October Fly on the Wall

Welcome to a Fly on the Wall group post. Today 12 bloggers are inviting you to catch a glimpse of what you’d see if you were a fly on the wall in our homes. Come on in and buzz around my house.

When you’re done, click on the links below for a peek into some other homes:
Baking In A Tornado
Just a Little Nutty
Follow me home . . .
Stacy Sews and Schools
The Sadder But Wiser Girl
Menopausal Mother
Moore Organized Mayhem
Spatulas on Parade
The Rowdy Baker
Trashy Blog
Dates 2 Diapers
Sorry kid, Your Mom Doesn't Play Well With Others


About 6 years ago our neighborhood was having a problem with someone driving over our lawns at night and doing damage. This went on for a few weeks. One night when my husband was out of town and the kids were in bed, I heard a crash. I went out front and found our basketball hoop, which had been cemented into the ground, ripped out and laying on its side.

Police and CSI came, the kid was found and arrested and before he went to court he and his dad replaced our basketball hoop.

Last month we had our roof replaced. On the roofers’ last day at the house they rang the doorbell to tell me that they had an accident. I bet the odds are astronomical that this could happen more than once:

I live with three intelligent grown men. One day this past month I could be heard asking them a question that not one of them could answer: “Why is it that absolutely nothing comes out of the dryer more wrinkled than a wrinkle-free shirt?”

My son is a lifeguard. He works at an indoor pool so he’s working year round. A few weeks ago he came home from work wearing his lifeguard bathing suit, a wrist band, 6 strands of Mardi Gras beads and an eye-patch. I haven’t a clue and I was afraid to ask.

A couple of our electrical outlets weren’t working and I had to call an electrician and make an appointment for him to come out. The woman in the office asked what time I wanted him to come and explained that she couldn’t guarantee an exact time but would give me a 2 hour window. I asked for around 10:00 am and she said “sure, he’ll be there between 10:00 am and 3:30 pm”. Two hour window? This must be some new kind of math or something.

So the electrician came out to check the outlets that didn’t work. I didn’t want to embarrass myself so I checked the fuse box before he came to be sure none of the fuses had tripped.

The electrician comes out, checks the garage outlet, the outlet in the front garden and the one on the back deck and sees that they don’t work. He walks into my laundry room, presses the “reset” button on the outlet in there and is finished within 60 seconds of arriving.

And again, so as not to embarrass myself, when my family came home I made up a whole long involved story of the hour the electrician spent here getting all the outlets working again. I think I even made up a few “technical” terms too.

Chocolate Pizza with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

The Cicadas were really loud this year and generally I just tune them out, but at the end of last month I had a headache and they were driving me crazy.

Me: “Those cicadas are making my headache worse”.

Son: “They can’t be making it worse”.

Me: “Well they are. I had a slight headache and now my head is splitting”.

Son: “Now you know how I feel when you sing.”

After dinner my son clears the table and takes out the trash. My husband wipes down the table and, if I’ve used the grill, cleans the grill. I fill and run the dishwasher. One night my husband comes to dinner and does a little happy dance.

Me: “Oh, you love my chicken parmesan”.

Him: “No, I love that you don’t make it on the grill”.

And here was another fun conversation:
Me: "Can you please go out back and pull the weeds."
Hubs (indignantly): "Stop asking me that, I already did."
Me: "Then what's this growing in the swingset, a beanstalk?"

It seems that I tell one of these stories about my younger son every month, but they happen all the time and it’s best for my mental health that I just keep telling them and try to laugh. So here’s the latest:

I go into my son’s bathroom and his trash can is full to the brim and about to spill onto the floor. I decide not to take it down to the kitchen to empty into the main trash, but I’m steaming mad. He’s a senior in High School, he can tell when a trash can is full.

So he comes home from school and I angrily say “go into your bathroom and look at the trash can.” And he leaves. And he doesn’t come back. And, being concrete and literal, I’m sure that he did actually go into his bathroom and look at the trash can. Kill me now.

When I’m in the living room, if my son is really bothering me and I want to get rid of him, I turn on “The Big Bang Theory”.

I get it, I love the show.

He doesn’t get it at all, he lives the show.

Chocolate Pizza with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

                                   ©www.BakingInATornado.com

                                                                                                                                                       
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients, chocolate pizza:
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 stick butter
1 stick margarine
3 eggs
¾ tsp vanilla
2 cups sugar
1 cup flour
 
Ingredients, frosting:
1/2 stick butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 drops of red and 16 drops of yellow food coloring.
½ tsp vanilla
¾ tsp Pumpkin pie spice
1 TBSP milk
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
 
Ingredients, decorations:
Gummy worms
Halloween sprinkles
1 strand peeled off of a Twizzler peel ‘n eat
2 Vanilla wafers
2 M & Ms
1 Hershey’s Kiss
 
Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a large round pizza pan (without holes in it).
*Melt together the unsweetened chocolate, margarine and butter in microwave. Stir until completely smooth.
*Stir in the vanilla. Once incorporated, stir in the sugar, then the eggs and last the flour.
*Bake for 15-18 minutes until the center is set. Allow to cool completely.
 
Frosting:
*Beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Beat in the food coloring, vanilla and pumpkin pie spice. 
*Carefully, starting off at your lowest speed, beat in the powdered sugar. If it’s too stiff, add the milk. If it’s too loose, add a little more powdered sugar.
*Carefully spread the frosting onto your chocolate pizza.
*Decorate with sprinkles to outline the face, gummy worms as hair, cookies and M & Ms as eyes, twizzler as a mouth and kiss as a nose.
*Store in the refrigerator and bring to room temperature before serving.