Piddler at Heart: An oatmeal kind of morning

A day made for piddling around the house.

The boys are on a snow day. Late morning, Logan and I worked on his science fair project. It's about subliminal messages; he inserted messages into music (yel-low, yel-low, yel-low) and tried to influence folks' color choice. But it had no effect - nada - compared to his control group. But his display for the science fair looks great and is full of good info. We even added a subliminal message to the display - some of the stickers are small blue ribbons that say "First Place." There's a sign at the end that asks, "Did you see the subliminal messages in this display?" Tim was the first one who looked at it and he didn't notice the blue ribbons at all. We were happy. We put them there so they stuck out like fireworks to us. (We hope the judges have a sense of humor.)

Logan with his Science Fair Project

Before the boys got up, my morning went like this:

9:00 ish - Roll out and get started piddling. Mornings are the best piddling time.
9:02 ish - Let Trixie out. She and I are morning bums.
9:03 ish - Let Trixie in. She does not do inclement weather. Fastest pottier in the land.
9:05 - clean the litter box.
9:10 - feed the critters - Trixie and the five cats.
9:12 - fold clothes in dryer. Move clothes from washer to dryer. Start 'nother load of laundry.
9:20 - check e-mail and respond as needed. This morning it was to a bag customer, setting up a meeting for next Wednesday. We will be showing him a mock-up of a new bag.

Also made morning calls to the Bag Co., my faithful employer. I always talk to Tom. I should admit that I'm a sales rep., for said Bag Co. I have these customers, see, mostly feed mills, and they need bags, lots of bags, for horse feed and cattle feed and sheep feed etc. So they call me. And I put their orders in, and I call Tom a dozen times a day and say, Hey, how about that order for so and so....he checks into it, calls me back, then I call them back -"Yeah, Charlie, those horse bags should deliver by Friday."

In between all these calls, I piddle.

I have to get those calls out of the way so that by 10 a.m. I am ready to start in on cleaning the kitchen. The kitchen needs cleaned at 10 a.m. because that is the time that the Diane Rehm show is on my local NPR station. Diane Rehm is my idol. Oh that I could be so wise as her. Her show is my Adult Current Events Education. You can check out the show at www.npr.org.

Sometime in between the laundry and Diane Rehm, I fixed myself oatmeal for breakfast. I had heavy cream in the fridge and it was calling my name. The stuff is addictive. Plus it was snowing/sleeting/raining. Cold and icy outside, warm and cozy inside. So it was an oatmeal morning. Oatmeal needs to be the old-fashioned kind. This is what it says right on the round box - "Old-fashioned". What this means is that the oats have not been ground up into little pieces. They are oats, like what a horse eats. And they don't take any longer to cook than the ground up "quick" oats. And they are so much more satisfying (in cookies, too).

Old-fashioned Oatmeal

Take a micro-wave safe bowl, put in about 3/4 cup water (for one serving). Put in microwave for about two minutes until it begins to boil. Use hot pads to remove bowl from microwave to counter. Pour in oats a bit at a time until the water is almost full of oats (they will expand a little to soak up the rest of the water). Loosely cover bowl and place back in microwave for 20 to 30 seconds. Remove, stir. Add in, to taste, some brown sugar, a dab of vanilla, a generous sprinkle of cinnamon, and if you happen to have it on hand, pour in several glugs of heavy whipping cream. (Or half-&-half or milk.) Stir all, adjust to taste.

It's even better eaten standing at a window of a warm, cozy house watching it snow and blow outside, with a Trixie at your feet.