1. Go out to your garden, gather up a whole mess of cherry tomatoes.
2. Snip off a big bunch of basil.
3. Go back inside to your kitchen, and get out a box of plain couscous. Follow the directions for whatever serving you want to make. Make it. (I’ve made it with both water and broth and haven’t found any big difference.
4. While it’s sitting, rinse your gardenables, cut the tomatoes in half and chop up the basil. Inhale deeply, because that late summer basil smell = SO GOOD!
5. Pop a lemon or two into the microwave for about 10-15 seconds (makes them easier to juice!) Slice in half, position a mesh strainer over a bowl and squeeze. Bang the seeds into the trash and toss the strainer into the sink.
6. Take your bowl of lemon juice, add a pinch of kosher salt, some black pepper, your chopped up basil, and a swirl or two of extra virgin olive oil. Whisk.
7. By now your couscous has absorbed all the liquid, and may have even melded itself into a pan-shape (if you were doing it in a pan that is). Pour it into a new bowl, fluffing with fork as you go. If you have some chunks that won’t fluff (because it melded itself into the pan-shape) no biggie. They’re yummy too.
8. Pour your basily-lemony dressing over the top, add the tomatoes, combine gently and then dig in.
9. I think this is supposed to be chilled, but I usually can’t wait.
10. Also, this is good the next day, but significantly LESS lemony, so plan to add more lemon juice, if you want.
11. Last thing - if you do all this when the couscous is still hot, the basil will lose some of it’s super-greenness, especially if you keep leftovers. It won’t affect the taste, but if you want it to stay pretty, cool the couscous first.

So yummy. I’m all out now (used store tomatoes) and need to make more. Hopefully I will have nice red tomatoes in my garden now ready to be EATEN.

The non-narrative version after the break.
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We had another incident with Ethan on Friday, which just breaks my heart because it was the last day at this school. They called me and I came and picked him up. He had bitten another kid — his very super best friend, to boot. He did fine at home, and we allowed him to go back and participate in the end of summer camp event — campout night! That’s right, our son spent his first night away from mommy and daddy and any family member. The reports go that he fell asleep late (i’m guessing 11ish) and then woke up at 2am ready to go play some more, and then went back to sleep an hour or so later. He was dead asleep when James picked him up at 8am, and slept until noon. When we had lunch, he kept correcting us - “It’s BREAKFAST!” and we kept correcting him, “You SLEPT through breakfast!” I’m very glad that he left our old school on a good note.

Today both Ethan and Jocelyn started at a new school, a daycare that is closer to home, and does afterschool care for Ethan’s elementary. They were both excited, and I bought Jocelyn some new shoes this week, purposefully waiting until we were done at our previous school (our old school had a sandbox. Do you know how quickly sand RUINS shoes?) She’s very happy with her new shoes, “SKECHERS!!!” and tried them out yesterday by running races with Daddy (who graciously let her win).

I am nervous about Ethan because he’s going from this woo-hooo! sUmMeR cAmP! mentality to a more structured class (thank goodness) where he won’t have his Nintendo DS and be able to play on the computer all day long. This is a FANTASTIC thing, but he may be a bit bummed about it. He also won’t be taking his lunch in, until after school starts in two weeks, so he is bound to not like that. Jocelyn was a bit clingy when I dropped her off, but when I peeked in at her before leaving, she was happily playing with some puppets. There are a few girls in there that I’m sure will become her best friends, or as James put it, her best friend one day, and then not her best friend, and then her bestest friend ever, and then “I’m not playing with her,” even while she tells us all the things she did with them (typical jocelyn behavior!)

One thing I gotta say - it’s nice to have their school so close to home! While I will miss our old school, it was NOT close, and I won’t be missing that!

So yesterday I jailbroke my phone. It was very fun and exciting. And also - amazingly EASY. I heard there was a lot of issues with the first (2.0) jailbreak software, but I used the 2.01 version and had no issues whatsoever.

2 applications are put on the phone when you jailbreak, kind of like alternatives to the app store, the first is called Cydia, and the second Installer. I’m still figuring things out in there, I think my trouble is there’s a lot of applications that work for versions UNDER 2.0, but have not yet been ported to 2.0, so I will go to click on an app that looks interesting and get an error.

I have installed quite a few though, and I am so happy! I will write up my favorite 3rd party applications soon, but need to give it a week or so first. One thing I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE though is that you can completely change the look of your phone. The screen where you see all your icons laid out is called the “Springboard” and there are lost of springboard, summerboard and even winterboard themes that you can install and fiddle around with. Here are a few of the ones I tried:

Here is the original iphone “theme”:

And here are some othersI tried out:

This one is called “Sexy Realize”-

KillsignSuperBlack-

Sephia-

And finally, “Pinkameter” - the one I’m going to stick with until I get sick of pink (it might not last until tomorrow):

And last but not least… QUAKE SCREEN SHOT!

Quake 4 iPhone

I haven’t really played it. Need to figure out how to set up some customized controls - using some tilting of the phone itself would be awesome, hope that’s available.

WOOT! Jailbroken baby!

-amy got sprung!

I’ve been kind of ansy, wanting to jailbreak my iphone, but kind of nervous to mess with it. I’ve been (semi) following along with the hackers’ iphone blogs and a few other iphone feeds and it seemed as if even if you jailbroke your phone, there weren’t many 3rd party apps for 2.0 anyway, so, easy for me to put off the ants in my pants and just wait.

but no more!!

Quake! QUAKE 4IPHONE! ¹

You see before you, an old quake fanatic. It’s been years, but if there’s network play, I look forward to stomping james into kingdom come. (I used to be able to do it!)

I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

E: this submarine is really bitchin.
A: WHAT did you say?
E: because it’s super fast and–
A: honey, what was the word you used?
E: uhh, I can’t remember now.
A: did you say bitchin?
E: yeah, that was it.
A, trying to not crack up: honey, that’s actually a bad word.
E: oh.
A: I know you didn’t know, but try not to say it again.

It is pretty bitchin.

THE GIRL

This morning Jocelyn had picked out a pair of shorts that had a little drawstring bag attached to the front belt loop. We dithered about what to put in it, and settled on a little wooden clothespin doll I had painted last christmas. It fit about halfway in, with the head and torso sticking out.

When we arrived at school and she was getting out of the truck, I said, “Oops, don’t your little doll girl fall out! Little Pansy! Is that a good name? Shall we name her Pansy?”

“No..”

“How about Lucy?”

“Emma!*”

“No.. TOYOTA!”

THE BOY

And in Ethan news, he had made a little lego car/tank creation that he wanted to take in to school. During the school year, and always for Jocelyn, our policy is toys can go to school in the car, but there they must stay. So my instant response was that it has to stay in the car.

He moaned and groaned a bit, but it was pretty contained, not getting near any sort of tantrum territory.

He brought it in the car, and when we were halfway to school, he said, “Mommy, I would like to just take this toy in for a quick minute, just to show Austin.”

He hesitated a second, and then quickly added, “But if you say no, then that’s ok. It’s ok, if you say no, Mommy.”

I didn’t respond, but mulled it over the rest of the way to school. Earlier, I went with our go-to response for toys, but for summer camp, kids bring their hand-held gaming devices and pokemon cards and all sorts of crap. Why would a little lego car be any different?

“You can bring it in, Ethan. We’ll ask the counselor when we get in if it’s OK.”

“Thank you Mommy! You are the BEST!”

It’s pretty easy to be the best to such a sweet boy.

THE PARENTS

Every week of summer camp, on Fridays there’s a “big event.” The preschool campers have theirs posted on the board right as you walk into the school, and the older campers have theirs at the front of their wing of the school. James and I… well, we don’t usually check either of them very often.

This morning, the preschool campers had “Beach Day!” as their big Friday event. They were supposed to arrive in their swimsuits and bring any related beach articles they wanted (toys, chairs, umbrellas, etc.)

It’s been a somewhat distracting week ANYWAY, and yes, neither James nor I clued in to this fact. So after I took the kids in, I had to high-tail it BACK home, grab her suimsuit, towel, and water shoes, and head BACK to school. It’s times like this that I wish we didn’t pick a school for them that’s in the next town over. And of course (and I’m going to stick to “this week sucked” as my go-to excuse here), Jocelyn’s swimming suite, water shoes and towel were still in the plastic grocery bag, all wet, from splash day on Wednesday.

Oops.

Next week is the school’s last week of summer camp, and Ethan and Jocelyn’s last week at that school. They’ll be moving to a daycare/school that’s close to us, and that buses public school kids to their school (for Ethan). I’ve already spilled my guts about how much we love our current school, so I won’t get into it all over again, but … Wah.

Me: Ethan, I’d like you to set the table, please.
Ethan: OK, it would be my pleasure!

Now that’s more like it!

Today went swimmingly. No issues, a message from his KG teacher that he did great. We came home and played on the Wii to celebrate.

Or, Why Parents Suddenly Become UnCool When Their Kid Hits Teenagedom

This has been rattling around in my head for a week or so. Let’s see if I can get it out in some sort of concise manner.

When you’re a teenager, well probably long before that, but let’s go with this for now shall we? Jeez. quit interupting and just let me get this out already!

Ahem.

When you’re a teenager, you are very aware of what others are thinking, what they’re wearing, what they’re doing, what they’re eating, what they like, what they don’t like, what they might think of you, whether you’re cool, whether you’re not cool, etc.

So you start to really pay attention to your own behavior, clothes, habits, etc. You monitor everything you do so as not to be deemed uncool. Thus is your entry into the world of adulthood, constantly monitoring, choosing, judging both yourself and others, on whether they or you are “cool”. This goes on pretty much forever, in what we call “society.”

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I could have also titled this post, Fastest Banner Created Ever In The History Of The World.

The picture is grainy, taken by the iphone, but I still love the expression on Jocelyn’s face. Just look at my sweet, sweet girl!

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