{"id":483,"date":"2009-08-01T09:34:14","date_gmt":"2009-08-01T16:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=483"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:34:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T17:34:46","slug":"menfolk-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"Menfolk alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The following is an excerpt (with commentary by me in parenthesis) of an email from the home front while I was away at the convention.<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #000080;\">Dinner was a hit. We had sausage on a stick, fresh off the charcoal grill <span style=\"color: #000000;\">(read here Hibachi<\/span>). \u00a0Also the Rice Pilaf, found in your mother\u2019s pantry. I owe her a box of Trader Joe\u2019s Rice Pilaf. We had corn, salad, and baked beans. Conor struggled to taste the Rice Pilaf, but Evan encouraged him and he ate a full serving.\u00a0 The corn and beans were warmed with 100% solar power. I put the cans on the bricks out back and they warmed to serving temperature.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u00a0\u00a0 We went over your wish list of chores. <span style=\"color: #000000;\">(which was vacuum, clean toilets, wash my car,\u00a0etc.)<\/span> \u00a0Evan decided he wanted to fill the water slide. <span style=\"color: #000000;\">(a giant vinyl contraption that with the attached air blower, blew up into a slide you could hook water to and it would spray out&#8230; my fight against renting a bouncy for B-day parties.)<\/span>\u00a0I was busy tending the fire, so Evan decided to set it up himself. He\u2019s certainly learning self reliance at Webelos Camp <span style=\"color: #000000;\">(cub scouts).<\/span> He dragged out the slide with a little help from Conor. He set up the blower and filled the water weights. He turned on the blower and it promptly blew the air sleeve across the yard, along with the plastic bag he put on the blower to keep water off. That\u2019s when I was asked to help. I wrapped a bungee cord around the air sleeve <span style=\"color: #000000;\">(must not have noticed the ties at the end of said sleeve for this function)<\/span> to keep it attached to the bungee. We tried again. The water slide has this big hole along the slide, and the huge hole in the bottom. It tried hard to fill, but nothing happened. Conor voted to buy a new water slide.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">My husband&#8217;s family motto&#8230; there&#8217;s a hard way to do everything.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is an excerpt (with commentary by me in parenthesis) of an email from the home front while I was away at the convention.\u00a0 \u00a0 Dinner was a hit. We had sausage on a stick, fresh off the charcoal &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=483\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-joy-of-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}