Happy Thursday

I woke up this morning determined to make scones.  I love making or baking a delicious breakfast, but most mornings it just doesn't happen.  Even on the weekend.  But today I wanted some scones.  And not even the giant stack of dirty dishes was going to stop me.

The scones came out of the oven and, despite doubling the amount of dirty dishes needing to be washed, I sat down happily to enjoy one.  Then Ben came over to investigate.

"Mom?  Bite?  Mom?  Me Bite?"

So I give him a bite.

"Mmmmm.  That good.  That good bite."

Then silence and a determined look.

"Ben, are you pooping?"

"Mmmhmmm"

Sometimes being a mom means you eat your delicious homemade scone while your kid poops and begs for more of your scone.

Happy Thursday...

So Now I Have to Admit I'm Married to Him...

This has been a pretty interesting week.  Why I've been such a slacker about blogging about it, I couldn't really say, just lazy this week I guess.  :)

The fun started Wednesday after a long day at work when I got a call from my husband that didn't start out well:

"You're not going to like this."  (Not a good sign.)  "Wells Fargo needs you to go to the Social Security Office tomorrow and change your name."

WHAT?!?!?! 

I've been married to my husband for nearly seven years.  I didn't really start out with the plan not to take his last name, it's just kind of what happened.  At the time, I was just finishing up college and I didn't want to confuse my student loans or the registrars office with a name change during my last year.  So I left things alone and as a result my college diploma has my last name on it, which I'm pretty happy about.  I probably should have changed my name after graduating, but who really wants to go to the social security office and the DMV?  No one.  So I kind of just left it and figured I'd do it before I had a kid so I'd have the same last name as my child.  Well, having that kid took a bit longer than anticipated, and by the time he finally arrived, I was feeling pretty confident in leaving my last name alone.  It had been my last name for so long why mess with a good thing?

Apparently Wells Fargo felt the need to mess with a good thing.

We're refinancing our mortgage this month (yay for saving $200 a month!!) and apparently Wells Fargo is confused that I don't have my husband's last name.  They won't let me do an "aka" on the loan and since the deed was prepared with my husband's last name on there, I was actually required by Wells Fargo Bank to take my husband's last name.

So I did it.  I grumbled a bit, but it's not something I really mind.  Sure my husband's last name is longer, and sure it has that damn capital "D" in the middle interrupting the flow of the word, but what are you gonna do?  It's not a bad last name, so I'll take.

Thursday morning Ben and I went to the Social Security Office.  We took our number, a la deli counter style, and sat down to wait.  There were fifteen windows in that office for helping customers.  Obviously, only one was open.  So we waited, and waited, and said "Hi" to everyone else waiting (Ben is in a SUPER friendly stage right now) and waited some more.  Forty minutes later our number was called and we went to the window.  Five minutes later, the lady at the window handed me back my papers, gave me a receipt, and congratulated me on my wedding...seven years ago.

Success!

Or so I thought.  Apparently Wells Fargo doesn't trust me.  I gave them my receipt, which was signed by the lady at the Social Security Office, but apparently that's not good enough.  I could have forged that.  Because that's what I do.  I forge stupid Social Security documents so I can close loans in my maiden name and stick it to the man.  Yup.  They caught me.  Seriously though, they wanted me to have a "stamp" on my receipt from the Social Security Office.  A stamp.  AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!  So Friday morning I called the Social Security Office and BEGGED them to send something to Wells Fargo saying I did in fact GO to the office and CHANGE MY NAME.  They sent a letter for me and with a little luck, Wells Fargo will believe them.  It's on official letterhead after all....(sigh).....

So yes, I've officially changed my name.  Now I just need a trip to the DMV and the bank and I'll be good to go.  And then I have to change my facebook status...but that's like, really official, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that...maybe in another seven years.....

Confused Today

I'm not a very political person, and my blog is very unpolitical.  But lately, I've been kind of confused about this very political debate about contraceptives.  I'm mainly confused because I thought this stuff was sorted out in the sixties and seventies.  Women's Liberation and all that jazz.  Birth Control for women=cool.  We can have some control over our lives and when we want to have children.  Our choice.  Seems pretty fair to me.  So needless to say I've been pretty confused as to why this is an issue. 

I've been following the story on and off through the newspaper, blogs, online articles, etc.  Today, I read a few blogs about Rush Limbaugh's recent comments and was flabbergasted.  There are really people out there that think women who would like to see affordable birth control are sluts and  prostitutes?  Really?  REALLY?

This really irritated me.  Seriously.  To the point where I actually checked to see if Limbaugh really said those things, because, seriously, how could someone be so ignorant.  And he did.  And he said worse than that.  It's sickening.  And now I can't stop thinking about it.

I think the initial argument here was that employers should be required to provide health insurance to their employees that provides birth control for women.  Not unreasonable in my opinion.  And I get that this makes churches mad, and I'm pretty sure they are going to be exempt.  So I'm just not really sure how this exploded into "If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it.  And I'll tell you what it is.  We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."  (Actual quote from the transcript of Rush Limbaugh)  That's disgusting.  Just disgusting.

And as upset, and confused and grossed out by this whole needless debate over birth control as I am, I'm saddened because I know that for years, women, men, doctors and congressmen have been fighting to require health insurance to cover infertility treatments.  If congress can't even agree to cover something as simple and common place as birth control for women, I see little hope of ever seeing coverage for infertility treatments.  And that just makes me very, very sad. 

A Sweet Fix

A couple of years ago, or maybe it was just last year, not really sure on that, I copied down a recipe for Cream Horns from my grandmother's favorite cookbook.  This was one of those old school cookbooks that women would get for a wedding gift so they could be the best possible housewife.  You know, the kind that tells you how to make such delicacies as head cheese and porcupine stew.  The cream horn recipe looked reasonable, so I copied it down.  And then decided I couldn't be bothered to actually make the cream horns.  Well, until Monday.  At 5 pm.  When I was supposed to be cooking dinner.  Oops.

FYI: they're not really that hard.  I whipped up a batch of "filling" in my double boiler in about 15 minutes, had the puff pastry dough done fifteen minutes after that and thought I'd have those bad boys done in no time.  Until I looked at my "filling."  Apparently, 60 years ago when this book was published, cream horns did not contain fluffy sweet whipped filling.  They contained pudding.  Which is what was sitting in my refrigerator.  Since my husband does not like pudding, I had a problem.  After a bit of searching I found an easy whoopie pie filling recipe, whipped that up, and stuffed it in my cream horns.  For a first go at it, they came out pretty damn good.  The filling was a little sweet, and the pastry a little too thick, but perfectly edible.  Perfectly....

So, what do you do with a bowl of homemade pudding in your refrigerator?  Duh.  You make a homemade Boston Cream Pie.  Yesterday afternoon I found a really easy recipe for Boston Cream Pie, threw together the cake (literally, I just dumped the ingredients in my mixer, turned it on high and voila! cake mix) cut it in half, filled it with my delicious homemade pudding, whipped up a chocolate ganache and Tah-Dah Boston Cream Pie! (Ok, I goofed the ganache a bit and it was a little runny, but seriously, it's liquid chocolate, it tastes delicious anyway.)

So now I have a house full of desserts.  Well, I had a house full of desserts....they are disappearing at an alarming rate....

Some Required Reading

So I started reading a new book.  Gettysburg by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen.  I know what you're thinking Newt Gingrich???  Really??? It's not something I would usually pick up, but I've got a good reason:  My father-in-law was as excited as a school girl telling me about it, and about as giddy as I've ever seen him when I said I'd read it.  If you've met my father-in-law, you can see how this has prompted me to pick up the book.  (If you haven't met him, let me say that the first time I actually spoke to him I said: "Good Morning.  It looks nice out today" and he humphed and walked outside.  If he's excited about me reading this book, I'm doing it.)

So far, the book is actually pretty good.  Have you read The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara?  It is a really amazing work of historical fiction that really feels more like historical non-fiction.  It's amazing.  If you saw the movie Gettysburg, then you've read the book.  It is THE BEST book to movie crossover that I have ever seen.  The movie was almost exactly word for word with the book, and since the book was amazing, the movie was great too.  (The same is NOT true for Gods and Generals.  That was a butt numbing, mind numbing movie.  Yuck.)

This book is written in pretty much the same style as The Killer Angels.  And, fortunately, the writing is nearly as good.  (Although I have to say on the first page the author split an infinitive and I nearly put the book down in disgust.  Really Newt?  That's disappointing.  And you want to be president?)  I admit I'm not very far yet, so I don't know EXACTLY what's going to happen next, but the premise of the book is what would happen if the Confederate Army won at Gettysburg.  It sounds like a pretty interesting premise and I'm hoping it continues to read as well as it has been.  And I hope the two books following this one are good too, because it looks like I'm signed up to read the whole series.  Oh well.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  (How's that for a random cliche!)

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

I think my taxes are going to kill me this year.  Ugh.  And not just because I may owe the IRS more than my first born child.  The actual "getting the taxes done" is proving to make me want to stick a toothbrush in my eyeball. 

At first, I attempted to hire an accountant who had done our taxes in the past.  But, in spite of the fact that we called the first week of February, she was completely booked for the tax year.  So, I figured, hey, I've been doing them online with the help of an online tax preparer for the last couple of years, I'm sure I can do it again this year.  Wrong.  We are in a different situation this year due to the house in Limerick which we were finally able to get rid of this past spring.  (Who knew there were so many 1099 forms??  I sure didn't!)

Since we'd been using a tax preparing company that has physical offices as well as online access, we made an appointment and took our stuff in to a human tax preparer that we could see and touch...well, touch if we wanted to, which we didn't, because that's weird.  And while I would like to say that I have complete confidence in this human tax preparer with 14 years of experience; I don't.  He's asked me some really dumb questions, and that has me worried.

So, like any US citizen terrified of pissing off the IRS, I've opted to start reading IRS publications to figure out what is going on so I can speak intelligently to my tax preparer.  I'm pretty sure it's part of the IRS mission statement to use terms and phrases that are not part of the English language.  Or any language.  Seriously, how are you supposed to read that crap??

But, I can say now that I'm feeling pretty confident in regards to IRS Publication 4861 and Form 982.  Watch out human tax preparer that I'm not comfortable touching, I'm going to be quizzing you on your familiarity with Qualified Principal Residence Indebtedness and the Insolvency Worksheet in Publication 4861.  You don't know what you just got yourself into...

Just Some Pictures Today

No.  Things have not gotten more interesting over the past week.  And no, things have not settled down into a less stressful pattern of events.  I'm getting pretty tired of being stressed out at every waking moment, but what can you do?

Last week I took Ben puddle splashing.  He's pretty much the cutest thing ever:

And last weekend we took a trip to the island to visit Papa and Nana.  Ben got a special treat and got to play with some cute twins who are just a little older than he is.  They were super smart little girls and very, very cute, but I didn't get any pictures of them together, shoot.  So you'll have to make do with some pictures of Ben and his Papa and Nana instead.

We had a fun little trip and can't wait to go up there again when the weather's a little warmer.  The beach and the playground are going to be so much fun this spring and summer!

In a little while I'll be heading out to work, and then working most of the weekend.  Hopefully things will start to sort themselves out soon and be a little less stressful.  If not, well, there are plenty of puddles to go splash in.