You thought I was kidding about turning this spot into a design blog.

Well I wasn’t! I’m all a-flurry with ideas and I must get them out somewhere!

Here is the basic dimensions of our big room in the basement. I’ve dropped some furniture in there too, but it’s all up for grabs at this point.

Created with EQ3’s Room Planner:

There are 3 basic areas this room will have. TV viewing/seating area, kids play/toy area, and my sewing area. Right now I think I want 2 to be the toy area, and 3 to be the sewing area.

I’ve been collecting ideas on all three of these areas, but I’m going to try to consolidate all those thoughts right here over the next few weeks.

Starting with the kids’ play area! First off, I’ll be so glad to get their toy/play area out of our front room and downstairs. Of course, after that happens, I’ll need some furniture to GO in that front room, but let’s take this one step at a time, shall we? 🙂

So.. take a look at the #2 area. The door goes into what will someday be the bathroom, but is now just part of the concrete-floored utility room. We also plan on moving that door to the other wall at some point.. but that is in the distant future and I’m not figuring it into our current plans.
The kids need to good bit of toy storage, and what we currently have going is assorted plastic bins of various sizes and colors filled, and sitting on the lower shelves of a normal sized bookshelf. It works, but the bins stick out a bit and it’s just generally not pretty.

I’d like to get a white expedite bookcase, 2×4 cube size, laid on it’s side, with white or colored boxes/bins in each cube for toy storage.

I’d love to do something like this for the surface of the bookcase for the kids to draw and play:

Need to make sure the bookcase on it’s side would be tall enough for them. Could I attach some short legs to it? Interesting idea.

Above the bookcase, I’d like to hang some of the ikea kitchen caddy’s for storing smaller items (crayons, markers, miscelaneous lego dudes, etc.)

And then further up on the wall, some floating white shelves that would be parent-only reachable.

I love these two chairs from Ikea and know the kids would LOVE them:

2 svinga ikea chairs $60/each

OR

2 egg chairs, blue $70/each

I’m not sure how these will work. I would love to incorporate them, but I’m not sure it’s possible in that space… the door is problematic and I wouldn’t want to hang them in front of the back wall.. If you look at the floor plan, you can see how I tried to place them (i used the dimensions for the hanging chairs) on either side of the door. Of course, if I used the egg chairs, the kids could move them all over as needed. I wish that door was gone already. Anyway. Need to think on it.

RUG

Little knees on hard floor does not a happy camper make!

3×4 FLOR puzzle rug tiles (would equal approx 5′ x 6.5′ in size)
undecided on color, but probably blue or green
cost: $15.99 / tile = $192

Less fancy FLOR:

I could buy two of these prepackaged dealios from Target ($60/each for a total of $120) for the same size rug (12 tiles). I will miss the puzzle pieces though – I just LOVE THEM!

other rug ideas (cheaper)
sew 2 or 3 of these together:

Barnslig Rand, $20/each ($60 for 3)

And this just struck me… we already have a road playmat rug currently residing right in our front entry, andwhile it is on the small side, we could just put that down there in lieu of something new.. It definitely will need to go somewhere, as it is used heavily! I guess in my head, I figured that it would stay on the main level with a bin of cars. Hmmm.

I’m referencing Ikea a lot aren’t I? What can I say. It’s because it’s cheap. And easy to link. And for kids… Ikea just makes sense. Moving on…

On the back wall, I’d like to paint the bottom half(ish, maybe bottom 1/3) with magnetic black chalkboard paint

Inspiration:

and the top half a bright color. I thought at first gray would be cool, but since it’s the toy area, I’m thinking a blue or green. will depend on the other main color of the room.

Oooh, I almost forgot.. I also would like to put ceiling to floor curtains on that back wall – the one with the window (which is one of those tiny, up high basement windows, by the way). They will likely be pulled back at all times, but I think it will make a storybook sort of feel, especially to whatever the kids are drawing on the chalkboard wall. What sort of fabric for that however, I’m clueless on. I love so many fabrics, but at the same time, fabric kind of scares me. More on that later when I expound on my ideas for my crafty sewing corner.

So those are my thoughts for the toy area! Any thoughts? Would love some more ideas. In my mind, it all works together wonderuflly, but working with that floor plan was kind of a eye-opener.. Not sure it would actually work in that space, but I guess we will see. This whole thing is going to be a big work in progress for a while, since it will be put together bit by bit rather than all in one fell swoop.. For example, I think the chairs would be a good christmas present for the kids.

THOUGHTS ON WALL COLOR FOR THE ENTIRE ROOM:

Probably a brown. Not too dark, as this is a basement we’re talking about. Although if I keep the furniture light, a dark espresso might look stunning. Oh decisions! I figure that the main color will go everywhere, with 2 accent walls – The kids chalkboard wall, and the small little wall in my sewing nook. the rest will be the main color.

How beautiful is this gray featured in domino magazine???

I like this light brown – and how cool is that ceiling? I think it works so well here because of those super tall ceilings. I wonder how it would work with normal ceilings. Could use that color for the upper half of the chalkboard wall in the kid’s nook..

Also quite fancy these colors as well:

Mmmmmmm. Yes. I like that. I definitely like that.

I also need to keep in mind the green color that is through the door into james’ office.

And I also need to remember that the color will have to carry up the staircase onto the main level too. Ooooh that gray is looking better and better! I think I need to resist.

Isn’t this fun? I think so. I’m having a ball. Since I’m a decorating clueless person, any thoughts anyone wants to offer me is VERY welcome 🙂

– amy can’t figure out what her style is.

1. James finished laying the flooring in our basement. THIS IS HUGE. This project has been lingering all summer. Maybe even back into spring. There is still lots to do, like emptying out the closet and laying the flooring in there too, laying down quarter round (the trim that goes along the floor) and then of course PAINTING and picking out furniture… Notice how that one step about the furniture is the very LAST thing.. and yet when I awoke this morning, I was dreaming about where to put the kids toy nook and where to put my craft nook and what kind of rug would look best… Yeah. Me = jumping the gun a bit. Very exciting. We are going to have a few boxes of flooring left over, and I said, “It’s costco, they’ll take them back.” And James said, “Or we could do another room!” Which is tempting, and while I’m always surprised at how nice the floor looks whenever I go downstairs, I think for the rest of the house I would like to go dark. I’d love to get chocolate wood floors. (Yum!) I foresee this blog turning very design oriented in the upcoming months! Here’s the same flooring in James’ office:

   

   this is the same stage that our basement room is in now

   

   This is james’ office, looking through the door into the big basement room that now is also laid with laminate! This is the “done” picture of the office, the quarter round trim all put up. Please note, that laying floor on a diagonal like this is, in a word, INSANE. It takes SO MUCH MORE WORK. We didn’t do this for the big room. I don’t suggest you do it either.

2. Jocelyn dairy watch: She confirmed that she ate ice cream on the ride home on Friday. Saturday went ok. Sunday she woke up with a little scratchy voice and an occasional cough and sniff. I wrote it off to typical morning congestion. Her voice improved after she was up for a while, but by the end of the day her voice was getting seriously hoarse. No real coughing though, but still, I took it as a sign that she’s got some post nasal drip irritating her throat. This morning, still pretty hoarse and some minimal sniffing and coughing. I am still looking on the bright side because there is no visible snot leaking out of her nose. I hope that’s not waiting for tomorrow.

   So to sum up, I think the milk intolerance is still there, but if this is the worst it’s going to do, then it has improved quite a bit. It could still take a turn for the worse however, and I will lift my phone every time it rings the next few days with trepidation that it’s school calling because she has a fever.

3. My mixing bowl did arrive a week or so ago, and I decided to christen it in a variety of ways, one of which was making cinnamon rolls last weekend. Yum. The other of which was to make chocolate zucchini cake yesterday. Except I couldn’t find a recipe for chocolate zucchini cake so decided I’d just use the recipe for zucchini bread and toss some chocolate chips in there except that after cake bread was completely mixed and just waiting for the last minute addition of chocolate chips, I was shocked to find that there were none in the house. So now we have zucchini bread in a cake pan that tastes nothing like cake. It’s still pretty good. And now I don’t have a gargantuan zucchini on my counter anymore. yay!
4. Since I’ve been carting my mixer in and out of the cupboard above the microwave periodically lately, I’ve taken note of several items that I have and never use and therefore must go. In fact, I’ve been taking note all over the damn house. Our garage has slowly pushed our cars out of being able to park inside, and I’ve taken note of stuff there that must also go. And since our toy collection grows and I always say stuff is GOING already and then neglect to actually get rid of it and then the kids find it and it gets put back into the toy mix, that’s out of control as well. And lastly, our son has outgrown his britax Marathon carseat(!!) and I purchased him a booster this past weekend, so there’s another thing that can go. My point is, I foresee a post about how dumb people are on craigslist in the near future. Possibly more for my own benefit than yours (although if you’re in the dc metro/no va area and are interested, feel free to contact me, as the friend price is always better than the craigslist price), here is what needs to go:
   • pampered chef cheese grater
   • pampered chef apple slicer corer
   • diaper genie (hardly used, therefore no stink)
   • Britax Marathon (close to 5 years old – probably shouldn’t be used after 1 more year, freecycle?)
   • old dresser from kids’ rooms (possibly freecycle)
   • little tikes work bench
   • ball popper
   • should we get rid of one of the slides?
   • weeble wobble village
5. My son. My tiny baby boy. He is going to be in KINDERGARTEN. He has outgrown the seat we bought him when he was too big to fit in the infant carrier anymore (at FOUR MONTHS). He is going to continue at his school in their private kindergarten program, and they have a certain dress code they must adhere to. Khaki or navy pants, white, red or navy shirt. Red or navy sweatpants for PE, with red, white, or navy t-shirt to go with it. For some reason I just hate this dress code, because it seems like kindergarten is a little young to alleviate the problems dress codes/uniforms are supposed to alleviate (designer jeans and clothes envy and what not). I guess I can understand though, there is probably still envy about what another kid is wearing at that age, but still, I am somewhat irked by it, probably mostly because he has a MOUNTAIN of clothes that he’ll now not wear much and grow out of before next year.

   BUt oh well, right? I’ve tried to get behind the dress code and the school has even asked parents of past kindergarteners to donate what they dont need anymore, and offered those donations at $1 a piece. I spent a whopping $12 dollars and walked home with a pile of stuff. I finally sat down with Ethan this weekend and made him try everything on. Surprisingly, he was very adamant that nothing go back to the school to be exchanged – there were only 2 questionable items, a shirt that was too big for him, (“I’LL GROW INTO IT!”) and a pair of pants that were not only too small, but were girl’s pants (had the bootcut bottoms that you can’t avoid in girl pants nowadays) (“WELL THEY’RE MINE NOW SO THAT MAKES THEM BOYS!”)

   He was so enamored of a pair of red sweatpants and a longsleeved red polo shirt that he insisted on wearing it all weekend. “Look at me, mommy! I’m ALL RED! I’m wearing my KINDERGARTEN CLOTHES!” Cute, but annoying when we wanted to go out into the very hot and humid world and do anything. That boy loves his long sleeves and pants, he will be so happy when fall comes and he can wear them every day.

   I just can’t beleive this boy is so grown up. It’s shocking, really.

Well, that’s all I’ve got. Probably more than enough for one monday. Ethan also ran around the house taking pictures of everything with our old camera yesterday (and this morning), so I’ll try to get those downloaded and post them for tomorrow. And FLOOR PICTURES! WAHOO!!

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Today at the kids’ school, they’re having ice cream sundaes. Last year when we saw some sort of notice that that was the special friday event before it happened, and I made frozen yogurt and sent it in with Jocelyn so that she could have a sundae. This year, we didn’t see anything, but Ethan mentioned it yesterday on our way home. James and I discussed it, and decided to let her try it and see what happened.

This whole milk protein intolerance is soooo frustrating. I hope she doesn’t come down with a cold next week (which is how it usually goes when she has anything with milk.)

It’s odd the things that can trigger it vs. the things that can’t. When we went on our utah family reunion camping trip in May, I tossed in the towel and let her have hot cocoa. I was sure she was going to get sick, as hello! It’s all powdered milk and chocolate! But she was FINE! I was flabbergasted. Either she’s outgrowing the intolerance, or the process of getting the milk to a powder cocoa form alters the milk protein enough that her body didn’t go into “germ mode” and start the snot production factory up.

A lot of ice cream is made by cooking egg and milk/cream in a custard and then freezing it – cooking the milk could also alter the milk protein, so even if she doesn’t turn up sick, I’ll still probably wonder if it’s her outgrowing it, or it just wasn’t protein-y enough.

So since we decided to let her have the ice cream today, which we decided during dinner out at Friday’s last night, we decided what the hell, and got the kids ice cream sundaes for dessert. I leaned over to Jocelyn and said, “We’re going to get you a cow’s milk ice cream sundae Jocelyn, and we’ll see if your body likes it or not.” She GASPED with excitement and was soooo excited. It was pretty cute. Then, when the ice cream came, she ate all the chocolate syrup out of the dish and barely touched her ice cream (too cold!)

So she may not get sick and it also may be just because she didn’t eat any ice cream in school! 🙂 I bet she will though, she usually doesn’t have any problem with cold things.

So, yeah. Cross your fingers for us. We’ll probably know come Monday or Tuesday.

I really want to make our home beautiful and I know we need some basic things (like color on the walls, and the 1/4 done flooring in the basement finished already) but a VERY basic thing I can do without the fuss and bother of previously mentioned basic things, is artwork.

My wallpaper square arrived by the way, and is hanging, not in the guest room as I originally planned, but is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door. I figured it can live there for a bit because I love it and I’ll never see it in the guest room! The reds aren’t as red as the picture (or my monitor?) showed, it was more of an orangey red, which is fine, but I would have rather had the true christmasy red that I thought it had. Still, very happy.

So today, I decided to get another piece, and popped up my favorites list on etsy. Many of the ones I had previously marked had been sold, but this beauty hadn’t already, and after a check to make sure James liked it, it is now going to be mine! (err, ok, ours.)

Some other items seller redheather has in his shop:

I especially like that middle one. Maybe because it has a hint of Hokusai’s “Great Wave of Kanagawa”, which I adore:

Now the waiting begins! And contemplating what kind of frame it should get!

-amy

Yesterday I got to work, and the network was down. Turns out, the AC unit that solely existed to cool down our server room got fried over the weekend, and the room was up over 115 degrees.

After an hour of freecell, I headed home to work, coordinating with my boss to send me a couple of items to my personal email. I got busy and was working away on my laptop when suddenly.. my computer blacked out and rebooted itself for no reason.

Not. Good.

I tried to boot up using Last Known Good Configuration, but it got to a certain point and then showed me a variation of the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) that said something about UNMOUNTABLE BOOT DRIVE and my heart started to beat a little more rapidly.

So then I booted into IBM’s (I have a thinkpad, a T42) Rescue and Recovery do-dad. I clicked on one of the choices, something about looking at files, and my hard drive started to make this noise:

CLANK. CLANK CLANK. CLANKITY CLANK. KKKKKKLLLLLAAAAAANK!

It was scary. It was NOT a noise you want your hard drive to make. I of course had been quickly trying to recall whether I’d moved the most recent batch of photos from my hard drive to my external hard drive, and if not, whether I had deleted them off teh camera as well (pretty sure i’m in teh clear with all that stuff)

There will of course, be some losses, like my quicken file, and other stuff that I’m sure I haven’t thought of yet, but overall, I’m not too upset about the loss. I AM VERY happy that I bought that external drive last year, because if not, ALL our photos were residing on my hard drive at that time and they would have been lost (except for the inferior copies on flickr).

So after chatting it up with IBM, I should be getting a new hard drive and a set of recovery disks (yay for 3 year warrantees) today at the earliest, friday at the latest. I hope I don’t have to sign for them. I hope they will be waiting for me when I get home tonight.

There will be other losses, like software, because I know some of the software I had was the downloadable kind, and others were of the “so very very old that it’s way upgraded and they’ll make me buy a new copy” kind.

Anyway. Not a good day for computers yesterday. At least, computers that I came in contact with.

How was your Monday?

There are no spoilers to any of the books in this post. Just thought you’d like to know.

This post was part of the previous post until I decided I probably shouldn’t kill the few readers I have with much too long a post, so here is episode 2!

5 minutes after midnight, someone came on the loud speaker and warned everyone that someone had put spoiler laden flyers on all the car’s windshields. That’s when I really started to feel hot-coffee-sneeze kind of nervous.

We actually eyed everyone warily as we exited the store. I’ve heard stories of drive by from the last book, with people shouting out, “Blah dies!” as people exited with their books. How horrible would that have been! I actually felt a WHOOSH of relief when we got safely to the car.

the next day I had choir practice from 2-5. I hadn’t finished reading yet, and I was actually nervous to leave the house. Later on that week, I read about all the hubbub about the NY times and Baltimore sun reviewing the book before it was supposed to be released, and how many people were disappointed by being “spoiled.” I just don’t understand this… if you don’t want to be spoiled, you should know not to read reviews! Sure, some say that the headline looking up at them from the print version on their doorstep spoiled it for them, but don’t they know that spoilers lurk everywhere? THE TRULY DEDICATED know that just staying inside the house with the doors locked and the phone off until the book is finished is the only way to ensure that the book wouldn’t be spoiled. Ignore your children, because they might reveal if Snape is good or bad!

This is all that was running through my head as I LEFT THE HOUSE without the book finished to go to choir practice. Seriously, it’s a wonder I showed up at all, I was almost just going to skip it. Not just for the time lost in reading but the DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! factor of leaving the house with the book unfinished.

But go I did, and sit I did and read I did every moment that wasn’t spent with mouth open and sound coming out. At one point, I was immersed in the book and I heard some of the younger high school girls talking. One of them stated, “I always thought Snape was good.” and I just about THREW the book at them as I hollered, “DON’T SAY ANOTHER WORD!” It turns out that they hadn’t past the first chapter, and were just tossing out their thoughts, but damn that hot-coffee-sneeze nervousness just about put me over the edge!

James was ahead of me in reading his copy this time around. Last time, I was ahead of him, and I must say, it’s much nicer having him ahead of me. I am very vocal. I can’t help it. I ooohhhh and ahhhh and gasp and hold my breath and make “eek!” noises, it’s just the way I am! So the fact that I was reading what he already knew about made it easier on him. Not like last time when he swore at me and stalked out of the room to another part of the house.

He finished … I think Saturday night. I finished early Sunday afternoon. I didn’t rush it at all, in fact, I would often pause and put the book down and contemplate what I’d read. I even started to take notes, because i wanted so badly to have someone next to me that was on the same page I was on to say, “Oooh, did you get THAT part?” Of course, there wasn’t anyone, so I wrote it down instead.

I laughed and wept and wept and wept some more, and while there are a few little details I think could have been improved, I enjoyed the last book immensely. I love how she had so many things planned out since book 1, and little details all through the series come to play an important part in the end.

And now, there’s just this feeling of calmness.. the hot coffee is gone, the urge to sneeze has passed. After I had finished, I had this sense of invincibility. I felt strong and muscley and “No one can hurt me NOW, I HAVE FINISHED!” I hopped on the internet with brazen recklessness. I unlocked all the doors and threw open the windows. Anyone driving by tossing out spoilers is POWERLESS AGAINST ME AND MY FINISHED-NESS!

I feel good. The book was very satisfying.

Now that I think about it, kind of like how you feel after a good sneeze.

I also feel sad at the loss that coming to the end of the series means. Kind of like you feel after a good sneeze.

But most of all, when I finally finished, I felt INVINCIBLE!

Just like you do after a good sneeze.

This post doesn’t have any spoilers of the last book. Just photos and me blathering. Just FYI.

This is quite a bit after, but I suck at getting pictures off the camera, so there you go.

We had a great time. It was a time filled with nervous energy. I’m watching a movie as I write this, and a great line from it describes how we were feeling. “You know how you feel when you’re holding a cup of hot coffee and you feel a sneeze coming on.. It’s a bit like that.”

It was a LOT like that.. In the beginning, it was just kind of fun, and boring. Lots of people. Some kids, running around having fun at all the things the bookstore had set up.

the picture taking/frame making station.

hat making station

cute-slash-dumb signs posted all over the store

lots of people dressed up. Some were lame. There was more than one teenage girl that just fell under “slutty schoolgirl” rather than anything harry potter. But there were some good ones.

Moaning Myrtle (bookstore employee)

Delores Umbridge (bookstore employee)

and my absolute favorite – Rita Skeeter. She was DEAD ON. This picture doesn’t do her justice.

and then random sort of dressing up

Everything was fine… kind of boring, even, for a while. We got there at around 10:30pm, and by 10:45 we were bored and picked out magazines and settled in a corner to wait. Like many others.

I couldn’t really focus on my magazine though. I made James play some Harry Potter related games, like naming spells back and forth to see who knew the most (I did, yay for petrificus totalus!) and also Hogwarts students (he did, damn that little colin creevey).

Probably around 11:30 they started lining us up. Then the realization that it was all happening kicked in and we started getting excited.

Then they started carting out the books and the whole store cheered and whooped and freaked out and then it was really exciting.

Then we had to wait.

this is the book that was on the on the bookshelf right next to me.

When we finally got to the register at 12:21…

.. and bought our books from this nice lady (it’s blurry, but that’s the girl who sold us our books! hurrah!)

I was so excited and nervous that I forgot to also purchase the magazines I had been clutching for the past hour (but don’t worry, I went back 2 days later and paid for them.)

You know, we’ve never gone to a midnight party before. We were quite content to let amazon deliver, or just go pick up the books the next day ourselves with little fuss and bother.

But this was the last book. There won’t be anymore. I kind of wanted to go because.. and this is really cheesy, so just cringe and go with it.. because I wanted to be part of history. Now, I know we’re not talking about Shakespeare or anything, but this was the LAST BOOK! And I think they’re going to be around for a good long time. Never again will we be in that moment of not knowing how it all turns out. Never again will we roll our eyes at all the hype surrounding the latest harry potter book. This was IT.

Why not go? Why not go and get excited and jump up and down and just get all pruney with the cheesiness and the HISTORY (ha ha) of it all? We won’t have another chance, so if we want to get goofy and all over excited like a 3 year old who didn’t nap, well, THIS IS IT!

So we did!

I’m glad we went. It was FUN.

And I’ll be able to (gag, barf) show my grandchildren the pictures.

episode 2 tomorrow – me blathering

Made this real quick for Ethan’s costume for tomorrow. It’s “dress up like a story-book character” day!

I bet no one can guess what he’s going as!

It was very easy to make, took about 20 minutes, most of it just getting the size of the template right.

I used these directions.

Edit: I had linked the wrong website for the hat pattern – corrected now.

Jocelyn has some weird notions about boy vs. girl. I don’t know if that’s because we took so much time explaining everything to Ethan (who is always wy? why? why?! all the time) that we wave and say “sure” to Jocelyn. But according to her, some things are boy and some things are girl.

Let me explain a bit better.

When she is in the bathroom and has finally finished doing her business, she will pull off a length of toilet paper and then carefully wrap it around her hand before pulling it off all nice and neat and wipe.

“This is the girl way.” she informs me on occasion.

Maybe this is because she has seen her brother yank off a chunk, wad it up in a ball, stick his rear end out and wipe vigorously. Obviously, that is the boy way.

I can’t think of any other examples, but she has a couple of these boy vs. girl things that make little to no sense.

The one that took the cake though came today on our way home. We’d gone out to dinner as a family, me and the kids meeting James there, and then divided into girls in one car and boys in the other for the ride home, as Jocelyn and I stopped at Target to get her some new shoes.

“Mommy, I’m huuuuungry.”

We’d just bought some snack type stuff that I keep in the car for after school snacks. I knew she wasn’t hungry, she just wanted one of the granola bars I’d let her pick out.

“We just ate dinner honey.”
“I want a snack.”
“No, we just ate dinner, when we get home, you can have a drink. Soy milk or water.”
“SOY MILK!”

She drinks soy milk because she still has an intolerance to cow’s milk protein. If she has something with un-tampered with cow milk*, she will get really congested. Ethan had the same thing but outgrew it by the time he was about 18 months old. We’re still waiting for Jocelyn to outgrow it (cross fingers!).

So back to our conversation. she expresses her desire for a drink filled with soy milk, and then lets out this astute observation:

“When I turn into a boy, then I will drink COW MILK!”

She has let some real stunners out lately. Like how I ate her and then she was in my tumm when she was a baby. (She said that AGAIN recently, I had better buy her a simple reproductive book I think..) but damn, this one really threw me for a loop!

I tried a few tactics. Correction never works, because she will just adamantly insist that she’s right and I’m wrong. I tried to explain that it was because her body doesn’t like cow milk. and maybe someday her body will decide it DOES like cow milk, and then she can drink it, but she will still be, and ALWAYS be.. a girl.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that one sticks.

*By untampered with, I mean, uncooked, or changed in any way. Yogurt = OK. Cheese = OK. It’s because those milk proteins have been changed from their original state. But milk, or a milk based sauce (like macaroni and cheese) is no good.

… when I heard this story involving Jocelyn.

Go on over to James’ often neglected site to hear it for yourself.