Tagged by Blog O' Beth.

And I like the Blog O' Beth and she provided a nifty little graphic, so I'm going to do it.

I'm supposed to write five predictions for the new year. I like guessing games and this is one, so...

1. I predict The Tank will learn to use the potty by March, no matter what he says. "I said nooooo, thanks!" "I can't like dat potty." "I don't care my potty." "Dat potty's not for me." Lies. All lies.


2. I predict these artists, The Half and Half, will become wildly successful. Your political views notwithstanding, I love the print below, which we bought a few months ago and my husband had framed as a Christmas gift to our family. Barack Obama will be the first political candidate my two oldest children remember supporting and, in case you hadn't heard, he is our first non-white president. About damn time.




3. I predict my marriage will get fun again. Seasoned parents, we've finally realized we don't get along with a toddler in the house. In fact, if we ever do this again, I will suggest separating and sharing custody from the time the toddler is one and a half until he acts like a human, around three. Then we can get back together. Also, my husband's father died this year, which was rough. And, I started working more for the first time in our marriage. Tough year, y'all. Good thing we're both funny as hell.
   


4. I predict the real estate market will go wild and these excellent realtors I know in Columbia, South Carolina will make so much money they'll take me and my family on a tour of Europe.


5. I predict I'll be about the same weight and look about a year older one year from now.

And I'm tagging...Faith the Atomic Blonde, Lisa of Blonde Appetit and Sam of Baan Sawan Thai Bistro. I predict they might not do this thing, but I hope they do, because I think it's fairly entertaining.

In other news, today is New Year's Day and, out of silly superstition and fear, I rushed to the store at the last minute and bought the ingredients for the easiest good luck meal ever. Should you ever be in the same desperate situation, please return to this post.

Black Eyed Peas (Not Quite Hoppin' John)

Buy a 2 pound bag of frozen black-eyed peas. Dump half of them in a pot with 2-3 cloves chopped garlic, a can of Rotel tomatoes and about a cup of water, enough to cover the peas. Bring them to a boil, turn down the heat and let them simmer until they're tender, a little over an hour.

Serve over rice. I used the ready-made frozen kind from Trader Joe's. Hell yeah. Sprinkle crispy onions from a can on top.

Collard Greens

I stole this idea from the brilliant Tracie, with whom I took an excellent New Year's Day walk along the river earlier. The walk was followed by lunch with my family and Tracie at Liberty Tap Room where we watched the Gamecocks act stupid and I enjoyed a scrumptious Red, White and Bleu Burger. My husband was cracking jokes about people from Iowa being "Idiots Out Walking Around." That idiot shared the joke with some local judges, who happen to be Iowa fans. I had to point out that Iowans have been doing more than walking around. They have been playing football, unlike some teams I know. But I digress. Collards...

Heat a splash of olive oil and a few spoonfuls of Miso in a pot. I bought Garlic Red Pepper Miso at Rosewood Market recently and I love it so much I want to marry it. Add a chopped onion, some soy sauce and a splash or three of vinegar. I used cider vinegar because I had it, but rice wine vinegar would be just ducky. Add an a**load of sliced collards to the pot, wilting them as you go so everything fits. The X-Man and I bought four bunches and used them all. His New Year's Resolution is to eat at least one vegetable a day, which he apparently has not been doing. Do I get that Mother of the Year Award now?

Cook them until they're done and add more vinegar and/or soy to taste.

Pork Roast

Put a boneless, 2 1/2 pound pork roast in a Reynold's oven bag with 1/4 cup of something liquid. I used Shealey's Bar-B-Que Vinegar and Pepper Sauce.

Make a sauce out of shallots, jelly, ketchup, vinegar and some seasoning. I added equal parts ketchup and Cherchie's Lem'n Hot Pepper Jelly to the pot, heated them and added about 1/3 cup chopped shallots. I know shallots are fancy, but they're milder than red or yellow onions and hold up better than green onions. Then I splashed in some vinegar until it tasted right. The sauce simmered for a while. I have no idea how long, so don't ask. I didn't add any seasoning, because the Lem'n Hot Pepper Jelly was interesting enough. You could use apricot, orange or apple jelly and add chili powder. Oh, wait. I lied. I used a little garlic salt.

The roast will take about an hour and a half to cook - the directions come in the box of Reynold's Oven Bags, which rock. You can make the other stuff during that hour and a half. You can also drink about a half bottle of Chardonnay, which I did. Mwah!

Namasté and Happy New Year, y'all!

Kids Are Strange (Alternate Title, Because This Turned into Something Completely Different: Real Estate Madness)

The other day, we were in the car and the X-Man said, "We might need to move."

Now, we have no intention of moving. Several years ago, we found Our Dream House. A, who never makes a split decision (in fact, he rarely makes a decision at all, outside of work), saw the house and immediately said it was ours.

We went through a very dramatic, stoic (on A's part), teary (on my part) weekend trying to figure out just how we could make it work, that is, how we could end up with a mortgage payment that still allowed us to do important things like pay for Montessori school, buy nice bags and shoes and go out to eat a lot. Mortgages are funny. In our limited home buying experience (twice), we've found that lenders will approve you for amounts beyond your wildest dreams, but you have to tell them how much you really feel like putting towards a mortgage every month. And I've heard those crazy California folks do things like sign fifty year mortgages. Best case scenario, you sell the house for a lot more than you paid, years before the fifty years are up. Worst case, pay it back while you're dead.

Anyhow, in our case, by Sunday night, we had resigned ourselves to waiting until another house came along. Because another great house always comes along. I don't think anyone has ever missed out on their dream house and regretted it for the rest of their lives. Although I did try to talk A into it by telling him things like, "We'll never have to get babysitters or eat out, because we'll always want to stay home! We'll just have great parties!", to which he (wisely) responded, "Yeah, assuming people keep coming over after they realize all of our parties are B.Y.O.B. and potluck." I briefly considered telling him that was a good thing, because we would be able to live off the leftovers, thereby eliminating the need to buy groceries, but even I realized that was kind of tacky. And I didn't want to quit buying shoes. Although, if we never went out, I wouldn't need shoes...

I called the owner of (Our!) Dream House and, trying to hold back tears, told him to go ahead and consider the other offer seriously, because we couldn't do it. Until the next morning, when I called our former mortgage broker (tears, again) and pleaded with him to find a way for us to get what was rightfully our house. He promised to crunch numbers, I called the owner back and asked him if he had taken the other offer, which he hadn't, yet. He had countered, but they hadn't responded. Our broker called back within an hour and, miracle man that he was, gave us the good news that mortgage rates were a hair lower than we had calculated and we were on!

My dad is a realtor and it was a blast to see him in action. He came over around lunch to help me draft our offer. As he was driving over to (Our! New!) house to submit it, he called me and asked if we could increase our earnest money (we could) and if we would forgo the home inspection (we would*). I could hear the exitement in his voice, and the edge of competition; he wanted the sale. And I know he wanted it just for the thrill of winning, because we don't pay his commission. Just so you know, he's a great realtor, but he does make other people pay his commission, so you should call him for his skills, not to save money.

So we waited. And waited. I went to pick the kids up from school. I wanted to drive by the house, but I was afraid I would jinx the sale. Maybe the owner would see me drive by, think I was psycho and not want to sell to us. He would sell to the other people, because they were normal and we weren't. I had made myself believe that he wanted us to have the house because we were so cute. Which may have been true, but I'm pretty sure he also wanted to accept the best offer. Since I'm not much for impulse control, I drove by it and, as I rounded the corner, my cell phone rang. It was my dad. "Aaaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!," I thought, "Now I've done it. I shouldn't have driven by!"

I picked up the phone to speak to an unusually somber Dad.

"He countered your offer. You and A need to have a serious talk. You need to decide how much this house is really worth to you. I don't want y'all to overextend yourselves, but I don't want you to regret losing it."

With a shaky voice, I responded, "Okay, Dad, I'll call Alex and call you back as soon as I can. [sniff, sniff]"

I was about to hang up, call my husband and offer to actually get a job when Dad said, "Wait! Don't you want to hear what he countered?"

With a heavy heart, I answered, "Sure."

"He'll take $X [our offer], but he wants his lawyer to hold the earnest money."

I was like the girl who just won Miss America (and a little bit like this totally inarticulate girl who didn't win Miss Teen U.S.A. recently). "Whooooooooooheeeeeeeeewaaaaaaaaa! Yeeeeaaaaaaaah!" I think I hung up on Dad, so I could call Alex and pull the same joke on him. I don't think I managed, because I couldn't pull off the fake serious voice. I also hung up because I was a little bit mad at Dad for putting me through the emotional torture, but I guess that's what we get for not paying him. Good one, Dad.

So, here we are, in the Greatest House Ever. We still love it, we're taking our time furnishing it and we have parties, with beer, wine and food. Recently, we've even decided to make the very mature step of adding liquor to our party menu. Funny, when we were young and broke, we had nothing but liquor at our parties. During the broke with kids years, it was B.Y.O.B. Then we moved up (feel free to hum the theme from The Jeffersons here. I know I did.) to beer and wine. Now we're adding liquor. If we get rich, I'm not sure where we'll go from here, maybe a frozen drink machine, maybe this one, because A and I like to joke (I think) that if we ever win the lottery, we'll be "Livin' the Frontgate Lifestyle!"

So, back to strange kids. The X-Man, in all his six year old (FIRST GRADE!) wisdom, thinks we need to move. Of course I asked why.

"Because, you know!"

His brother did the same thing around this age. He would chuckle and say, "You know!" in an expectant voice. We never did know. And we still don't, so I answered, "No. I don't know. What?"

In the same expectant voice, "You know. Because of Baby J?"

Hmmmm...nope. Still no clue.

"Because of something that starts with a...W?!"

At this point, I felt like I did in school when the teacher calls on you even though your hand was not raised. Incidentally, I hate when teachers do that, because why would you call on someone who clearly doesn't know the answer when you have several people to choose from who do, as indicated by their raised and wildly waving hands? A desire to humiliate students because of your own insecurity, that's why. So they call on you anyway, giving you even more hints in a voice that clearly indicates that you're the dumbest student ever to darken the doors of their classroom. So maybe our kids want to humiliate us. Huh.

Much like I did with those teachers, I admitted that I didn't know and would need to be told the answer.

"Wires?!" he answered, incredulous at my dimness.

"You mean because Baby J tries to grab wires? Sweetheart, every house has wires [I know. Not true. But every house we live in will.] "

"Ugh! Never mind!"

So, I still have no idea what he meant. If you have any insight, please let me know. Whatever the case, we are not moving. Ever. One of the greatest things about this house is that the Master Bedroom is downstairs, so we can live here when we're old and feeble. And it's a great house for entertaining, so it'll be perfect for the visitation before our funerals.

Namasté, y'all!"



*Just so you don't think we're nuts: the house had been sold six months earlier and passed a complete inspection. The current owners planned to live there forever, until she got a great job offer in New York City and they decided to move. Also, we still got termite, heating and air inspections, so it wasn't a huge deal.