I'll never understand why men enjoy cooking out on the grill. It's 110 degrees out there, you're dripping sweat, and your hand ends up medium well from hovering over the flames trying to season your meat. D-U-M, dumb. I cooked chicken out there last night. James usually does the grilling around here and I now have a new appreciation for that. Due to my lack of practice, our dinner was a little overcooked. I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear, however, that we were able to crack open the hard black shell and find a few tender morsels of chicken near the center of each piece. One thing is settled: James is the outdoors cook around here.

Tonight we opted to go out for dinner. Much better choice. Why, you may ask, don't I just cook something in the house? I'll tell you. It's the plummer's fault. We've been waiting on him since last Thursday to show up and re-route the pipes under the kitchen sink so that the new sink and RO unit can be installed. He was supposed to do that on Friday, on Saturday, and again today. Never showed up, never called. ~sigh~ And to think, this is the GOOD plummer in town. Back to our cooking dilemma, the reason I'm unable to cook is because I unloaded EVERYTHING from under the sink last Thursday (in anticipation of the plummer's visit) and loaded it all onto the stovetop. I've moved it from time to time to use a burner, but it's the place where it's the most out of the way, so it stays put. Besides that, I've got a huge cast iron sink in the middle of my kitchen floor, still in the box, and a giant box containing the RO unit sitting on my table. Every time I need to do anything in the kitchen I have to either climb over or wrestle and grunt and groan trying to shove the sink out of my way. It's a losing battle, so I decided to quit cooking until these things are resolved. (Besides all of that, who wants to cook and heat up your house when you're already sweatin' like pigs and trying to not run up a record high electric bill with the air conditioner?!) When I call the plummer tomorrow I may have to threaten to call "the bad plummer" if he doesn't show up soon. Michael has always been SO GOOD to us before -- this is SOOOOO not like him. Still, it's better than if we DID call the bad plummer, we know that much!

Hhmmm. That's about it from around here. We worked so hard there for a week or two and perhaps we overdid it a bit because we've been so lethargic the past few days. Just can't find any motivation to get anything done. It's been nice, on the one hand, since not being tied up in any projects has allowed me to spend more time with the kid-o's. I walked with them so they could ride their bikes around the block yesterday. It's really too hot for that kind of thing, but they've got to get out of the house sometimes anyway.

Joe has been playing with his handcuffs NON-STOP and is driving everybody nuts. You can only be cuffed and taken to jail so many times before it grows wearisome. Sam has been toting around a bag with marbles in it for days now. They have, for the time, taken the place of the plastic snakes, lizards and frogs he usually keeps with them -- although he still wants to sleep with the critters at night since I won't allow him to take the marbles to bed. Katie spends her days hauling a PILE of her favorite things to whatever room she decides to land in. She's such a hoarder. She's reading SO good now and I let her read a sentence now and then when I'm reading Swiss Family Robinson to the three of them. We're on chapter 6 or 7 and the kids are LOVING it. It's got a lot more action and adventure than Charlotte's Web (we finished that one last week) and Joe is LOVING all of the hunting and skinning and fishing and such.

Okay, I'm rambling. I'm going to try to MAKE myself go do something productive, even though I feel like saying, "Nah -- another day. I think I'll just go read for a while." ~sigh~ Wonder which side of me is actually going to win this battle: the diligent, or the lazy??? Tune in tomorrow for the not-so-thrilling conclusion...

~Becki~