Miss Sarah at the Gas Tank

I did it! I pumped my first-ever tank of gas!

What a stressful experience! First of all, the machine wouldn't accept the credit card. After fiddling with that for a while, mei daed showed me how to take the nozzle out (without pressing the trigger - that was almost my first mistake!) and press it into the tank. I was so sure it was going to come leaking out or something! The trigger made mei thumb ache, so I held it with both hands... at first with one on the cord and one on the nozzle, but then I got scared and put both on the nozzle. Then of course mei daed whips out his cell phone to take this picture; I was sure we were going to all go up in flames! (Hence the look of terror.) Fortunately, we made it, and *blush* I only screamed a little when the nozzle gave a kick to let me know the tank was full. No one ever told me it kicked!

I have two more weeks and one day of Driver's Ed left to go! Scary. Tonacht I got to practice engaging and releasing the emergency brake in the Staples parking lot. Very nerve-wracking, since the car was actually on! I also practiced putting the directional on and off. I'm going to need to get the hang of that too.

Hopefully I get less jumpy when it comes time to actually drive!!!

Public Advisement

 

Public Advisement: Don't take Advil on an empty stomach. Just don't. 

You'll be up at quarter till midnight making chicken and sodium soup from a can to soothe your aching self. 

And it will not be fun the next morning. 

Just... trust me on this one. 

Jah?

Vacation!

I've been posting a lot of videos lately, for some reason!
This one is of the first four days of the vacation we took in the Berkshire mountains. During those 4 days, known as "the Sutherland-Nelson" part of the vacation, we did a whole lot more things than I've included in this first "chapter". I still have to finish the rest of it. This is mostly just little bits and pieces of funny videos.
Enjoy!

Note: the chairs propped up against the doors were meant to keep out robbers, muggers, kidnappers, and  other such unwelcome intruders. Quite the story behind that......!

Challah

I posted mei first recipe on mei mamm's blog! Go here to see it. She's hired me to write out some of the different recipes and photograph them for her. The photos are easy, but the recipes are a bit harder... since I always just throw in whatever comes to mind!

Mei mamm has dubbed it "Sarah's Cooking Corner". Original? Maybe not. Oh well.

Shalom.

Tonight's Featherplucking theme was Jewish!

We watched a movie about Jews, broke challah, ate matzoh soup and potato knaidlach, and made this lovely reenactment of a "Bottle Dance"....

(previous video removed by request) 

Claudia-ism

Jasmin chases Claudia, who doesn't like this. The persecuted damsel runs crying to Sarah, who picks her up and tries reasoning with Jasmin. The repentant older sister switches from torturing to consoling.

Jasmin: "Claudia, think of a happy place."
Claudia: "Toys R Us!"

The cure-all: Start bawling, run to Miss Sarah (she'll take care of whatever ails thee), and think of Toys R Us!

The Feast Week of Ashley

"Once again the days of the feast of Ashley are again upon us! I must say that this years feasts came up with rather frightening speed, it seems only weeks ago since we ate last year’s feasts! Ah, but all must bow to time’s relentless march, and so it is today that again we celebrate Ashley’s birthday.

     As an invented “ancient tradition”, I have devised a week of feasts to mark this momentous time. In all seriousness, the feasts were thought up and named at a time when we were very poor, so I basically gave over-dramatic and impressive names to what ever we were eating that night and then, on Ashley’s actual birthday, let her pick out a restaurant she wanted to eat at, or meal she wanted prepared for her.
     In subsequent years I came up with a back story for this whole craziness. This text was written in a “Book of Mormon” pseudo-religious style, describing how the ancient people of Martineau came to celebrate this great week of feasts to the “Goddess of the ash tree meadow”.
      Yes, I went overboard, yes it is ludicrous, but when you are in love, you go there.
      I wanted (and still want) my wife to know that no matter how bad things get, we can afford to have fun. I want all my friends to know that I consider ANYTHING as a good reason to celebrate; life is too short to be serious about everything.
      The original feast week had two feasts devoted to the eating of meat, namely “The Feast of The Fowl of The Air” and “The Feast of The Fowl of The Land”. Now remember that these “ancient traditions” were invented a few years back, when we still ate meat. Well, as of last year’s feast we’d both given up the eating of meat, thus rendering us unable to keep the feasts.
      Well, not wanting to break tradition and at the same time wanting to conform to modern sensibilities, I did what any made-up religious leader would do in a situation like that: I invented a new revelation!
     I don’t know if there still exists a copy of the original Feast week text, but I do have a copy of the “new revelation”.
     Another tradition I made up to commemorate this festival is to read from the text on the first day of the feasts and then announce the day’s feast on each of the following days until the feast of Ashley (on the 16th).
     So here follows the text of the most recent “revelation” regarding the Feast Week of Ashley." 

             - Brian Lawrence Martineau

Martineau Muppet Movie: The Feast Week of Ashley from Ashley Martineau on Vimeo.