I can make my eyes work independently, but age is really beginning to laugh at this ability, and my eyes are not cooperating. So the farsighted one wanders somewhere off to the right, which probably makes me look a lot like a frog – and this should be making you, my buzzing little friend, very nervous!

As a fly you have approximately 30 days to live, so if I were you I’d fly to some of these other awesome blogs and see what THEY are doing. Hopefully they’ll be a lot more interesting than I. Oh,and if you take a quick look in the front yard, on top of the two feet of packed snow you should find lots of good eats, thanks to the dogs, cats, and turkeys. Knock yourself out – my pleasure!

Shoo!

Baking In a Tornado
The Insomniac’s Dream
Stacy Sews and Schools
My Brain on Kids
Just a Little Nutty
Sanity Waiting to Happen
Menopausal Mother
IBD, Daddy and Me!
The Sadder But Wiser Girl
When Crazy Meets Exhaustion
The Momisodes
DeBie Hive
SpecialEd/Army Wife