Day One Hundred Fifty-Eight

Mila spent a good portion of the afternoon mad at me. She was justified in her anger, but it was one of those things that can't be helped. I offered a few good things to try to offset her anger, but Mila was having none of it.

She decided to throw a tantrum.

The super fun part about the tantrum is that I was in a work meeting at the time. Fortunately, it was with only one other person and it happened to be a person who can see my dirty laundry, so to speak, because he's one of my favorites. He knows I am not in charge in my house.

As an added bonus, he and his wife are expecting their first child in a little over a month. So, he's genuinely in that weird bubble of time when you're absorbing all of the possibilities of having a child, from the joy you're about to experience to the "WTAF HAVE I DONE."

Mila decided to pile onto the WTAF category. She started by hissing at me, because seriously she does hiss like a cat when she's angry. That didn't even make me blink because she has overused that trick, so she escalated to stomping. Then she decided to try slamming the door, but again, I didn't even pay attention. I was schooling my co-worker in the fine art of not reacting to ridiculous behavior, but also I genuinely don't respond to tantrums. It requires too much energy.

Besides, there was a witness. I don't make small children cry with my evil mom glare when there are witnesses. Gotta save that.

To my co-worker's credit, he also didn't respond. He could see the whole show because we had our webcams on, but he mirrored my response and just kept on going over the thing we needed to go over. Except when he knew Mila's back was turned. Then he kept busting up laughing because have you seen how tiny Mila is? It's HILARIOUS when she's mad. So tiny! So angry!

Mila didn't think her first few door slams were loud enough, so she tried to make them louder. She slammed and she slammed and I ignored and ignored. When that got her nowhere, she escalated again. There were a pile of papers on the floor that I needed to grab on my way downstairs to throw away. Mila, not knowing they were trash, starting picking them up, tearing them in half, and crumpling the pieces into balls so she could throw them at my head.

It was exactly as hiliarous as it sounds, while also being absolutely infuriating. Mila does know it's all not allowed behavior, but she really seemed to think that having a witness was going to save her from her eventual fate. Spoiler alert: it didn't. She has since selected her own punishment for being a jerk.

But the co-worker. He sat there talking about important work things with a totally straight face all the while Mila kept throwing balls of paper at my head. I'm relatively certain that each little ball of paper was like a bomb dropping on his pile of "WTAF have we done?"

Good luck with that baby, E. I will do my best not to laugh when she destroys you during a conference call.

Day One Hundred Fifty-Seven

This past weekend was Take 2 of the Great Pond Enhancement of 2020. If you recall, the first time I ripped out the old liner, made the pond bigger, and put in a new liner, it ended in 2020-style disaster. Fish died, the liner had holes in it ... everything was terrible. I really wanted to wait a very long time to touch the whole thing again, but it was losing enough water every day to turn the back yard into a swamp in the midst of a drought. That seemed dumb.

So. New liner. And a redo on the whole damn project.

The most important thing that I learned is that doing that project a second time within a few weeks is INFINITELY easier than doing it the first time. There wasn't 10 years of settling and muck-collection and such, which seriously made it a full day less effort. It also helped that there were no really large fish, as awful as that sounds. They definitely made things more difficult.

There were, however, lots and lots and lots of baby fish to deal with. Hundreds of them, even. I know that there was an insane quantity of them because when Mila became aware that the project would be happening, she made it her personal mission to find every baby so I could make sure to catch it. She spent HOURS wading through the water and yelling, '"THERE'S ONE!" and then supervising its retrieval.

I can't say that I minded. Mila managed to find 3 babies that were about an inch long, so they were worth saving. The others, the veeeerrrrry tiny ones, were -meh-. I didn't want to be responsible for all of their deaths, but there wasn't much I could do about the whole situation. Still, Mila made sure a few hundred made the move. I've spotted many of them since, so it was probably worth the extra work.

And then there were the frogs. Mila decided to make it her life's work to make sure no frogs were left behind. My personal theory on the frogs living in our pond is that I didn't invite them, so they are welcome to come and go as they please. They can jump out of the way, so there's no need for me to personally rescue them. They magically show up no matter what I do, so why care?

Mila cares. A LOT. She caught at least six of them and personally escorted them to the safety of a nearby plastic tub and she LOVED every second of it.

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Seriously, it was the best day of Mila's life.

There's just one problem. Now that Mila has had a taste of being allowed to stand in the pond and catch frogs, she thinks that's what she's going to do every single day always. I yelled at her at least 24629351390 times today to get her feet out of the pond. Her response each and every time? "I'm just making sure my friends are okay!"

Oh boy.

Day One Hundred Fifty-Six

Rhubarb. Strawberry. We've discussed this before -- I can't get enough. It's not possible.

I've done the Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp thing. Frequently.

The Easy Strawberry Crumb Bars are full of win. Frequently.

I had forgotten about the Rhubarb Chocolate Chip Banana Bread, but I plan to fix that. Frequently.

And you can never go wrong with Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Just eat it frequently. That's the trick.

Then I went and thought of a way I could put strawberry and rhubarb in ALL OF THE THINGS. I made a Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce.

If you think the only thing I did with it was to pour it over a little vanilla ice cream, you are wrong. I have found about a dozen ways to make use of that Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce. The best one (and this is TOTALLY related to hockey playoffs and overtime and GAAAAH!) might just be this one.

Say hello to my little friend, the Strawberry Rhubarb Mojito. I don't drink often, but when I do, I go for the gold.

I mean, really.

Yes. Yes, indeed.

Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce

1/2 cup chopped rhubarb
1/2 cup sliced strawberries
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons lime juice

1. Combine all of the fun stuff in a small saucepan. Boil on medium heat until the rhubarb is soft.

2. Either throw it all in a blender or use a immersion blender to puree it all.

3. Store in the refrigerator. Pour it on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, pound cake, strawberry shortcake, cupcakes, French toast, plain yogurt, cottage cheese, oatmeal, or ... make a little drink with it.

Strawberry Rhubarb Mojito

1 oz white rum
2 oz Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce (less if you like your mojitos a little tart, more if you like them sweet)
6-8 mint leaves
1/2 cup club soda
Ice

1. Put the mint in your glass and squish it. Seriously, smash it with a spoon, a fork, whatever. Use up all of your playoff hockey angst and thoroughly bruise that mint.

2. Add the rest of the stuff. Stir.

3. Be happy.