Fear of a Black Planet

Fear of a Black Planet cake was topical, delicious and favored by the people.

And a new puzzle by Ravensberg is the right mix of challenging and beautiful, without being infuriating. I've done a little of this today, as well as reading a book about Madeleine Albright's brooches.

People who like football are watching the final of the European Cup.

Last night one of my grandmother's ugliest paintings, which she painted when she was 17, found a new home with one of the nephs. I decided to bring this painting with us in order to get at least one item out of the garage. Much is right with the world.

The Republicans Are Awake

Oh vacation!

The past two days have been fairly quiet and nice. Then horrible world events happened, and how there is a Republican confab at the end of the dining table. I will be taking refuge in Nature now.

Tonight is our night to cook.

We will be making this:

Nothing Says Vacation Like Sanitarium Brand Weetbix

Like I said. I'm eating a bowl and mentally preparing for vacation.

Family vacation. 

There are certain constants: 1) one sister has a terminally ill cat. This is, sadly, traditional. 2) I have to head out immediately after vacation (last year I had to leave after three days to move the mama to her new place. This year I have to go on a work trip the day after we return). 3) Underlying sibling tension: traditionally during vacation this has been bigsis blowing out over the close relationship between middlesis and I, and feeling left out. But the torch passed to middlesis. It's a good time: one of us will hold back the waves of anger for a few days and then either explode, or light the long fuse and explode / self-congratulate for waiting at a later date. Who knows? Could be me this year.

As always there is mama drama, or a mama-related family project. Two years ago we spent the vacation setting her up with autopay for all of her bills. Last year we spent trying to figure out her health care in her new zip code. This was a group project but god love middlesis for enduring the 3-hour phone calls with the HMO. Finally, it is customary for us to have lengthy and un-fun family pow-wows about family business, our family trust, whatever, because we siblings aren't often in the same place at the same time.

This year I am mixing it up. Less tension and planning beforehand. More deep breathing. More participation, perhaps?

Time will tell.

Bananas 2016

Today I dispatched the remaining two dozen or so bananas that I had retrieved from the ancestral chest freezer. Readers of mrsguy may recall that when we cleaned out the house last summer there were more than 40 frozen bananas found lurking. We now have two loaves of banana bread and some banana drying in the dehydrator. Our house reeks of bananas! There are worse things.

The carnage:

The dryer:

And I had company in the kitchen. In the previous incarnation of the kitchen she would observe from her perch on top of the garbage can. We've hidden those but bought her stools to sit on.

The dehydrator was a modified success. Needs more drying time, I believe. I care not. And mrguy is so pleased to have a banana-free freezer.