i stumbled across the recipe for this cake on Pro Bono Baker and was immediately intrigued by the brown frosting. and when i looked at the ingredient list i knew i had to make it because it is egg free! i’m always on the look out for good egg free dessert recipes. darn that niamh, she’s hampering my baking style big time. if she doesn’t outgrow this allergy i will be very sad. at any rate, i’m always suspicious of baked goods without egg. plus an ounce of chocolate? weird. but the cake turned out fabulously. and the frosting—oh, the frosting! !!!! To. Die. For. love it. have any of you ever had penuche frosting before? i’d never even heard of it until this recipe. so so good. it’s kind of like the frosting on maple bar doughnuts. and the cake itself is very good too. if you are a fan of spiced type desserts (molasses spice cookies, pumpkin pie, etc) then this is the dessert for you.

it’s only been two days, and the entire cake is almost all gone. i’d like to say that it’s been spread out evenly between 5 people, unfortunately no. one of us doesn’t get cake yet. two only get small pieces if they finish their lunch/dinner (a rare event). one of us has some semblance of restraint. none of the aforementioned people are me. and i wonder why the pregnancy pounds aren’t just melting off!

I saw a license plate cover frame (?) that repeatedly flashed the message ‘Envy Me.’ I’ve never seen a license plate cover with an electronic message – this one was on a Scion.

this morning as i was attempting to take out our overflowing paper recycling with niamh and muriel in tow, i told niamh to hold the elevator door open for me. she did not, and i was not quick enough to stop the door from closing. of course, the one time the elevator door closes with one of my children inside and me outside, it got called away. and of course, it wasn’t just anyone in the lobby waiting for the elevator. it was niamh’s arch nemesis–the upstairs neighbor and their big mean scary dog (ie-sweetest golden retriever/lab type dog ever). i heard shrieks and screams coming from below and tried to get the elevator back up, as muriel was howling in the stroller and didn’t want to leave her (no idea why did it not occur to me to carry her down in my arms). have i ever mentioned how the smallest sound reverberates, echos, and is amplified ten times in our stairwell and lobby? lovely. anyway, the elevator wouldn’t come, so i dashed down the stairs, leaving a very angry baby behind. reached the bottom to see niamh backed into a corner of the elevator as far as she possibly could, her face streaked with tears, and the neighbor trying to assure niamh that everything was okay.

when we got back to the apartment niamh told me “no woof-woof eat nya-nya all up.” i told her that dogs don’t eat little girls and she thought for a moment before saying “no woof-woof eat nya-nya shoes.”

i don’t have a photo of the incident, but here is a pic from this morning of niamh laying next to muriel. something rowan and niamh are always wanting to do. i hope this muriel adoration continues once muriel is mobile!

an interview clip with one of the actors in the Twilight movie: The Fun Starts About Three Minutes In…

ha!

Here is a photo of Muriel I took last night on her one month birthday. Not the greatest photo (she looked so much sweeter when i was looking at her), but I am pretty pleased with it anyway, as it was taken with no flash and only the light of a bedside lamp. I have not been very good about taking photos, but hope that will change soon since I’m starting to feel normal again.

I can’t believe it’s been one month already. I knew that this time with her as a newborn would zoom by, but it’s still hard to believe. I’m trying hard (and a bit unsuccessfully) to savor every moment and not let this time be tainted with sadness. Maybe if I had a better memory it wouldn’t be so hard…I already can’t remember really what Niamh and Rowan were like as babies.

Rowan was a knight for Halloween.  Or, he was supposed to be a knight–our Halloween was plagued by Murphy’s Law.  Let’s just say I got him a knight costume that he wore a few times around Halloween.  So anyway, my mom decided to fashion him a makeshift sword out of cardboard.  Quite appropriate for a knight, but I told her “Oh, Rowan won’t know what to do with it.”  HA!  Imagine my surprise when the first thing he did, the very moment it was in his hands, was to point it at Grammie and say “I’m hurting you!”  My jaw just about hit the floor.  I couldn’t believe those words came from mouth of my sweet, uber-sensitive boy who hides his eyes when watching Smurfs and a scene involving a bear chasing Gargamel comes on.  Did he pick it up at school?  Is violence built into boys’ genetic makeup?  We have been reading Castle, maybe he picked it up there?  He was very intrigued by a picture of a man with an arrow sticking out of his chest…Ugh!  Who knows.

I have decided that we are going to take our approach to violent play from this Mothering article Bang!  Bang! You’re Dead!  So every time Rowan and Niamh chase each other with swords I try not to cringe (how I wish, yet again, I’d had a brother growing up so I’d be more familiar with all-things-boy).  I am a little puzzled at what to do when he points a sword at me.  Seems like there should be some boundaries.

Wow, time passes — do you remember back when Gaje looked like the cutest little brown bear when he was a puppy?

It was Gaje’s 9th birthday on Tuesday. Though he’s had to adjust to the supporting actor role since Mr. Jonah arrived on the scene we still think he’s the best dog ever. Here’s to many more happy years swimming, eating anything that looks edible (and a few things that don’t and aren’t) and barking at the door, fiercely. I might also point out that Jonah thinks Gaje is the best thing in the world.

Jonah observes as Gaje blows out the candle on his "cake"

Where have I been?  And by that I mean, where has my mind been?  I’m so out of touch with what is going on with everyone.  I didn’t realize that until I was slapped back to reality when I inquired about McCann #3 and if she had arrived yet this morning…..ummmm, yeah, she’s here and has been for 3 weeks!  Ugh, I’m hating myself right now.  I’m a terrible friend and am sadly even more self absorbed than I feared.

I want to reconnect.  I miss you.

I saw this article a couple weeks ago and I meant to write about it but of course many “life” things seemed to get in the way. I’ll apologize ahead of time if it’s a little rambly. My guys are currently “sleeping in” on this rainy Saturday so I’m finally finishing it.

I was sad to see that, among others, the Klickitat ferry is headed to the scrap heap (full article below). For those of you who’ve forgotten your Washington State Ferry history the Klickitat ruled the Port Townsend – Whidbey Island route and ferried (ha, get it? ferried?) my brother and me to our dad’s place for many years. After my parents divorced my dad moved to Anacortes (and then Mt. Vernon) and so every other weekend my mom would drive us to Port Townsend and we’d meet my dad and cross over. Sometimes if another ferry wasn’t due very soon or if the weather was nice we’d walk over to an ice cream shop near the dock and I’d always get mint chocolate chip. Then the trusty Klickitat would come and we’d get on and always want to walk around the deck. It didn’t really get old. I guess it’s weird to think that I look back on this time with nostalgia…a time when my parents being apart was something I had to wrap my very young head around. But perhaps it just goes to show that at a young age we accept change so much better. As an adult I mourn the passing of the Klickitat and all of its former glory and adventure. Yes, it’s OLD and could possibly sink and kill people. But it still makes me sad.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
State selling its oldest ferries
Four steel-electric boats are heading south – for the scrap heap
10/12/08
By LARRY LANGE
P-I REPORTER

They came north from San Francisco Bay decades ago to join what became the country’s biggest ferry flotilla. Now they’re the oldest boats in the state ferry fleet, and they’re about to head back south, this time to Mexico.

Once the final sale arrangements are made, the four steel-electric ferries, mothballed in November, will head to the scrap heap.

State officials tied up the four ferries — the Illahee, Klickitat, Nisqually and Quinault — in November after discovering corrosion in the hulls of two of the vessels and concluding that none of them was worth repairing.

Since then they’ve sat, idle, at Washington State Ferries’ Eagle Harbor maintenance yard on Bainbridge Island. The state, trying to get $350,000 apiece for them, couldn’t sell them on eBay but got one buyer to agree to pay $500,000 for all four, plus a percentage of the revenue from recycling the boats that could total an additional $200,000.

The vessels have served Puget Sound ferry routes since the early 1940s, most recently on the Port Townsend-Whidbey Island route, between the San Juan Islands and as backups. Since being sidelined, they’ve taken up space at the maintenance yard that the state wants to use for ongoing work.

Originally built in 1927 for the Southern Pacific Railroad in the Bay Area, the ferries were later bought, moved to the Seattle area and renamed by the former private Seattle ferry operator after they were made obsolete by new Bay highway bridges. The state acquired them when it bought the private ferry service.

Now time and age has become their enemy. Washington’s ferry system began making plans to build new ferries late last year after it beached the four.

It hoped to sell them for $350,000 apiece but couldn’t get any bids at that price after first listing them on the state’s surplus-property Web site and then eBay. It then started a negotiated-sale arrangement, notifying individuals, brokers and shipyards, and got three offers; it settled on the $500,000 bid from Shoreline-based Environmental Recycling Systems. It’s now finishing up the final agreement.

The company plans to tow the boats, likely two at a time, from Bainbridge Island to the Pacific Coast port of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico, where they’ll be dismantled and the scrap metal sold.

At one point the state had an estimate that the old boats could draw $450,000 each as scrap, but during the disposal effort “the cost of fuel went up, which changed the picture for transporting them,” said Doug Russell, the ferry system’s chief naval architect. Initially estimating the price, “we didn’t account for transportation cost.”

Other factors include the cost of preparing the old ships for the ocean voyage, which requires sealing valves or discharge pipes exposed to the water. Wave-breaks will need to be placed at each end of the ferries, to keep water out of car decks during the trip, and potentially hazardous polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, will have to be removed if levels exceed legal limits. Rudders must be fixed in one position. Coast Guard officials must approve ERS’ towing plan.

Dennis Vaughan, ERS’ chief executive officer, thinks all the preparations and final sale arrangements will take another 30 days to complete before the ferries can be moved.

Another bidder for the ferries was Steve Rodrigues, who purchased the former state ferry Kalakala at auction in 2003 and hoped to use materials from one of the other four ferries to rebuild the Kalakala’s hull, a move far cheaper than a completely new hull.

An alternative, he said, would be to lift the Kalakala’s superstructure onto the hull of one of the steel-electric boats. He also wanted to keep one or two of the steel-electric vessels as floating museums and event locations, paying the state for them after he resold them for development as attractions.

“They didn’t want those steel-electrics to exist in the state,” Rodrigues said.

The state rejected his offer, saying ERS’ offer brought it more cash. One other complication was transfer of depreciation rights from three of the four old ferries to another newer ferry. The rights were acquired during the 1980s and early 1990s by private companies that invested money in the ferries and received tax writeoffs in exchange. The holders of the depreciation rights to the Klickitat may be owed money once that ferry is sold.

Meantime, the state has removed re-usable equipment from the four old boats: radar, radios, onboard communication systems, life jackets, art work and plaques installed when shipyards renovated them. The wooden nameplates with their gold letters have been taken to a state warehouse as memorabilia.

Retiring old ferries is unusual. It last happened in the mid-1990s when the state disposed of the ferry Olympic.

The ferry system plans to start building new ferries next year. It will open bids Nov. 6 for two 64-car ferries for the Port Townsend-Keystone route. Separately a group of three shipyards is expected by Dec. 12 to submit a design for a 144-car ferry to be used on other routes. The system expects to finish one of each type of ferry by 2010.

Russell said the system is looking ahead to building new boats that will be built to modern standards. The four old ones “served very well,” he said. “People got their money out of the vessels but it’s time to move on.”

Our general acquaintance is jubilant at the outcome of yesterday’s election results here in the U.S.A. With a democratic president, and a black man to boot, and even our governor holding on to her seat we’ve got a lot to be happy about.

I can’t help but be more than a little depressed though about some other results that have happened around our country. In California, Prop 8 (banning gay marriage which was made legal in June when the California Supreme Court nullified a 2000 ban) passed, Arizona and Florida passed similar measures and Arkansas banned unmarried (i.e. ones who can’t legally marry) couples from being adoptive or foster parents.

It makes me angry. Really angry. Marriage is a legal contract made with the state. It’s not really any different than the contract I signed to get my business license. Some people believe that their marriage is also a holy union but those people have to sign a contract with the state as well. Same contract as those who have religion-free weddings. It irks me to no end that the morally/religiously-self-righteous have found a way to assert their control through a legal means. If we are putting labels on what it means to be a man or a woman and what legal contracts each can engage in where do you draw the line? Should we go back to a time when black folks and white folks can’t get married? Or is it about a misplaced notion of deviance? Should anyone who’s ever watched porn not be allowed to get married? Maybe no non-Christians should be allowed to get married. Or perhaps women shouldn’t be allowed to own property. Or to vote. Try and explain to me how these things are so different.

I firmly believe that it is amoral to apply a scale system when it comes to giving out rights to citizens. And the fact of the matter is there’s something down-right creepy about a whole group of people who want to know the details of what goes on in our bedrooms. It’s funny how this group also overlaps with the group that claims personal responsibility and less government intervention as some of its core values.