N & M Renaud

Four loads of laundry.
In my pyjamas. No one
saw me in the hall.

(win.)

Sure, they look harmless enough, all flopped and relaxed.

But I spent hours cleaning their area recently: the hay, the litter, the fuzz (oh, the endless balls of fuzz I vacuumed!!) And how do they reward me?

By reminding me that their cage is their cage. And while they’re 100% litter trained, sometimes a few territorial poops go a long way in making a statement.

Sigh.

For fun, I tried to do the Wii Fit every day for a month in order to make a pattern.

See how I did? I almost made it. My proudest day is the 20th. That’s the day after I missed one, and I decided to keep going anyway. The day that I decided that my pattern wouldn’t be perfectly complete, but that Mostly Complete would be better than Given Up.

(Full disclosure: I don’t have any stamps for the month of March. Make of that what you may.)

Today, I’m happy to report that I’ve made my last payment on my student loans! We put half of our our debt payment allowance in February toward one last lump sum for OSAP. That means that 8 years after graduation, I’ve finally earned my degree.

I would have posted this earlier but somehow I miscalculated my final payment by $0.22.

Who can blame me? It was an Arts Degree.

You can’t imagine how excited I was to see this booklet in the brochure rack of our waiting room at the hospital. Somehow, despite the apparent recession, the pulse growers and pulse producers of Canada got a lot of money. They produced this slick looking magazine (click here to download the pdf) and, now that I’m doing a little research, I see they have a slick website, too. (clicky-clicky)

A mere two years ago, I wouldn’t have looked twice at this publication. But today I took a copy, read it cover to cover, exclaimed over the tips and recipes and preached about it to the friends we were visiting with tonight. Apparently, I’ve become a bean fanatic. An unapologetic, bean evangelist, so to speak. I think we can expect to see a lot more chickpea recipes coming our way here at RenaudFamily.com!

*I cannot take credit for this pun. I can’t imagine who was the first person to say it, but I read it most recently on the Pulse Canada website.

I’m having a friend over for lunch tomorrow. That means today is cleaning day. I almost wish she could see the before, to know that I actually did try and clean up for her.

She suffers from allergies. I have suggested she stock up on Benadryl.

Just so you don’t think I sit around and read magazines all day at work, let me tell you that today was one of those days when all of a sudden you realise it’s 6pm and you haven’t gone pee since lunch (at 11am.) Yep, we all have days like these, and the last few weeks it’s been my turn.

I just realised that the lovely flowers I bought for myself are still on the dining room table. I’d forgotten about them in the rush of day-to day (not to mention I’ve been avoiding the pile-up of papers and books, also on the table.) It’s a grey, rainy, slushy day and I think it’s time to contemplate the daisies. Maybe with a cup of tea.

And in other news, I just finished my first ever pair of fingerless mittens! The least practical woolen item a Canadian can knit – just warms the palm of your hand, the part that never gets cold. But cute as a button and fun to knit up!

While it may look like I was the model of efficiency this morning, with all the laundry and dishes and meal making I did this morning, I actually squandered much of my time knitting and let the washing machine, dish washer and crock pot do my work for me. It’s no Rosie the Robot, but every little bit counts!

You probably heard my squee of excitement when I read this recipe: Crockpot Crème Brûlée. So last week I gave it a try. We had a potluck coming up on Saturday and I thought I’d want to make a test run before bringing it to a potluck. (See? I learn my lessons!) The crème brûlée had all the makings of a great dessert, egg yolks, heavy cream and sugar, lots of sugar. It got rave reviews on the internet. It was bound to be delicious!

But it wasn’t. It was a pretty dismal failure, actually. It sort of, um, curdled.

However, I blame myself and not the recipe. I baked the crème part one day, then refrigerated overnight. The next morning it looked like it turned out okay, so I popped it in the oven to broil the sugary top for the brûlée. I think it would have turned out okay if we’d eaten it right then. However, I think the problem came with my packing up a still-warm pudding with not-yet solid sugar on top, taking a 30 minute bus ride and hoping the whole thing would stay cohesive until it was served 8 hours later. It did not.

But no harm done. I made an easy-peasy Spring S’mores Bars for the potluck and we all lived happily ever after, without any kitchen dramas.