kerTHUNK

A friend, Mandy, came over today to borrow my wheat grinder (and my trampoline). She has an adorable set of toddler-sized twins, plus a 1 month old little boy. The toddlers are going a little stir-crazy at home while their brother constantly naps, so we thought we would let the twins burn off some energy on the trampoline. While they did that, Mandy and I got to work in the kitchen grinding up a few bags-worth of wheat for Mandy to stick in the freezer. (My electric mill does a little finer job than her hand-crank mill, and when you're making homemade whole wheat bread...it makes a difference.)

Usually, this would be a super simple task. Plug the grinder in, load the hopper, empty the resulting flour, repeat. Today, though, nothing was seeming to go right. The kitchen was spotless, the cleaners having just left two hours before, so maybe that highlighted the mess we were making. We plugged in the grinder. We loaded the wheat. We...well, nothing. Nothing was happening. Not a grain of wheat was getting ground up! Quickly, I scooped the wheat out of the hopper. I got it as empty as I could, and then sort of thumped the side of the machine to get the last little bit of wheat through the mechanisms. Baffled, I took off the flour bucket. It seemed fine. Mandy took the machine portion over to the sink to try to shake loose any grains that might have become jammed inside. She turned it upside down, gave it a little shake, and then righted it again. As she did, we both heard a *THUNK* from inside the mechanism. We looked at each other. "Uhh...that didn't sound good." She turned it upside down again, and gave it a few good whacks. *kerTHUNK* She held up something small and white in her hand. "Uhh...LoLo?"

Let it now be known, and published across the lands - homemade breathmint flour will have to remain, for now, a pipe dream. 

(The mill is kept just below a box of snacks. When Ming Wai was digging through it yesterday, looking for a box of TicTacs, she must have dropped a mint...which landed squarely in the hopper of the mill and funneled down inside. Somehow it blocked the wheat from getting in to the grinder. Oh well - no harm, no foul, eh?) 

In other news, I found this tiny, rubber (Squinky) dragon in the kitchen. He was posted about an inch and a half from the baseboard at the back of the room. Somehow, the absurdity of it made me laugh. Like a tiny watch dog, intently guarding a room from intruders...by facing the back wall and ignoring the entrance. Silly guard dragon. Good luck catching your tiny baddies.