Scenes from Saturday + Cheese Board Games

There are certain things a parent should be expected to pass on to their kids. Team allegiances. Curiosity. Respect. Proper flash card study habits. Lawrence Welk on lazy Sunday afternoons. An irrational love of Prince. The basic underpinnings of a happy life.

Parents should be careful however, not to pass on their fears. Fear is the killer of inquisitiveness. Kids are largely innocent. For better or worse, they just don’t know. Fear colors that curiosity with something darker. I might be afraid of heights. Or small spaces. Or pre-teen Disney stars. But that’s me, not them.

Cecilia survived jazz improv camp. She even let it slip she might go next year. I played trumpet for eight years and never soloed. I might have been afraid, but she’s not.

I was prepared for Saturday to be a bottle episode where we were all stuck inside playing endless games of Uno until my mind broke and I was seeing Draw Fours when I closed my eyes. But after a blustery start, it was mostly dry and eventually even sunny.

Ally started the day on the Cape couch with Dash on his perch pretending he is a lazy tom cat.

Despite not remembering my sneakers, we hit up the little gym for a morning workout (I wore very old golf shoes).

My Cape gym nemesis was there. She does not approve of my sweating. I do not approve of her profuse use of the elliptical machine.

Then the power went out. She had to leave. We kept lifting. Problem solved.

The Cape in the rain is sort of like visiting Disney in the rain. You do what you can. The girls are getting a little too old for us hyping up walking the beach in the drizzle.

The Uno seal was broken early.

Signs that someone in the Xfinity user experience department did some testing: Poppy was able to swap out his modem and get the network back up without my help. That’s real progress.

Before lunch we discovered a looming holiday weekend crisis that had to be addressed…

We attempted to break out of the Uno rut and play Yahtzee but it turns out none of the adults remembered how to actually play. No problem. We had the directions. Eight pages of them! There were more rules than cribbage.

We went back to Uno.

In case you were in doubt about where Ally’s showmanship genes come from there was an impromptu living room, mother-daughter dance number.

Grammie picked cacio e pepe for her birthday dinner. Sort of. She decided she wanted it with linguine and shrimp. Not exactly traditional but you get what you want on your birthday.

I’m never going to duplicate this (very deceptively) simple pasta dish like they make in Rome but I’m getting better at it. It can be very frustrating for home cooks to try to make this 3-ingredient dish and not end up with a gloppy mess.

I’ve tried numerous recipes. My best advice/trick, is to make the cheese sauce separate and use cold water to bind it, then toss it with the hot drained pasta so it melts/loosens on the noodles, not in the pot.