Knocking on heaven's door

This is turning out to be a busy week, hence the short or limited posts. Yesterday was spent prepping for the coming week, which entails two church functions, one service project, one wedding, and one birthday party in addition to the daily Bible study lessons and, you know, living.

For one of the church functions, tonight's, I'm doing both refreshments and a presentation. The former I remembered and have ready; the latter slipped my mind until this afternoon, so I fit in prepping what I was going to say as I was baking fruity oatmeal bars and making a curried chicken cheese ball (don't mess!). The cheese ball was a success, though I won't do more than taste, lactose depository that it is, but I'd had visions of my grandmother's cheese ball for some time, so I decided now was the day to make it. My mother helpfully provided the recipe, after my father wondered why in the world I wanted it. As I informed him, I have just a few untainted memories of my maternal grandmother, and most of those involve food that she made (her spinach fettucine is one of my greatest lactose laments), so we have to honor our sometimes dubious heritage where we can. The oatmeal bars were a new dish, though I messed up and doubled the recipe but only bought one can of cherry pie filling, which was definitely not enough. What to do? I improvised with some leftover strawberry freezer jam (berries, sugar, and pectin. What's not to love) and some frozen mixed berries, thawed, heated, and thickened with cornstarch. And the new and improved berry oatmeal bars are quite tasty, if I do say so myself (I had to try them. What if they were vile??). Once again, necessity and invention and all that.

Getting ready for tonight was complicated by the fact that J peeed on me not once, not twice, but THREE times today, the third time soaking the outfit I had just then put on for tonight. Granted, this kind of fountainworks hasn't happened for a long while now, so we were due, but each time he let loose today, he giggled uproariously right before, leading me to the terrible conclusion that he has learned to pee on command. And he thinks it's funny. Heaven help me!