Life is Too Short for Mediocre Coffee

Meatballs are in the oven, so I have a few minutes to type rapidly while they cook.

• Wednesdays are a hugely busy day for me, so it helps to have dinner made in the morning. I am of the school of pre-cooking onions for the meatballs/meatloaf. I think it gets the moisture out and helps your meat creations stick together. Others put the onions in raw. I believe this is wrong but it's not a criminal offense and wouldn't be a barrier to our friendship.
  
• I have been drinking store brand coffee to try and save a little money. There was a trip to the ER and some dental work and I was trying to keep the month's budget balanced. I use the HEB brand (our local store) and I have to say, it's better than a lot of cheap coffees around. But, I don't look forward to my morning cup. It's more of an okay, hmm, coffee's ready. Not an anticipatory pleasure of the first sip. I rate it a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. So, today I treated myself to local roasted coffee (within the last month) that I just love. Maybe that's not somewhere where I can shave off money? Anyway, suggestions of delicious cheap coffee to try would be welcome because I'll brew anything at least once.
  
• I tried this recipe from Pioneer Woman. Thumbs up all around from the crew here. Only difference was that I used the thinly sliced chicken breast offered at my store rather than pounding larger breasts.
  
• I sometimes have to chuckle with the way husbands and wives use the same language for widely different results. To me, doing the dishes means rinsing them and putting them in the dishwasher, culminating in turning on the dishwasher if it is full. To my husband, doing the dishes means rinsing the dishes and stacking them in the right side of the sink. He must think there's a dish fairy who magically comes in the morning and puts them in the dishwasher. Oh wait, I guess there is. Of course, to be fair, my idea of doing laundry means doing the washing and drying. Not the folding. That's a separate job and is pretty much his in our household. That's what he gets for being an engineer who can fold precisely and letting me know early on that I didn't measure up. Instead, an armchair full of clean clothes awaits his return from work. Of course, putting up the clothes is considered a third job and is pretty much up for grabs.
  

And now my house smells of deliciously browned meatballs. Must get back to real life. I miss you my friends!!!!

Mama learns a lesson

We've been having a lot of trouble with our soon-to-be 12 year old son. He's been distracted, sleepy, forgetful, etc. He can barely drag himself out of bed in the morning. His normal MO is to be up at 6, so this can't-get-out-of-bed kid seems foreign to us. And he has been forgetting assignments and having a hard time focusing. It's very un-mushroomhunter behavior.

Suddenly, last night, I remembered that we had had put him back on his asthma meds a few weeks ago and that we had experienced the exact same set of problems the last time he had had an episode during the school year (the problems are less noticeable during summer). We'd been pretty diligent about the asthma meds because we didn't want weak lungs during this swine flu outbreak.

Oh, she realized in a rush, this behavior is not his fault and he isn't the throes of some sort of strange and awful middle school phase. He's having a physiological reaction to strong drugs. Is it no wonder that illegal drugs can have such an effect if readily-prescribed drugs alter the body's chemistry so much? I really don't think enough attention is paid to side effects, particularly in a growing child. It's a delicate balance to get it right.

Now I feel bad about getting so mad at him. But hopefully the new organizational tools we've put in place to combat his lack of focus will be of some help to him, even after he has regained full use of his brain.