it's the lightening. really.

It is very difficult for me to concentrate on dinner when severe thunderstorms begin.  I know what we're having, it's laid out and ready to go, but to begin cooking? I'm not ready for that level of commitment when the sirens could go off at any time.

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Why must my stocky three year old insist on sitting on my lap and using my face as a bumper when he shifts around every .39 nanoseconds? Just exactly how do you tell your little bruiser to get off your lap?

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Not that he's the only one who bumps into my head.  I'm a bit of a klutz all by myself.

Oh, interwebs, I have a story for you.  I'm sure my chiropractor will get a fantastic laugh and insurance bonus out of this one.

I have some friends who are getting married in a month. I was so pleased to have not one, but TWO $10 off coupons to Kohl's, and so I was able to pick out a great present for the shower tomorrow, and spend not as much as I planned.

It's a blender (they don't read me here, and if they do - YOU'RE GETTING A BLENDER), and the box is a bit bigger than the gift bags they had at the Dollar Tree.  So I picked up a roll of silver shiny wrapping paper, thinking "shiny! I like shiny! they will like the shiny too!"

I let Pinky hold the roll as we walked back to the car, and apparently one end of the outer wrapping was opened.  The roll dropped out onto the sidewalk - I picked it up to find that it was not silver shiny wrapping paper.  It was clear.  Like you have seen wrapped around a lovely basket.

Mr Lemon and I howled about it.  He was like, "It's a present - it's wrapped - you can't possibly guess what it is!"  I chimed in, "It's a force field!"

Today I went to wrap the blender, since the wedding shower is tomorrow.  And the clear wrapping paper isn't going to cut it, so I remembered I had some Christmas paper that could be interchangeable if you don't look very closely.

I stepped into the coat closet below the stairs, noticed something different on the floor, and instead of stopping to inspect it, I kept walking and cracked my noggin on the underside of the stairs.

My head still hurts.  I felt it all the way down my neck and into my shoulder blades.

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They better LOVE and CHERISH this blender until death do they part.

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I made a chocolate cake at 9pm last night.  It was supposed to be my birthday cake when we were visiting my family, but Mom pulled rank and declared it to be too hot to use the oven.  So we had a Reese's cup-shaped ice cream cake from Friendly's instead.  Y.U.M.

Back to the chocolate cake - I used a softened stick of butter instead of 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and almost a whole can of Carnation in place of the 1 1/3 cup of water it called for on the back of the box.

DO IT.

But when you do it, take my advice and make it a three-layer cake instead of two thickish layers.  The one pan must have had slightly more batter in it than the other, so when I took them both out at the same time that pan wasn't quite done. It sunk a little in the middle, and I made the mistake of using it as the top layer.

Still.  heaven.   It was the best chocolate cake I've ever eaten.  And no, I did not save you a piece.  Get your own boxed cake mix to doctor up. ;)