You Like Tomato and I Like Tomahto...

So we have planted this little garden in the middle of the desert and actually managed to keep it alive. It has taken lots of water and a ginormous shade umbrella, but by golly it’s growing. We did what is called the square foot garden method. Basically you can plant a different variety in every square foot, which sounded like a great idea for a beginner gardener. So if I kill one plant the others may still have a chance, then I can tell what is easy to grow. We planted corn, tomatoes, strawberries, radishes, green beans, carrots, jalapeños, yellow squash, watermelons, pumpkins, eggplant, snapdragons, peanuts, and sweet peas. So far I can tell you that you plant sweet peas in the cooler months, peanut seeds need to be raw and still have the skin on, and for some reason the eggplant plant hasn’t grown at all. We have harvested the radishes and made a pasta dish out of them. The strawberries we have grown are smaller than the size of a dime and that’s before the ants get to them. Out of our 16 corn plants we have 9 ears growing, more than what I expected. We picked quite a few tomatoes the other day. We were hoping to make some tomato sauce out of them but we didn’t have enough ripe ones. So, we made salsa. All we had from our garden were the tomatoes; we had to go buy everything else. Which really cost a lot more than just buying a jar of salsa, but no one in the family likes to eat tomatoes so we had to use them somehow. Which you may be wondering, if no one likes them then why grown them? Well, we all like tomato sauce and tomatoes in salsa just not tomato slices on our burgers or tomato cubes on our salads. Anyway, Ronnie and I get home with all our stuff to make salsa and we start chopping. Then we chop some more and some more. We are chopping for almost an hour! Finally we are finished and we break out the chips and taste it. It was so good! All our chopping and dicing and mincing had paid off, but next time we are totally breaking out the food processor.

The Tooth Fairy Conspiracy

On Saturday Kyle lost one of his teeth. He was sick with a stomach bug and just nibbling on some tortilla chips when the excitement took place. However, the rest of us where trying to eat some lunch. Something about the whole losing a tooth thing just makes me queasy. He was sent off to the bathroom to take care of his tooth while I hoped it didn’t make him any queasier than he already was. He came out of the bathroom talking about how he couldn’t wait till it was time for bed and he could put the tooth under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy. That night I suggested to Kyle that he might want to sleep on the floor, since he has a loft bed it would be faster for him to get to the bathroom from the floor. He loved that idea, for some reason he thinks it is such a treat to sleep on the floor. Ronnie and I went about our normal evening activities and then went to bed. The next morning we were awakened by an attack of the stomach bug. Poor Kyle, here he was still sick and then he says, “The Tooth Fairy didn’t come last night”. My jaw dropped and my eyes opened wide as I searched for a reason why the Tooth Fairy didn’t come. Luckily Ronnie said, “Well maybe since you were on the floor and not in your bed she just didn’t know you had lost a tooth”. I was very thankful for the save, but also astonished by the fact that my almost 10 year old son still believed in the Tooth Fairy. Kyle accepted the excuse and went to lie back down. Then I asked Ronnie to set an alarm on his PDA for that night so we wouldn’t forget again. He set it for 10:00pm. That evening Kyle was feeling better and decided to sleep in his bed so the Tooth Fairy would know where he was. Then a little while later the alarm went off and I started looking for quarters. In our house the Tooth Fairy leaves a dollar. I had scrounged up three quarters and set off to the car for the last one when Ronnie met me in the hallway with a dollar bill. I sighed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to go searching under seats of the car, and then he handed the bill to me. I put my had up in the air signaling that I didn’t want the dollar, hoping that he would just go do the Tooth Fairy thing. Then he shook his head no and stated that he did the last one. Then we went into our room so we wouldn’t disturb Kyle’s slumber. We both laughed and said the whole Tooth Fairy thing is just disgusting. Why did someone think this practice up? Who really wants to touch old gnarly teeth anyway? And then what do you do with them after you have snatched them from under the pillow? My mother has proudly boasted that she has every one of my baby teeth, well except for the one I swallowed while eating Grape Nuts. I can’t help but think what is she going to do with them? I surely don’t want them. I have told her on many occasions that if she thinks she is going to give them to me one day she is mistaken. I have suggested that she just throw them away, but for some reason she still has them. Anyway, back to the who is going to snatch the tooth discussion. I suggested to Ronnie that he could put a sock on his hand like a glove and then he wouldn’t even have to touch it. Then he said he has a hard enough time trying to find them under the pillow without a sock on his hand. He said it took two or three tries last time to find the tooth and that my hands were smaller and I would have an easier time trying to find it. Then my reply was that if I wore the sock the pointy parts of the tooth might poke me, so someone with tough hands should do it. Then he said the Tooth Fairy is a girl so it should be the mom that does it. Finally he agreed and mission accomplished, the tooth was in his possession. Now what do we do with it he said. I said just throw it away. Does that make me a horrible mother for the fact that I don’t want to keep my kids baby teeth? I personally think some very disturbed person thought up this whole Tooth Fairy thing. And just think…….it hasn’t even started with Lana yet; I have many more years of convincing Ronnie to play the role of the Tooth Fairy. Maybe if I got him a tutu and some fairy wings he could then become one with the Tooth Fairy role.