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From a few days ago, this is the faux fondue we made for fun. Faux because we just melted the chocolate in the microwave. We're not winning any cooking contest shows here.
It was fun all the same.
I used to have a fancy fondue pot with the fancy forks, all having a different colored knob on the end. This was for use when we could still see people in person and not just on a screen. Back in the olden days.
That lovely, red fondue pot eventually suffered the fate of all the lovely, unused gadgets in my kitchen. It went on to another adoptive home, or--horrors!--the trash.
Now that I have a daughter who loves the fuss of fondue, we might get another one for a quarter at the next used junk sale that pops up.
For faux fondue, though, we used fancy toothpicks instead of fancy forques for stabbing the helpless morsels before twirling them through the liquid chocolate sea. Toothpicks means the food just spins on the end.
Even with subpar means, we had a fun time loaded with lots of sugar. Kara and her friend decorated their tasty morsels with little faces.
We dipped pretzels, mini marshmallows, maraschino cherries, and raspberries into white and milk chocolate.
All of this was just in participation of Sugar Sports 2020 that lasts between Thanksgiving to the last stale cookie after New Year's Day.
The dishes haven't hopped into the dishwasher yet. For that matter, the clean dishes from the dishwasher haven't hopped into their respective cabinets yet.
The broom hasn't swept the floor. The clean laundry hasn't folded itself and put itself away.
I'm still training my house. Have a long way to go.
Seriously, though, if I could have any superpower, it would be the snap Mary Poppins has. Or I secretly wish for my house to whip itself into shape during my beauty sleep of the night.
Not happening, though. The beauty sleep or the magic cleaning.
Nothing happens by just sitting here talking about it; I actually have to overcome inertia and force order upon the chaos.
And as a side note, I'm trying to recall the exact process by which my children escaped helping with the mess. I remember pulling the same stunts when I was a kid, though we still had to do the work, just with more complaining, more fussiness, and more wishing for when we could be adults and only do exactly what we wanted to do.
Adults always could do whatever they wanted and could spend whatever they wanted on anything.
Then I grew up.
Turns out adults have responsibilities to keep the household running, and that doesn't happen without income coming into the house. So, go to work all day, spend what's left of it managing the home messes and child-rearing, then sleep about 1/2 the required amount, and get up to do it again.
(I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay. Ain't it sad?... ABBA song there that frequently comes to mind.)
That sounds depressing as I reread it, but that's not my intention. It's just the way life is as a matter of function.
As a matter of happiness, the whole day is filled with opportunities to see the sunshine, choose a good attitude, and appreciate all the people and gifts in our lives, family first.
So life is beautiful.