These days I mostly try not to write. My life is so full of work and family and weeding. But every now and then, my brain starts to itch and the only way to scratch that itch is writing. This is where you will find my most recent scratchings.
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Punk Housewife Tip: The Other Half of the Onion
And what to do with it? Why, put it on an upturned yogurt lid of course! Though it took me years to figure that out. Save a baggie and still keep your fridge from smelling like an onion sandwich. This also works brilliantly for lemon and apples.
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A Stick, a Bucket, and a Piece of Rope
Speaking of removing external suggestion to allow your child’s authentic self to blossom, let’s talk toys. I’ve been thinking about toys ever since the first ones started arriving in the mail, 3 months before the due date of my first child. When I was despairing the already accumulating stores of kid stuff, my mother-in-law said something to the effect of, “Oh, someday your whole house will be strewn with Fisher Price. And you know what? You’ll love it.” Actually, almost five years in, I don’t love it. I love having my kids home with me, I love watching them explore…
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Truly Green Investment
These few years in New Orleans have been really great, this place is as good as a city gets– charming old architecture steeped in history, a vitally important music and art scene, fabulous restaurants, a very un-American lack of prudishness, and whole seasons of jasmine and magnolia flowers. But, I am not a city girl. As our return to Alaska approaches I’m getting quite eager for our sleepy little hole in the wilderness where a Saturday drive ‘out the road’ yields adventures like this: Just as much as the place, I am really yearning to be back in Our Own…
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Punk Housewife Tip: Small Freezer Portions
There are some things that are just too handy not to keep in small portions in your freezer, no matter how Betty Crocker it makes you feel. Two such things are chicken stock and chopped tomatoes. I make my own stock and put it into pint size or bigger jars for the freezer, but there are many times when you just want a little stock, like for cooking collards or adding into a sauce. I also always buy the 28 oz cans of chopped tomatoes, but often don’t need the whole thing. So I put the rest in the freezer…
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Unschooling Possibilities
Last summer I hit the pre-school vs homeschool debate pretty hard in my head (read the original post if you have time, the following will make more sense.) The outcome of all my obsessing was joining a homeschool group and rallying a subset of families with smaller kids for a weekly playgroup. We’ve been meeting every Thursday for seven months now, a group of 14 kids if everyone comes, aged 1-6. In the beginning I was just trying to get my girl enough peer time but as the group has grown and blossomed, I have really begun to feel very…
calamity jane 