Give peas a chance

So now that it’s finally really and truly spring here in Virginia, we’re starting to see some exciting things in the produce section of our Whole Foods. Such as, the advent of English peas, which we’ll have for maybe three weeks if we’re lucky, so we’ll splurge on those while we can. I bought a pound on Monday and brought them home. We do love us some peas here in Jenworld.

The girls shelled the peas with much enthusiasm, so much so that some peas flew right out of the pods and onto the floor. The enthusiasm was so great at dinner that Elegant ignored the fork next to her plate and instead used her fingers to eat those very same peas. This was in spite of the fact that she has been told almost daily for the past 1,294 days not to eat peas (and a long list of other foods) with her fingers and that she should use her fork. Or else.

Then she was told again and the Or Else was explained to be a definite restriction on ginger snaps after dinner.

Then the Or Else was repeated a third time with the additional comment that this was the last chance she had to get it right.

Alas, the eating-peas-with-fingers enthusiasm was so great that it continued unabated and as a result there were more ginger snaps available to the rest of us that night.

Last night’s culinary excitement was sugar snap peas, which have also recently arrived for the spring. Alas, the girls don’t love sugar snap peas as much as they do English peas; the primary reason being that the girls think that pea pods are foul and possibly even poisonous. As it happens, I am trying to kill off my children through the regular application of healthy green vegetables, so the girls were forced to eat one — just one, for the love of all that is holy — sugar snap pea pod with dinner last night. Elegant nearly died, the trauma was so great. I nearly had an aneurysm from the stress of getting the pea pod into her mouth and down her gullet.

So tonight I’m thinking we’ll be switching to broccoli, as there’s nothing there that the girls find to be truly vile. I’ll just have to find something else with which to cause Elegant pain and suffering. Probably ravioli, which she loathes. Too many mixed ingredients, and all touching each other, which we all know is pure poison.

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In other news, I appear to have taken leave of my senses this week. How else to explain that I volunteered for two different projects within a 24 hour period?

The first instance proving my lack of sanity was Monday night at a meeting of PTO reps from all the schools in our little city. Yes, I represent our school, but it is a volunteer gig so easy as to be almost laughable, so when asked last year to do this, I jumped at the opportunity for great glory for no work.

My friend Melissa — the other half of the Dynamic Duo of Shoe Shopping — is the rep for her school. I take full responsibility for roping her into that, but this is not so heinous that she has a vendetta against me.

We were having our daily phone chat a few hours before Monday night’s meeting and discussing the agenda, which included finding someone new to take over organizing these meetings. We were both very clear that neither one of us would be raising our hands for that responsibility.

NOT THREE HOURS LATER, Melissa had her hand up in the air AND roped me into it too. Clearly, Melissa has some problems with short-term memory loss, which I’m sure has nothing to do with any alcohol we have consumed together over the years. We have since agreed that our responsibilities with the citywide PTO council shouldn’t be too onerous, as all meetings will either be planned via email or during our shoe shopping excursions.

Then, last night, while at our monthly school PTO meeting, I agreed to lead the fundraising effort to raise money for a track around our field.  (Small money, so not a big deal.)  I’m still smacking myself in the head over that one and have no one to blame but myself. What can I say? I was so excited that someone finally stepped up to be PTO president next year — and dudes, it’s a DUDE, as in a DAD, which is awesome because it’s usually the moms who do this stuff — that I got caught up in the fervor of school pride and all that. Luckily, as a professional fundraiser, I am just brimming with ideas for this effort, so now I just need to find some other volunteers to help me implement those ideas.

All the same, I’m being extra cautious today and avoiding people, just in case anyone has some scut work they’d like done, because I’m NOT volunteering. No, I am not.

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Remember that rain I talked about yesterday? That was Day 2 of a three-day (and counting) monsoon. After months and months of drought, I should be pleased that we’re finally getting some precipitation and that the land surrounding Jenworld is lush and green, just like England. But I really prefer my rain to come in bursts of less than 24 hours, followed by sunny days just to dry things out a little. As it is, everything’s so soggy around here that I keep expecting to see mushrooms growing on the cars.

But at least all this rain is helping the peas grow.