The Rest of the Week

I had such great blog material yesterday after I nearly set myself on fire, that I didn't post about some other things from this week.  I don't want you to miss even a moment of the excitement around here, so here's what else has been going on:

• I had a sweet, sweet little dinner with my great neighbor Judy on Valentine's Day.  We had crab cakes and cheese and crackers and wine and cake!  We talked, we laughed...it was the best Valentine's date ever!  She is pretty awesome!  

• How about this salad I made?  Isn't it gorgeous?  I even made the tostones, which were amazing on a salad.  Pretty food for the win! 

• The pork shoulder that tried to kill me yesterday was delicious!  A little spicy and so, so tender!  I wrapped it up in tortillas with a little cheese for Chip.  For myself, I just piled it up on a bed of quinoa and black beans.  Leftovers went into the freezer for another day.  Thanks for the recipe Mary! 

• I tried to surprise Bob and Lana with a dozen heavily seasoned steamed crabs from Baltimore for Valentines!  Who needs roses?  Unfortunately, there was a delay with the shipment because the crabs that came in that day to the seafood company just weren't that great.  The company called and said they were going to hold off until they got better crabs so delivery would not happen on Valentine's Day.  I called to share the delay news with the parental unit and they were just ecstatic when I told them what was being delivered.  On Wednesday I got the news that delivery would happen on Friday.  Bob sent me this picture yesterday and said "Does it look like we are excited?"  They already have a newspaper covered table all set up with their crab eating tools a full 24 hours in advance!  What a bunch of nuts! 

On a much, much more serious note, the school shooting in Florida has my heart ripped open and my blood boiling.  I am so over children being shot in their classroom. What in the world?  Why is this a thing?  I have a kid that I drop off at school every day.  Can you imagine instead of getting a embarrassed call of "I forgot my lunch" that you get a call from a panicked child with gunfire in the background and they are calling to say their teacher is dead in the doorway and that they love you one more time? Can you imagine getting a call that instead of picking him up in the car line and hearing about his day that I have to wait at the morgue to identify his body?  Can you even imagine? The empathy thing I have is in full overdrive.  I am not smart enough to know what the answer is, but I am a mother and I know we have to do better than this.  I absolutely cannot stand by and wait for it to happen at my school before I get frantic about it. I can't wait for it to be my kid's body covered in blood in the middle of a school hallway before I freak the hell out.  So many parents are living this nightmare right now.  I do not want to be one of them.  I don't want my kid to ever have this kind of experience in his memory.  Already, they talk about it in school, what to do, where to hide if a gunman is loose on campus. I find that terrifying.  So, I have to get educated.  I have to find a fight to fight.  I have to find some smart people that have a plan. I am smart enough to know that no plan will solve the entire problem, but we have to do something. Anything.  Doing nothing is not working for me.