General

I picked up my copy of the new Harry Potter book at 11 this morning, but I still haven’t had a chance to start reading it yet. When Carrie goes down for her afternoon nap in an hour or so, though, I’m not going to wait another second longer!

When will the drivers around here realize that the “new” left turn arrow (it’s been up for 6 months) near the mall is different from the old one? Every single time I’m at the head of the line and there’s a red arrow I get honked and screamed at when there’s a gap in the oncoming traffic and I don’t turn. Gee, I don’t turn because it’s an effing red light, morons! Seriously, the cops could make a fortune sitting on the corner of that intersection, because when I’m not at the front of the line I always see people running the light. They even hung a sign right next to the light saying “wait for green arrow” or something to that effect.

I didn’t used to be so concerned about other drivers’ bad habits, but now that I have a kid in my car…well, let’s just say that if anyone ever hurt Carrie because they were driving recklessly and/or breaking a law, I would most likely be going to jail for murder.

Uh. OK. Rant over. Tune in tomorrow to find out whether I go at midnight tonight to pick up my copy of HP6 or if I do the sane, responsible adult thing and wait until Carrie goes down for her morning nap…

I just can’t seem to catch enough sleep lately. Carrie’s actually been doing pretty well, sleeping almost through most nights, but I’ve been dragging. It probably doesn’t help so much that I stay up a bit late, but 11 to 6 with at most only one short interruption ought to be enough for anyone, right?

And I really have no excuses, since Carrie took 2 naps for a whopping 5 1/2 hours total today, and if I had been smart I would have napped a bit too. Instead I puttered. I accomplished nothing useful besides doing a load of laundry and knitting half of a dishcloth. I did read a few chapters in the 5th Harry Potter book, but it’s a lost cause to get it completely re-read before Saturday. I kind of wish I’d thought to re-read it a couple of weeks ago!

I really should go to bed now, but first I have to pump, clean the pump parts, finish tidying up the kitchen, run the dishwasher, take the dogs out, and…wait, no wonder I’m so tired. And the trick will be to not pick my book back up when I’m done with all that and stay up even later.

Despite the fact that I’ve known for three weeks that the carpet cleaners are coming tomorrow, of course I didn’t remember until this evening that it meant I’d need to pick everything movable up off the floors of three rooms and a hallway and vacuum those areas. Everything is done now except the vacuuming and Carrie’s room, which I think I’ll be able to get done in the morning before they get here.

Except now I’ve just realized that I’m really going to need to spend most of the day at my grandparents’ house with Carrie instead of just the hour or so they’ll be cleaning the carpets. There’s no place for her to crawl around and play until the carpets are dry. And it’s not as though my grandparents’ place is all that baby-safe, so I’m basically going to have to spend the whole day in chase and distract mode.

Ugh. This is going to be such a hassle! What on earth was I thinking?!?

Carrie, Nana, Poppy and I all took a drive to the outlet mall near us. I hadn’t been there in about 6 years, but I’ll definitely be going back soon. They had a Children’s Place outlet and a Coldwater Creek outlet, but best of all…?

There’s a Carter’s outlet!

I love Carter’s clothes for Carrie, and I was very sad because she’s pretty much outgrown the 6-9 month sizes and I’ve only very rarely found 12 month Carter’s clothes, and nothing bigger than that. In their store, though, they go all the way up to size 6! And almost everything was at least 30% off. I had to exercise extreme self-control not to buy all the cute outfits there, since I’m sure we’ll get some clothes for her birthday and I should really wait to see what she needs. We did come home with some really cute overalls (with coordinating onesie, sweater and socks) that should last her until next spring, and some pajamas to fit her now and for the winter. And there was a really cute dress we found in 2T for next spring/summer/fall.

It’s actually about the same amount of time to drive there as it is to drive to the local Babies ‘R’ Us. This may be a dangerous thing to know…

Why has the world suddenly become such a scary place?

I am so sorry for all the people affected by the latest terrorist attacks in London.

Today is Denis’ dad’s 64th birthday (Happy Birthday, Dad!) so we bought a cake to celebrate. In lieu of putting 64 candles on the cake (I was tempted, though) I bought numeral candles. When we went to put the candles away, we discovered that we already had the 0, 2 and 8 candles. (We don’t even remember using the 2 or the 8, although we’re both older than 28, so it must have been for that year?)

Oh, and Denis thinks it’s pretty funny that the first hurricane of the season is named Dennis. Not that hurricanes are laughing matters, of course.

Well, we weren’t planning on letting Carrie stay up to watch fireworks, but there was a very local display of them that woke her up anyway. I don’t think she was excited or scared, she was just very sleepy and wondering why we carried her out into the dark night to look at colorful lights. We weren’t close enough for any really loud explosions, although there were quite a few screamers.

This is the second year in a row we’ve had a huge fireworks display visible from our house, and we still can’t figure out who’s doing it – it wasn’t in the newspaper list of all the local displays. Next year I think we’ll just plan on it, and remember to put on bug spray. Carrie seems to have gotten away without bites, but the rest of us were eaten alive.

Between swimming, cooking out and fireworks-watching, I’m totally beat! But it was a very good day.

Happy birthday, Lisa! Hope this is your best 6th birthday ever!

Because, of course, when it’s 95° outside, you’re going to want to turn the oven on and bake something.

We invited my family over for dinner tonight, and we happened to have some canned pumpkin on the table that hadn’t made it’s way down to the pantry yet. After a little discussion about what we could make with a can of pumpkin, my brother and I came up with a recipe for pumpkin brownies by combining elements of a pumpkin cookie recipe, a brownie recipe, and sheer dumb luck. It came out quite tasty…well, the second batch did, anyway. The first try didn’t turn out so well, so we made some modifications and tried again. Mmmm.

So, without further ado:
Pumpkin Brownies
Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1 15oz. can pumpkin
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup Hershey’s cinnamon chips
• ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Mix oil, egg, vanilla, nutmeg and ginger. Add pumpkin and mix well. Mix in baking powder. Mix in sugar. Mix in flour. Stir in cinnamon chips.
3. Pour into 9×13 baking pan. Sprinkle with ground cinnamon (if desired).
4. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool before cutting

Enjoy! (These would be excellent with vanilla ice cream.)