If you have ever wondered (because I know I’m not the only one), “why is medieval spelled so weird? Why isn’t it mid?” Then I’m the gal for you!

Ah, the land of etymology.

A land in which I may, or may not, have spent hours if not months of my life.

We didn’t spend nearly as long as a time in the Medieval Faire, but we had a good long visit, and that was good enough for my vintage soul!

For the record, I may have gone to many (many) Scottish faires, but I have never been to a Rennaissance faire. I don’t like the time period right now. Lately I have been researching Medieval philosophies, royalties, timelines, country borders and who knows what else.

Why?

I don’t know. Don’t ask. It is what it is.

But it is crazy interesting because it is such a misunderstood and misrepresented time period. It has boggled my mind that this period lasted about a thousand years, and very very little modern progress came out of this time. So, what were people doing for a thousand years, really?

Wars, farming, families, the Crusades, the establishment of British feudal society, the creation of Scottish royalty and nobility, trading, the shift from Anglo-Saxon to Normans (officially in 1066 under the first Norman king, William I) and consequently the formation of Middle English which then became Early Modern English in the 1600s (which would have been during the Renaissance, Shakespeare, James I, etc), the printing press in 1470 which changed everything, the progress of primarily theological philosophy through Aquinas, Bacon, Maimonides and Wycliffe, along with the establishment of British universities, such as Eton College, and finally ending with the Protestant revolution.

That may not be the invention of the combustion engine, but it is still a lot to cover!

So when I found a Medieval faire (not a Ren faire, which is a completely different time period), I was all over that.

However, I don’t like being that person who walks around behind her camera all day.

So I gave my phone to the kids and told them to take pictures for me.

This is a tactic I’ve used on many occasions, and I cannot tell you how amazing my pictures are with this method. I get to see what the kids see, and what is important to them…

What is particularly interesting is how many pictures of other kids I find on my phone! They notice where the other kids are, and what accessories they come with. One kid in particular had a pretty rockin’ archery gig going on, and I had many quiver pictures!

They also notice people who are in costume, and stick out!

I also loved the picture of the parasol alley. Apparently that caught someone’s eye…

The girls found a dance lesson and engaged immediately.

Conrad was drug along extremely reluctantly, and I allowed him to sit out for most of the lessons. However that left Nova to dance with the instructor’s husband, who was much more light on his feet than all of us, combined.

We also found some woodworking and the kids were able to help build a bucket. I’m not sure that was the most entirely enthralling adventure, but they liked helping.

And fortunately we got to see some swordfighting!

It wasn’t exactly Braveheart fighting out there… but, then again, Braveheart wasn’t exactly historically accurate either. So, who’s counting.

Last week I ate my ultimate bowl of rice.

Gone are the days of bottomless gluten free spaghetti, or the idle Red Bull Red which packs a delightful pick-me-up in the afternoon, at the expense of 39g of sugar.

I look sorrowfully at the drawer in my kitchen which houses the red potatoes, which seemed like I had just enjoyed yesterday.

Wine, my good friend…

I am on day 3 of the Whole30 cleanse.

I have written out my Whole30 disaster plan on a posterboard and taped it to the cupboard with electrical tape, because no one could find the Scotch tape (again).

Since Friday, Day 0, I have lost 3 pounds of rice/bread/gravy/beer fat.

And, I feel fine…I say, confidently.

So far. 

Honestly, I feel kind of guilty about it since so many people have horror stories about the unmitigating headaches, nausea, irritability, awful pain and growing horns out of your skull and bleating like a goat until dawn…

The horns and bleating are unsubstantiated, but the suffering is not.

Dieting…excuse me, cleansing…is a serious deal.

Especially when you have to buy a book for it.

On the plus side, I get to put a stick blender into a watermelon and make watermelon gelatin and blow the kids minds on how I got the jello in the watermelon. #awesome

So, being a forward-thinking, rather smart woman who already has an incredibly restricted diet (see: Celiac+Kosher), a diet in which I cannot have pizza, pizza with pepperoni, ham, clam chowder, shrimp, sausage, gravy, crackers or bacon… why on earth would I do an elimination diet?

What is there left to cut out??

What is there left to eat???

Well, I’ll tell you:

I’m doing it because a friend told me it was great, and I already talked them into giving up gluten (because they were painfully obviously Celiac), and fair is fair.

How’s that for a motivational speech.

Plus, I honestly do want to feel better, more clear-headed and a greater energy threshold than I have now. Because even though I have the amazing, and extremely convenient excuse of “I’m tired because I have 5 kids and we homeschool,” I shouldn’t be this tired. I shouldn’t feel foggy in the middle of the morning. And I would like to feel better, physically, in general, instead of blaming it on age or whathaveyou.

It’s just time to do something. And Whole30 is definitely something.

The overview:

It’s pretty much a Paleo-Atkins-LowCarb diet plan…I mean cleanse. They say it’s not a diet, it’s a cleanse, a million times in the book. So, okay, it’s a cleanse.

It still doesn’t have beer in the plan, so I can only be so excited about this.

Now, the nice thing is it is a 30 day plan. This means I don’t have to do it for 6 months, which would take me well into the heart of autumn at this point, and it lasts longer than a week or two, so it gives me time to really nail down better eating habits. And I’m okay with this.

However, there are 30 different emotional stages you are going to go through.

And I took out my Crayola purple marker and wrote down each one of these stages as a reminder for myself.

Because I know me…and if I have a day when I am out of energy, or have a headache, or feel sick, or have just completely lost every ounce of willpower to be patient with daily life…then I am going to stop. Because I don’t want to make things worse, and maybe I could be making things worse; reverting to old ways would seem like the safest route to go.

Knowing this about myself, though, I wrote down the 30 different stages of the month to visually remind my lizard brain that what I’m going through is okay, it is a process, some parts of the process is harder than others, and I can make it to the end.

And maybe learn something along the way!

I could not believe this, but I actually discovered something just today that blew my mind.

I am the Queen of excusing pain away, and I know this. I don’t know if I have a high pain threshold, exactly, but I know for a fact that I have the stubbornness of a Russian ox and I can withstand whatever pain hits me for as long as it lasts. Oh, sure, I’m not entirely cheerful about the whole ordeal…but my teeth are firmly set to last it out to the end.

I also don’t know if this is healthy at all.

But the other morning I made an amazing dish of Shakshouka, which is eggs poached on top of tomato sauce. No one was more shocked than I when I served this on top of a corn tortilla for the kids, and they all ate it and liked it. It was astonishingly good! I liked it, the kids liked it, and I call it a winner!

Until this morning when I made it again.

I always liked eating eggs in the morning because I felt full for hours and hours afterward. There would be little to no need to eat much until the afternoon, because the eggs had filled me so thoroughly. This was extremely helpful…because I very much enjoy eating. Frequently. And a lot.

However, this morning as I was sitting on the couch and doing some reading with the kids I realized that my stomach was a little upset. Like, sour. So I had an apple to appease the nausea. That didn’t work so I had some water. That didn’t work so I had some green tea. That didn’t work so…

I realized that I didn’t feel full after eating the eggs, I felt bloated and barfy. That is completely different than “full.” That is actually the opposite of what I was going for, which was good food which helped me out. All this time, eggs were giving me problems and I just ignored it and thought it was a good thing??

And this is just day 3!!

So, tomorrow morning I am going to re-think breakfast and see what I can come up with. I was thinking about making some apple-chicken sausage, bell pepper, leek and sundried tomato hash and serve it over a bed of spinach…and see if I don’t feel remarkably better!

All in all, I’m glad I’m doing this. It isn’t as bad as I expected, and that’s definitely a relief.

In closing, here are a few things I’ve made!

The infamous Shakshouka, which still is pretty fabulous. I didn’t eat it with a corn tortilla, for the record.

This dish was amazing. It is a Chicken Waldorf Salad with Avocado dressing (just blend the avocado and add a little coconut oil, that’s all you need). The kids wouldn’t stop eating this until I took the leftovers away…because I wanted lunch the next day 😉

Also, I didn’t eat the potatoes on this, and some kids got Mom’s dinner hand-me-downs…but kabobs are a lot of fun, and this turned out really well. I used chicken, pineapple and red potatoes (which you can’t eat on Whole30, but you could use sweet potatoes! I just hate sweet potatoes and they gross me out, so no thanks).

After dinner I had a bit of a sweet tooth, so I diced up some boiled beets and put them on a bed of spinach and drizzled raspberry vinegar on top.

That was super adult of me. I am okay with this.

For drinks, I’m just chugging water and green tea until the thoughts of wine leave my head.

Which will be soon. I’m positive…

The other night, I made myself (and Ben) gluten free fish and chips.

Because I couldn’t figure out what to have for dinner, and I had 30 minutes to go to the store…and fish sounded good tonight.

Now, I usually don’t buy fish because it’s expensive. I wish we could have fish all the time, but it just isn’t a cost effective meal plan. Case in point: I got steelhead fish because it was $5 a filet, and the salmon was $33 a filet. Granted the tilapia was $1 a filet…but that’s because it’s tilapia, and that’s a gross fish.

So, for $15 worth of fish, I was able to make a very nice meal of battered fish for the two of us…and that’s nice once in a while!

Now, having Celiac makes frying food a little tricky. Because you are either going to over-cook the dish, or end up with some gummy, sticky concoction that is hardly comfort food.

However.

I have figured out how to fry fish like a normal person, and I am sharing this very very easy recipe with you, because everyone needs fish and chips every so often!

Ingredients

• Whatever fish you want. If you want to use $30 fish…you go on with your bad self! I like steelhead, personally, because it has a good meaty texture, good flavor and the bones are pretty easy to remove.
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1c Brown rice flour
• 1c Corn meal
• 1c Crisco
• Kosher salt, black pepper, garlic powder

What’chu Do

I use Crisco for the oil because it is a very thin oil, and it fries crispier. It’s also a lot less greasy in the end.

So get out a large pan (such as a dutch oven, or a cast iron pan) and put 1 cup of Crisco in and turn it on med-high.

In the meantime, get 2 bowls out.

Mix 1 cup brown rice flour and 1 cup corn meal in one bowl.

Crack 2 eggs into the other bowl.

Dip your fish filets into the eggs, then dip into the flour/cornmeal, and place into pan.

Sprinkle salt, pepper and garlic powder.

Turn after 3 minutes of cooking, cook for another 3 minutes.

Take tongs and pick them up and place them onto a paper towel to soak up extra oil.

That’s about it!! It is a very easy and very satisfying dinner, especially for Celiacs.

If you want to make french fries:

Slice up some potatoes of your choice and toss them with a light coat of vegetable oil and spread them out on a cookie sheet.

Then, lightly sprinkle them with Seasoned Salt and black pepper.

Bake at 400F for about 40 minutes, or until the edges are nice and brown.

BOOM.

Gluten free fish and chips!

We love spontaneous trips. Period.

So when Ben suggested in the middle of church that we go to the snow, I said, “Okay, but let’s wait until church is over before we leave…”

Last year we went up to the snow when it was cold.

Now, I’m not saying cold is “bad.” Honestly, since moving up to Washington I have been surprised how much more I like the cold than the ridiculous heat in California.

(yeah, I’m looking at you +100F for weeks on end)

I remember knowing it was going to be a really hot day if it was over 90 and my forearms were sweating…by 8am. That was going to be an unbearably hot day. The most frustrating thing about the heat was that when it was in the 90s, it was okay. Just keep the kids hydrated and sunscreened, and we’re good to go.

But when it got over 104, which was constantly in the summer, the ground was too hot to step on and the sun was too hot to play in for too long…so I had to keep the kids indoors so they didn’t overheat or get sunstroke or burn to bits. And that was absolutely no fun.

Plus, I was pregnant most of those summers, and if you ever tell a pregnant woman that overheating is not a thing, you will not live to the end of the conversation. Overall, getting in the car in the middle of May and the car thermometer reading 116F is never a good time.

So, even though we just got through the rainiest and wettest winter the Puget Sound has had in the past 144 years (or, as long as we’ve been recording the weather up here), and dealing with overcast days which never quit, and having to buy waterproof jackets because you are going to get rained on, whether it is sunny now or not… it is STILL better than those summers in California!

But, as I was saying…last year when we went up to the snow, we treated it like going on a day trip to the Sierras.

And the Olympics are so not the Sierras.

When we took day trips to the Sierras in the spring, we’d take some gloves, jackets, extra pants, spare socks. Just the basics to play in the snow on the side of the road, build a few snowmen and call it a day.

The Olympics are different.

This snow was cold, blue, 6 feet deep, and ubiquitous. There were walls of snow 10 feet high, and this snow covered the entire mountain range. It was way out of the league of Sierra snow. This felt like real snow, and we basically came to the snow expecting a summer resort to be waiting for us.

Last year it was white-out conditions on the mountain, it was colder than I have ever experienced in my entire life, the air hurt our faces and we were vastly underdressed (see: expensive trip to the gift store)

This year, we changed our game plan.

And made proper snow angels…

THIS time we came overly dressed, changes of clothes, waterproof shoes and on a sunny day!

Let me tell you, scarves are not just for decoration anymore.

They actually keep the wind out of your jacket and keep your neck warm, and they are indispensable articles of clothing!! Who knew.

There were so many walls of snow, we had to write our names in the wall…

There were some small hills where we just sat at the bottom and let the kids slide down for as long as they could. At some point they decided that their backsides were plenty wet and cold enough, and they would prefer to go back to the car and change into dry clothes. But we definitely got our fill of snowdom.

Now, I don’t know how to explain this properly, so I’ll just start by explaining it poorly…

I am a terrible snowman maker. Spheres are just so hard to make properly, and I am always overcritical of my snow-sphere making abilities. So, last year I made a snow-bust….because I can do that!!

This year I continued my legacy and created another snow bust, and I can say that I am very pleased with the results. Next year I am going to bring even more waterproof gloves (because mine had a limit, apparently) and I am going to build an even bigger bust…maybe even take a crack at David, who knows.

We had a fantastic day out there, and I cannot describe how beautiful the Olympic range is. It is an incredible and dynamic range of mountains which take your breath away.

Meet Rosie.

(Which you can get on Amazon very easily!!!)

Rosie is the maid of the future.

Remember Rosie? Like Rosie from the Jetsons? She took care of everything in the house so Judy could get her nails done and go shopping?

“Dirty floors make me angry, Dave.”

Well, I don’t need that much luxury in my life, but I really would like some help with mopping.

I hate mopping. It takes a long time. It’s wet. It’s messy. I know I use way too much water. And downstairs is big…and it’s all hardwood floors, so I’m mopping the whole thing.

Which simply means that I mop when guests are coming over, or when I just can’t take it anymore. This is not a satisfactory solution for keeping the floors clean, and I actually like clean floors. Especially because I’m barefoot most of the time, so I’m not interested in stepping in or on anything while I’m stumbling to the coffeepot in the morning.

So when I found out robot mops were available, I was on it like the jelly globs on my kitchen floor.

Here is a blow by blow of unpacking Rosie:

Here is the box! It cost me $200 from a third party seller, and it was technically used but no one ever used it. Good enough for me. It came with all the parts and nothing is broken, so I’m happy!

This is just opening the box…

This is what it looks like right out of the box. Very nice design, sleek, classy. Something you would show your friends, for example.

I took a few pictures out of the instruction manual so you could see some of the features. it not only can clean the whole house, but it can also clean small areas, the edges only, or you could put it in the middle of a spill and it will work in circles to clean the spill up. So that’s neat!

These are the front and bottom of the device. Pretty straightforward, nothing complicated.

And this is what it looks like on the bottom.

It vacuums very well, I gotta say. It gets the edges with a broom feature, which is what I was looking for. The edges and corners of my kitchen are always collecting dust, cereal, dog food, pine needles, dirt, etc. And the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is keep cleaning…

(I hate cleaning)

Which is why Rosie is here.

So here is the initial start!

Pretty basic…I liked that it didn’t get stuck on the rugs or under couches.

It has a good bumper in the front, so it’s not just banging into your furniture.

It is a little loud, but not nearly as loud as the kids’ video games. So, comparatively, it’s pleasant.

I found that it will go through a space and then move on, and then go through that space and move on, and so on. So it got most of the downstairs, but not all of it. Which is really good to know for the future. What I need to do is to put it in the room I want to clean, and turn on the small room feature. Or if I just want a general overhaul I can start it on the base and it can get most of downstairs, and I’d be happy with that.

But the point is, there are lots of different cleaning features that I can utilize for different needs, and that’s exactly what I need out of Rosie.

Next to the trashcan is the worst place for rubble to collect. It is right next to the back door, so dirt is always being tracked in. It is in the kitchen, so crumbs and whatnot are always collecting. And it’s next to the trash can, so some things spill over…

And Rosie did a great job tidying up that space!

I was happy to see it did fine on rugs, as well! Which means it can work on carpets just fine! It didn’t get hung up on the edges of the rug, or even on warped parts of the rug. It couldn’t make it over the fold in the middle, but that’s understandable.

I did notice that the motor is pretty hefty, because it did get stuck underneath an ottoman once…and proceeded to push the ottoman across the room until it hit a wall.

Okay, enough vacuuming.

Let’s talk about mopping.

It’s really straightforward:

This is is honestly the mopping part. It is a moist cloth on the underside of Rosie.

And that kind of is all I actually need…

I put the cloth (which comes with Rosie) under a faucet and placed it on the velcro, and that was it!

I sprayed the floor with a bit of lysol, which I do when I mop anyway, and let her go!

I was surprised that the vacuum was still going, but it actually makes sense. So, on the plus side, you are vacuuming and mopping at the same time!

The results turned out really well, and I was very happy with how the kitchen looked when she finished. She got the jelly, the dirt, the edges, the dust and left me a very clean floor in her wake!

I found it took a couple hours to charge (although I also wasn’t paying much attention, but I know it took more than an hour minimum), and it lasts about 40 minutes cleaning. The charging station is very small and I have it behind a chair and out of the way, so you wouldn’t even notice it.

So, there you go!

Robot mops of the future!

I am not getting paid for this article. I have not been contacted by the company. I’m not a shill to the man. I just think people should share information and be cool with each other for life. Savvy? 

The sun did not shine,

it was too cold to play,

so we stayed inside

on that cold, cold, wet day.

No we didn’t!!

We went to UW’s Engineering Discovery Day, and knocked it out of the park!

Wearing lots of layers and jackets, for indeed, it was very cold and wet.

First we visited the Mechanical Engineering department and found some crazy interesting rooms. We learned about how studying vibrations in metal can help scientists figure out the structural integrity of a structure in relation to its surroundings. The man explaining it to us was throwing out terms I have legit never heard before, like “And as we can see here, the blahblahblah Constant is clearly at work and reinforces the calculations of…” I don’t really remember the terms he used, but that guy knew what he was talking about.

We also saw a stress/strain test experiment, and found the 3D printing club (woot!), and also found the Marine Renewable Energy department and got to see a device they are planning on installing outside of Oregon this summer in order to harness the energy from the waves in order to create energy. It’s a prototype, but they are super excited about it.

They were also talking about a department in Hawaii, which interested Nova very much…

We also met the hyperloop team, who came in 4th in the world in a SpaceX competition. Elon Musk is hoping to replace the ridiculously expensive and horribly implemented bullet-train in California. So I was very excited to see their work.

There was a tsunami simulator, where the kids got to build things out of Legos and watch them get destroyed. Always a crowd pleaser.

And we found the Computer Science department which had the least imaginative displays on the entire campus. For instance, there was one display that had a blank trifold…and a Makey-Makey setup. And that’s it. Heck, we have had a Makey-Makey setup in our house, but we also explained how currents worked and how you are using a foreign object to open and close circuits. But even after asking the fine gentleman in charge of this station, he really had nothing to share. So we moved on, because that is lame, simply put.

The kids were delighted to find a robot which could solve a rubix cube, though, and Nova went toe to toe with it on a speed round. I’m sorry to say the robot won. But I was very impressed with the questions the kids pelted at the engineers. From “how can it feel the cube,” to “how does the circuiting work,” to “how does it walk.” I was happy to see they were trying to take it apart!

There was also a gentleman at a table who was extremely excited about using vibrations in order to determine the structural integrity of bones, in order to test older individuals for osteoporosis. He knew just about everything on the subject, as far as I could see, and was extremely passionate about explaining it all to a small crowd.

We saw some submarines in a pool, in front of some absolutely gorgeous academic buildings which drive me nuts because they are so beautiful.

And we had lunch in the cafeteria! Chili and breadbowls all around, for this cold, cold, wet day.

Except for me, who had a salad with chicken. Because: celiac.

salads–

Finally, we got to the Electrical Engineering department and they had some fantastic hands-on tables up there.

The kids got to play with some solar powered cars.

They got to design their own film on paper craft, which was very clever and the engineers in charge of this table were extremely helpful.

We also found a room where we were given tools, resistors and instructions, and we got to build our own earrings! It was very sweet, and Glenn decided to build a couple trees and a squid instead of earrings. Fair enough.

After we were done we still had a few hours of sunlight in Seattle, so I walked with the kids downtown (see: coffee), and I figured it was a good time to go to the top of the Smith Tower.

They may have been a little freaked out to stand up there.

It may have been amazing.

Plus, there is a throne which the Empress of China donated to Seattle back in the late 1800s, and the kids each enjoyed (thoroughly) sitting on the throne.

At one point Alice came over to where I was sitting (because it was very nice to sit, finally) with a very sad face and told me, “Eve won’t let me sit on the throne.”

I’ve heard this story before.

I’m not getting involved.

You’re on your own…royal problems.