Done in by Caramel Cupcakes

My son loves eating muffins. He likes to have one for breakfast. He's absolutely adorable when he picks up an enormous Costco muffin in his tiny little hands. It's gerbilesque in its cuteness.

So, yesterday, when The Boy was despairing that his daddy wouldn't be home when we got home (he takes night classes), I suggested that we make some muffins. Because we were out of Costco muffins, and I already foresaw the tantrum he would throw in the morning. So why not kill two birds with one stone? This tantrum and the next one? And heck, it's good family cooking fun, too.

So The Boy agreed that muffins would be a good idea, and his tantrum was averted. He was giddy and excited about cooking muffins. He loves cooking, he loves muffins. He really likes to "taste" the ingredients. Often. Especially the sugar.

His favorite muffin is the poppyseed muffin. Oh, he eats so many of these, that the lucky person changing his diaper can tell for days that he's been eating poppyseeds. But I have no poppyseeds at home, so I suggested we make apple muffins. Apple! That's almost healthy! And he agreed, apple muffins. When we were nearly home, the evil radio had a commercial featuring chocolate. At which point The Boy declared he wanted to make chocolate muffins with chocolate chips. Oh dear -- that's not quite as healthy as I had planned. But... no matter. We will make chocolate muffins.

We returned home, and I looked for a chocolate muffin recipe, and couldn't find one! I couldn't even find one on the internet that looked appealing, or that I had all the ingredients to. So I looked in Fine Cooking. I adore that magazine. Everything is so yummy. Though I still could not find a chocolate muffin recipe that didn't involve an ingredient I did not have (white chocolate, raspberries, etc) or that I didn't want to feed my son (espresso!).

So I settled on something similar that I knew would appeal -- the caramel cupcake. Okay, we're veering more towards unhealthy here. This is no longer a muffin (and frankly, they're just little cakes) but a full fledged cup cake, complete with icing. Oh well, The Boy approved (he adores caramel!) so we made those muffins. I have an adorable little mini muffin tin, so I thought what better way to make sure I don't eat too many, than to make tiny muffins!

No. Does not work that way. Instead, the tiny, scrumtious, little caramel cupcakes just caused me to need to eat many of them. So cute. So tasty. And so the reason I lost a few marks for temptation and moderation!!

But I think Ben* would have liked them.


(* -- Franklin, silly.)

This is What I Mean When I Say So Many Studies Are Flawed

I recently got a link to this article from a friend of mine, who knows that one thing I hate is how awful some supposed "research" is these days. There are people using data to justify conclusions that aren't remotely supported by their evidence. They misuse statistics left and right, and leave enourmous gaps where there should have been follow up studies. They use really awful data sets. Bad samples. Here's an example of all of the above!

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112850855225260475.html

I've never read The Number Guy's column before, but I just signed up to get an email when there's a new one! Excellent column.

Is That A Typo??

... you might wonder. No, I really am giving myself a "12" for both tranquility and sincerity. I was an angry little cloud of doom yesterday. Work was frustrating, home was frustrating, and while I was trying my best to rise above it, my mind kept going back to how wronged and angry I was. 12 is either my best estimate, or I just lost count.

Not a good day.

It made me work less, I gossiped a bit, it was just an all out crap of a day.

Week Two: Do-over!

Okay, you may have noticed I just sort of disappeared off the face of the earth. Well, what happened was that we had nine people in from out of town at work this week -- several of them from two different vendors! So, I basically spent 9-6 in meetings. All day. Every day. After that, I was exhausted and everything was a mess.

I did cook dinner (or reheat healthy delicious leftovers) every night.

Today I'm staying home. I'd planned on cleaning, and I have done a little, but I'm feeling guilty for not doing more. But most of all, I got a little chance to just sort of relax. There's no littler person demanding time, no meetings to go to, no deadlines, no desperate THING that needs to be done. We have groceries. We have dinner. We have the little errands done. And I'm taking a well-deserved rest. I need to rest.

Of course, I'd be resting more if my husband wasn't in the other room going a tad bit melodramatic over his homework. If he swears and screams one more time... well... I'll have to go hide upstairs or something. This is my day off. I'm supposed to be relaxing, not cringing every time he gets upset. I can't help it. It puts me on edge, and makes me jump, and makes me just... nervous. I want to fix it. But I can't do his homework for him (I mean, it's wrong, besides the fact that I don't know C++ that well.)

Anyway, I didn't really have time or energy to clean or try to improve myself last week, so I'm declaring a do-over!

Week Two: Silence

So, every Monday I will recap the last week, and then introduce this week's virtue.

Last week was temperence. I'd say I did a pretty good job. I cooked dinner every night, and did a pretty good job of not stuffing myself silly even though it was tasty food. I was moderate on the caffeine, though I would like to continue working on bringing it down to a lower level. I had one drink all week -- a margarita at dinner on Saturday. Mmmm! (Note: Not to imply I have a drinking problem or anything; just verifying that I'm observing moderation in food and drink as my buddy Ben prescribes.)

Week of 10/10 - 10/16: I don't have a table of marks against me by virtue this week. I only came up with the idea partway through the week, so it wouldn't be very useful statistically.

This week's virtue is Silence:

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Now, this doesn't mean I stop working on the other virtues, this is just the one we'll focus on, to see where we might violate it and where we might improve.

Benjamin Franklin invented a fictional woman named Silence Dogood when he was 16. He began writing letters under her name to the New-England Courant, ridiculing all sorts of things, from drunks in the street, to bad fashion, to Harvard. (Amusingly enough, even then it was considered a place ruined by corruption and elitism). I wonder if this counted as trifling conversation or not.

A nice Franklin quote about silence:

Silence is not always a Sign of Wisdom, but Babbling is ever a folly.

Saving Dinner

So, as a part of my improve-myself-and-not-feel-like-a-complte-loser-athon that I'm on, I also signed up for the Saving Dinner Menu Mailer service. It basically a friend of the FlyLady who wants to help people get back to cooking dinner by providing a week of recipes and ingredients, so you can just follow the instructions and have dinner. I'm pretty picky about recipes, but a friend said they liked it, so I decided to give it a shot.

So far, I'm not very impressed. I mean, I like that she has different options -- after looking at the sample menus, I skipped over the "regular" mailing menu and went for the Low Carb one. It's more meat-and-potatos sort of meals, as she describes it, and more like the sort of thing I'm used to eating. (Of course, that's probably because my Dad used to be very meat and potatoes and my mom grew up in a house with a diabetic, so we all sort of learned to cook very diabetic-friendly meals. Which isn't so much meat and potatos and meat and veggies. But close enough. Meat is certainly required, and the normal mailer wasn't always giving you a good hunk of animal protein). Also, since I am trying to both lose weight (not in the dieting sense -- just eat well, excercise and watch a pound leave every once in a while) and get pregnant (which requires a lot of protein). And even more, last time I was pregnant, I had gestational diabetes, so I figured I'd plan ahead and try to get a bunch of low-carb recipes, and I'd be ready in case I got diabetes again.

Anyway, to make a long story even longer... I have so say, so far I'm not terribly impressed with Saving Dinner. She tries to make the recipes too simple. I don't have a problem with simple, but you have to pick the right kind of recipe -- don't just make every recipe simple.

And example: Last night I tried the "Crustless Quiche" (though I bought pie crusts so we could have real quiche. I'm not a carb Nazi.) but part of the way through the recipe I just could not do what she was asking. She wanted we to just put the cheese, bacon and raw onion (?!) and flour (?!?!) into it, pour egg over and cook it. Raw onion? Is she nuts? Flour in a quiche?? Why?? So I just gave up and opened up Julia Child's How To Cook, and finished it with her instructions. (YUM!)

The other recipes I've tried involved cooking pork chops and jsut throwing orange slices on top, hoping to make a sauce (it was a bit bitter, and not really that exciting), and something that I guess was supposed to be teriyaki shrimp, but her sauce called for 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, and 2 tbs of brown sugar. I have to say, it was pretty vile once you threw a pile of shrimp in it.

The one recipe I was okay with was the "Burger Salad", but I added buns, and really, it was jsut hamburgers by then. And I made the salsa, but added mangos (I love mango salsa!). And I think I changed a few other things...

I guess it at least gave me the idea of shopping for a week of food, making the menus, and making dinner every night, just like my mom did when I was growing up. And it inspired meto cook things, even if it was never the actual recipes. I also put together a little XML system to track the recipes, complete with ratings, notes, and such, so I can assemble some sort of cookbook at a later time. I'll just gather recipes now -- later I'll assemble the database, maybe a front end, and render it all out as a book and mail it to people or something.

I have cooked every night for a week, except for Saturday -- that's the day we see my parents, and we ended up eating out that night. But that's ok. Just as long as it isn't every night, you know?

My New Plan

Let's see if this works. I'll update my charming new table in the sidebar every evening for that day's events. Then, at the end of the week, I'll post it so it can be archived. Each day I might bring up any particular good or bad deeds on my part, but I won't make you read anything nearly as boring as that long bulleted list. I hope.

Down the line, perhaps on a monthly basis, I can make the grpahis that I fantasize about, to chart my progress.

Tables in Blogger

Thanks to the Blogger help, I understand how to stick a table in here. The issue is that you need to have all the table tags on one line, no carriage return. Otherwise, for ever carriage return, Blogger inserts an extra line break, which makes a ton of white space above your table. Here's my gorgeous test table.

d	s	s	s	d	f	g	h
a	s	ds	f	f	f	hjj	d
f	f	f	f	f	d	d	d
d	d	d	d	d	d	d	d
dd	d	d	d	d	d	d	d
d	d	d	d	d	d	d	d

Changing My Style

I hate how narrow this page is, so I'm going to work on making a new style. I may try out some of the samples, but more likely I'll tweak one to look nice and unique. Won't that be nice?

Update: Okay, I've settled on something that will do for now, I guess. I'd really like to put a picture of my buddy Ben up there, but that can wait. It's now a much more liquid layout, and that makes me happy. I'll fix up the colors later, too.

These Reports are Too Long and Boring

Okay, I'm not sure what to do here, These reports are seriously long, and how boring are they? I need a better way to tally this.

Self-Improvement Report 10/13/2005

Franklin:

• Temperance -- I had a healthy lunch, a cooked a good dinner, and I didn't overeat. At lunch I was tempted by chips, but I put them away and yogurt instead. Yogurt isn't perfect, but it sure beats chips. I had one chocolate after dinner, and resisted making myself a chocolate shake. I had some morning coffee, no tea.
  
• Silence -- Full marks for that, I think. I'm probably missing something I did wrong.
  
• Order -- I cleaned up and made things better than they were in the morning, again.
  
• Resolution -- I made dinner, again, and sent off the spreadsheet and some other files I promised. I'm still behind on the XSL-FOs, however.
  
• Frugality -- All I bought was lunch. I would have preferred to bring food instead, but I didn't have any leftovers, and I got up too late to make anything easy.
  
• Industry -- Time was not wasted. Well, okay, another 2-hour AoE game.
  
• Sincerity -- Far too cranky in the evening, I think. But I did pretty well up until the Boy's bedtime.
  
• Moderation -- Yep!
  
• Cleanliness -- Pretty good there, too.
  
• Tranquility -- Yeah, I'm so not tranquill. I can't imagine how many black marks I get there.
  
• Chastity -- Still none of your business.
  
• Humility -- Mostly humble, I think? It may be hard for me to tell.
  

FlyLady:

• Make bed - no
• hotspot - no
  
• laundry - yes
• swish toilet - yes
• 15 mins in zone - yes
• 27 fling - yes
• 5 min - yes
• pack lunch - no
• dishes - yes
  
• hotspot 2 - yes
• vitamins/teeth - yes
• Clean up kitchen, LR, DR - yes
• lay out clothes - yes
• gather things for tomorrow - yes
• plan dinner - yes
• check calandar - yes
• clean fridge - no (I may move this to another day. This should be done the day before the grocery store, I'd think)
• Paper clutter - yes -- of course, I wasn't able to finish it because I lost my password for the FSA site.
  
• Clean purse - yes
• trash - yes

Self Improvement Report for 10/12/2005

Okay, I think instead of having a weekly scorecard, I'll do a daily report of how I did the day before.

Franklin:

• Temperance -- Lunch was leftovers, dinner was very healthy, however I ate 2 pieces of chocolate at night. No drinking involved, and I kept my caffeine intake to a minimum (1 cup of coffee in the morning, a little tea in the afternoon).
• Silence -- I did gossip a bit with my ex-editor on the phone (and here I said I don't do that a lot). I did do a good deal of blogging and email, but I'd like to think it helped everyone in some way. ;)
• Order -- More details below with Flylady, but I did my part to put things in their place. I might not be doing quite as well with juggling work time, but I'm getting it nuder control with more task lists and schedules.
• Resolution -- I did make dinner and did go to Target as I intended. And did cleaning as above. However I did not deliver a spreadsheet and a schedule that I promised.
• Frugality -- I think I did okay. I made dinner for my family, instead of using expensive mixes or eating out. I tried to keep purchases to a minimum, though I'm not sure how much Franklin would approve of my Halloween decoration choices.
• Industry -- I was quite industrious, until after I put my son to bed and we decided to play Age of Empires from midnight to 2 am. On the other hand, collaborative gaming is a very important part of our relationship. Yes, we actually tend to suffer when we don't shoot enough Huns together.
• Sincerity -- I was a bit sharp-tongued with my son as he continually ran off in Target and worried me. It was a long day, though, and I was getting upset that he wasn't listening.
• Justice -- I'm good on that.
• Moderation -- Probably could use more blogging moderation. It seems to be feasting or starving here.
• Cleanliness -- I was clean, my clothes are clean, and my house was cleaner when I went to bed than it was when I got up. It's still a mess, but it is improving.
• Tranquility -- I was disturbed by trifles. I was angry at a coworker over stupid things. I was upset by my son misbehaving. I was irritated when my husband kept trying to just talk and I was trying to get some work/emailing done. I need patience.
• Chastity -- You know, I honestly think this is none of your business. ;)
• Humility -- Ugh. Not very humble. That didn't go well yesterday.

FlyLady:

• Make bed - no
• hotspot - yes
• laundry - yes
• swish toilet - yes
• feed lizards - yes
• 15 mins in zone - yes
• 27 fling - yes
• 5 min - yes
• pack lunch - no
• dishes - no
• hotspot 2 - yes
• vitamins/teeth - yes
• Clean up kitchen, LR, DR - yes
• lay out clothes - no
• gather things for tomorrow - yes
• plan dinner - yes
• check calandar - yes
• clean fridge - no (I may move this to another day. This should be done the day before the grocery store, I'd think)
• Paper clutter - no

UPDATE:

I jsut decided to go tackle some "paper clutter" and I think I'm late filing an FSA recipt, because I oculdn't find the stupid recipt... and as it turns out, it's in my computer bag. It's where I thought it should be, yet I never checked there to see if I actually put it where it belongs. How sad is that? Hopefully they'll take it, even if it's late.

How am I Doing With Those Virtues?

Glad you asked.

• Temperance -- I'm doing okay with this one. I've actually been trying to conceive since last christmas, so I've had to keep from too much drinking or anything. On the other hand, I have not been eating well. Let's just say it's a bad thing that Costco has jumbo sized bags of chocolate. On the other hand, thanks to Flylady, I also signed up for Saving Dinner, in order to help me make a good, healthy dinner every night. I just started last night. I'm not sure this will last, since some of these recipes are not wowing me. On the other hand, it inspired me to work on the Holy Grail of a perfect computer-based recipe system. In XML.
• Silence -- I'm really not doing well at this, I don't think. It's hard to say. After all, maybe everything I say is of benefit to someone. I really don't gossip much, or talk about things that make no difference. I do chat with my son's teacher sometimes, but that helps us get to know each other better and strengthens the relationship between her and my family, and the stories are charming illustrations of my parenting style. Right?
• Order -- Since moving to our new house, I've been trying to find a place for everything. And heck, that's why I'm currently obsessed with Flylady (are you tired of hearing about her yet?)
• Resolution -- Well, I think you know how bad I am at that.
• Frugality -- I'm also not good at that. Hopefully when I get more organized, I'll be better.
• Industry -- Ugh. I've improved since I became a mom. there simply isn't time to waste all that often. Does playing Age of Empire count here? I mean, everyone needs a little hobby, right? Some way to blow off steam? Hmm.
• Sincerity -- I'm mostly good at this. There are just a few people I can find no way to keep from harboring ill feelings about and ridiculing them mercilessly behind their backs. Generally, I just avoid people I can't stand. In their cases, I cannot, due to obligations of some kind.
• Justice -- This I'd say I'm good at. I don't hurt people, and I do my duty. I'm sure I could improve -- there are times I yell at my son or snark at my husband that are surely not necessary. Hmm. Actually, I'm not that good at this one. I should, uh, "do my duty" to my husband more often, if you know what I mean. And spend more time playing with my son -- I spend a ton of time, but after cleaning, working, cooking, and so forth, his wedge of my time isn't very big. I'd like to give him as much as I can.
• Moderation -- In some things, I'm good. In others, not at all. I mean, look at my blogging! Silent for a month, then 20 posts in a day. I tend to do that a lot.
• Cleanliness -- I clean myself daily. I should shave more. My clothes are always clean, but I should take more time to remove stains and get out wrinkles. My habitation (I adore his word choice) is not that great. It is improving, though. I also recently cleaned my car, with was turning into a mobile trashcan. Thank you Flylady!
• Tranquility -- That is so not me. It should be. I'll work on that one, Ben. (You don't mind if I call you Ben, do you?)
• Chastity -- Er, well, I'm faithful. I swear I only use it for health (heh) and offspring. I could use more of the latter.
• Humilty -- Oh my. I have a huge ego. I can't help it. I suppose I should work on this, too. Though in the past, I keep the ego, but add in heaping scoops of self-hatred. Or at least a complete lack of self-confidence.

I think I should go back to doing one of these a week, like my buddy Franklin did.

My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro' the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arrang'd them with that view, as they stand above.

He goes on to say:

I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the virtues successively. Thus, in the first week, my great guard was to avoid every the least offence against Temperance, leaving the other virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every evening the faults of the day. Thus, if in the first week I could keep my first line, marked T, clear of spots, I suppos'd the habit of that virtue so much strengthen'd and its opposite weaken'd, that I might venture extending my attention to include the next, and for the following week keep both lines clear of spots. Proceeding thus to the last, I could go thro' a course compleat in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year.

Is there a way to have a permalink in Blogger? Maybe I can leave the week's chart at the top of the page.

Virtues Now in Sidebar

It's been a year now (a very quiet year) and I finally realized it would be a good idea to put the list of virtues over in the sidebar. It makes it easier to keep track of them.

Just looking them over again, it's easy to see how well Flylady fits into Franklin's Virtues.

1. Temperance -- Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence -- Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order -- Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution -- Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality -- Make no expense but to do good to other or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry -- Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity -- Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice -- Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation -- Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness -- Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility -- Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity -- Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. (Ed -- he really wasn't good at this one!)
13. Humility -- Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Posting via Email

One reason I never seem to manage to post enough to this here blog is simply the issue of time. There's never enough of it. One thing I do have, however, is a phone that can send email. It takes pictures, it has AIM, it has a web browser (but doesn't support cookies or javascript). It even has SSH! I fully expect the next version to bake cookies for me. And I always have this phone with me. Always. That way, if I'm ever bored, I can IM people, check email, surf, and so forth.

I even have my Flylady emails sent right to my phone, so I can easily get fly-washed. (Hey.. I wonder how I put a link in this through email. HTML? Here's trying: <a href="www.flylady.com">Flylady</a> )

So, now, I've configured it to let me post to this blog from my phone. Woohoo! Now I can blog while I'm waiting for my son to be done with daycare and get ready to come home. Sure, he screams in the morning when it's time to go, but you also can't drag him away from it. Toddlers are very complicated creatures.

Update: Whoa... it does not format this especially well.

Progress So Far

I haven't figured out yet how I'm going to share my Flylady progress with you, my loyal readers. Oh, I mean you, the people looking back at my old blog posts once I become rich and famous to see what SilverMine was like before she won the Nobel Prize.

But, until I've come up with a way of informing you (ooh, maybe I can post that bar chart I've been dreaming of every Monday morning!), my beloved readers, I guess I'll have to wing it.

So this week, we're in the kitchen. The big deal this month, for the kitchen, it to get a pantry and fill it with staples (the Perpetual Pantry). I'm doing pretty well so far:

• I have a pantry
• It is organized into categories, like "tomato sauce", "baking", "soup", and so forth.
• I keep a list on the fridge to write down items that we've run out of or are getting low on.

What I need to work on:

• I do often buy things that we just might never use. I am getting better about it, though!
• My freezer is not in any way organized.
• I don't even label and date things in the freezer!
• I do not have a list of "staples" to check against, to see if I'm missing any (but I don't know if I need it, since I have the list on the fridge...)
  

So, my plan to fix this:

• Organize the freezer
• Start writing dates and labels on freezer items
• Find ways to use up weird things in the pantry
• Don't buy things at the store unless they are on the list and you know what you're going to do with them

Franklin Meets Flylady

So, like most working mothers, my house is a mess. A big mess. And I don't have a good system for keeping it clean. Sure, I can go into hyper-cleaning mode for a weekend, if I know visitors are coming. But I'll probably end up neglecting everything else, and the house will just gravitate back to choas pretty quickly.

So, on the advice of some friends, I'm trying out Flylady. Initially, I didn't have a favorable reaction to the site. I feel snobby saying it, but it felt a bit too "midwest stay at home mom" to me. Not that there's really anything wrong with that (in fact my daydreams right now sometimes involve being a midwestern stay at home mom), but I couldn't imagine that the same rules could apply to me.

But hey, it worked for my friends, and they didn't fit my mental mold either. And, after reading a little bit about the actual process, I realized something: Franklin would approve. After all, how different is it from his system of virtues? You decide what you need to improve, and make a way to work towards perfection (realizing, of course, that no human could ever reach perfection, so it's ok if you fail) by improving one thing at a time over days, weeks, and month. It's not a quick fix, it's a lifestyle. So I decided to listen to my inner Benjamin and go for it.

At first I just read. And obsessed. And tried to make a control journal, but of course I had to have a really useful one. A web-based one, so I could check it any time. But there wasn't a pre-made tool out there I could just use. So I was determined to make my own. Well, months passed, I didn't make my tool, and my house was a mess. That didn't work.

So I realized (like she tells everyone else) that I just had to do it an easy way, and not spend all my time trying to make a perfect control journal. I tried a few other things, and they didn't work. Finally I have all my tasks in Outlook's Task pane. I have to use Outlook anyway, may as well use it! This way I could have all my own daily, weekly, and monthly reminders, and track how well I do on them, for metrics. I'm highly motivated by metrics. Flylady encourages putting stickers on a calandar as a metric, but I just can't get away from who I am. I have daydreams of converting my completed task log into bar charts. Yes, I'm sick. I know it. But I'm a very good scientist and a very good programmer, and these insane personality quirks are why.

I debated about whether I wanted to post about this. After all, I think I'm not the only one who reacts to Flylady with instant snobbitude. I wondered if anyone could seriously read a hardhitting political blog interspersed with Flylady posts. Of course, I am not a hardhitting political blog, I have no readers, and Lileks seems to manage to thrive on posting about what his daughter eats for lunch, so maybe this would be something worthwhile to post about.

Finally, my inner Franklin told me I should. After all, he wrote a book about his virtues. He approves.

I hope you look forward to reading about my journey to a cleaner, more streamlined house.