All right,

so clearly I suck at this blog thing. It's not that I don't have anything to say, I just don't have a damn minute left to do this. I'm still going to keep pushing this boulder up the hill, though, 'cause maybe one day I'll get the hang of it or something. I continue to be an optimistic, overambitious moron. After all, I had an entire daughter in the time between now and the last time I blogged. A WHOLE ENTIRE CHILD. Named Sofia. Who is beautiful, and chubby, and healthy, and the best early Christmas present I could ever have gotten. Maybe I'll get into that in another post- the whole delivery experience, which was rather insane- or maybe not. Let's just say I spent a lot of time in the hospital bawling, and focus on the good, positive vibes for now.

It's New Year's Eve. I'm feeling hopeful and blessed. I'm also putting off doing housework right now 'cause I just nursed Fia again and don't feel like getting up off the couch yet. I kinda want a snack but don't know what I'm hungry for yet, so I'll get up when I figure that out.

I'm so lucky. Evie doesn't resent Sofia at all. I thought she might because, well, Evie is WAY into me. And it's been the Evie Show now for the last 2 1/2 years, and she is 2 1/2, which is kind of an "all-about-me" age, so I'm yet again impressed with my kid. They really do surprise you, don't they. If anything, I'm most worried about Evie loving Sofia to death. It's like that Looney Tunes cartoon with the giant abominable snowman who finds Marvin the Martian and decides to "hug him, and squeeze him, and love him and name him George." (I know I'm getting that quote wrong, but you get the idea.) Evie just loves her sister. She wants to pick her up, feed her, change her, carry her around, hug her, pat her, burp her, everything. Unfortunately, she's 2 1/2 and has no concept of the delicate structure of a 6-week-old baby, so she gets very frustrated with me when I don't allow her to do any of these things. But she is an amazing helper, and she loves to give kisses and is very proud of her sister when I bring her to daycare to pick up Evie at the end of the day.

We kept Evie in daycare for three days a week while I was out on leave. I go back on Monday. Kinda dreading it, kinda not, actually. It's not that I want to go back, or that I even feel that I'm really missed (other than by the woman who's filling in for me while I'm out), but I don't have the choice not to work. Being out for 6 weeks isn't nearly as great as being out for 12 weeks, for sure. But it actually might be easier to deal with the return not having been out as long. Being out for 3 whole months, when I went back, I cried. I cried a lot. I hated it, and I hated the financial and life situation that made it impossible for me to stay home with Evie full time. So I really hated my husbeast, especially since he was on tour at the time, having an awesome rockstar adventure while I went to work in the cubicle farm all day and then picked up my daughter from daycare and went home alone to do the mommy thing.

But you know what? In the end, it was OK. I'd still love to stay home with the girls and do the mommy thing, but I think I'd have to do it part-time, rather than full-time. First of all, we'll never be able to afford for me to stay home full time. Even when Matt's job is going great, there are still rough patches where there just aren't any shows. He really does take any job he can, and it's becoming increasingly rare for him to have enough downtime to be able to even collect unemployment. By the time he's been out long enough to file, he's able to pick up a gig. Still, given even that, it doesn't bring in enough to support a family of 4 as the solitary income. No matter how frugal we could be.

Then there's the benefit of daycare. I had such reservations about sending Evie to daycare before she was born, and maybe I just lucked out because the place that she goes to has been wonderful for her. She's learned so much, and she trusts the women who work there, and is mostly OK with me leaving her there every morning. We have our separation anxiety mornings, but hell- sometimes I don't wanna leave her just as much as she doesn't wanna leave me. You just have a day like that sometimes, where you just want to stay home in your jammie pants and watch TV and snuggle on the couch. But she has little friends she talks about, and they sing songs and learn colors and table manners and all those little things that you learn every day that I don't know if I'd have been able to teach her quite as well as they have. It's a huge portion of my paycheck, though, so with two little ones going full-time starting Monday, I don't know how long we'll be able to afford it. Some big decisions are going to have to be made this year - we probably only have about 6 months before this really becomes a financial burden.

But then, there's just me. I don't know if my brain would survive not doing something non-child-related. I love my daughters, and every day that I've been home has been a gift. But even when we're snuggled on the couch, Fia nursing contentedly on one side and Evie cuddled into the crook of my arm on the other, my brain needs stimulation. Often I have the laptop open to read the news, or Ravelry, or people's blogs, or just something to entertain me besides the Goodnight Show on Sprout. I need the challenge of learning, I need problem-solving stimulation. I do puzzles to fall asleep, or math problems in my head, or alphabetical lists by subject (cities in PA from A to Z, or world capitals, or rock bands of the 90's...) The only thing I've missed in the last 6 weeks of getting my mommy-of-two legs is mental exercise. I'm getting physical exercise (lifting two kids constantly, chasing a maniacal toddler, etc), emotional exercise (not screaming at Evie for doing 2-year-old things is taking a lot of fortitude, or sleeping only 3 hours at a time, or not crying when Fia needs to eat yet again, even though she's nursed so often in the past 3 days that my nipples feel like they're going to fall off), but my brain feels like it's going into atrophy. The credit-based reimbursement shenanigans that await me upon my return to work will certainly provide that challenge. If I was home full-time, I would probably need to teach myself Mandarin or welding or string theory or something.

So I have mixed feelings. Mostly I wish I could have the life that would allow me to stay home, yet still do something mentally nutritious- design knitwear, or learn glassblowing, or teach yoga or something. But right now, I don't see me having time to read a novel, let alone learn a new career path. So it's back to the cube farm for me, for now. For my girls' sake, for my family's sake. For the health insurance, for a steady paycheck. I'm lucky to have a job- lots of people don't. I have a nice house, a healthy family, and all my loved ones are close and healthy. So that's my prayer for this year- status quo. That things can only improve, and that none of me and mine have any heartbreak, setbacks, or letdowns in 2010. Onward and upward.

Renewal

OK, gonna try again. It's getting to be summer here, and I'm feeling a new surge of ambition and productivity. I think in the winter I get the lazies, and just really want to hunker down in my house and wait out the cold. Now that it's getting warmer and the days are longer, I find myself getting excited about new projects, trying new things, just getting out there and doing stuff.


I've been investigating food storage- canning, freezing, once-a-month cooking. I think part of it is this new economical turn that we've been taking as a society- reducing the costs of everyday living while still trying to live well. The husbeast and I have been doing this for years, but it's only recently that we find ourselves with adequate space in our house to do it more efficiently. Tip? Side-by-side freezer/fridges are useless for this venture. They hold nothing. They look cool as hell, but they are USELESS. Currently we save what we can in our skinny-ass freezer, but every time you open the door, things come cascading out on you in a frozen food avalanche. I'd like to start buying what's on sale, storing it and then cooking from it when money gets tight (and it will, 'cause it always does), but we've only been able to do so much with our limited capacity. I have been saving up for a freezer chest so I can start really storing things.

So where would this freezer go? Hopefully in my basement where the washer and dryer currently reside. We've been remodeling our mudroom to be an actually functioning room and not just a lean-to filled with insulation and random crap. One side will be a laundry area and the other? ANOTHER BATHROOM!!! HUZZAH!!! We seriously require another bathroom now that the husbeast has been getting early-morning gigs. Also, we have a potty-trainer now (another HUZZAH! for that) and hauling ass up the stairs to get her to the loo before we have an accident is going to just get harder and harder. All the structural work is done, thanks to my husband, father-in-law, and rockstar good friend who was a finish carpenter for years before she settled down in the insurance world. This past fall, they knocked down the existing structure (kept the roof on it, which was in pretty good shape), rebuilt the foundation (part of it was being held up by a rusty metal pitchfork, no lie) and framed and walled it all in. Husbeast ran the electrical, and now we're just waiting for the stars (or, in our case, the money and time) to line up so we can get a plumber in there to run the pipes. Hopefully that happens soon...

...because I'm pregnant again. Not an entirely horrifying turn of events, in fact, we're now quite happy about it. I did freak right out when we discovered this, mostly because of the money. We're living pretty close to the edge now as it is, and weren't really planning on having another kid until we were in a more financially stable position. But hey, who doesn't say that about nearly every big step, right? I said it before we bought our house. I said it again before we started trying to have Boogie. I was in the middle of saying it when we were contemplating buying a 4-door car. And I'm saying it now, even though I'm not only OK with having another child, but actually getting pretty excited about the fun part of pregnancy starting soon. I'm only at the 14-week mark, so only a little preggo belly and hip discomfort so far, none of the really cool moving around and seeing what gender it is yet. Financially, it is going to be a challenge. Especially right now, the way things are going with the economy (or should I say, "THE ECONOMY," as it's often referred to in "THE MEDIA" as some sort of independently sentient being that demands the attention of all). But it can't be any worse than when the husbeast came back from tour and had to re-establish himself with this area's entertainment companies in order to start getting gigs again, or when we first bought the house and had to take on a tenant to help make ends meet. It's probably why I'm all about yard sales, and home gardening, canning, once-a-month cooking and deep-freezing items bought in bulk right now. Everybody's kinda freaking out right now, right? We're no different, unless we let it get us down and keep us from surviving. Now husbeast and I have not one, but two little people depending on us. But if you hear me start talking about building a bunker in the basement to protect us from the mayhem of an eventual financial collapse, please feel free to sit me down and re-introduce me to reality.

It ain't all bad, it's actually pretty great. That last paragraph sounded bleak as hell, and really, I don't feel that way. It's just that whenever I find myself in a new obsession, I like to try and figure out what spurred it. When I was a kid, my mom did lots of canning and freezing-- tomatoes, strawberry preserves (the most awesome ones ever), sweet corn. I still have flashbacks of sweating in our kitchen, slicing corn off the cob to put in freezer bags, stealing some of the blocks of corn kernels that got stuck together, which tasted so sweet and good because they were only just a little bit cooked (blanched, really) and still had a bit of the starchiness in them. One year she tried pickles, both the dill kind and bread and butter pickles. I think she even did beets once. We had a pantry in the basement filled with all these goodies, and even to my trivial childlike mind, I used to think it was pretty cool to have this stuff in the middle of a dreary Maryland February when nothing was fresh. I want to do that. I want to have our sour cherries in December when the tree's been bare for months already. I want to start making our tomato sauce with tomatoes I peeled and canned in the fall. They have a warmth to them that even a few months in a canning jar can't quite take away. When Boogie says, "pi-kul, mommy!" I want it to be one of the pickles we pickled together on a warm early fall day (or maybe even early summer, if I can gather up enough pickle jars). I want to be the one who gives away jars of preserves and bottles of homemade hooch for Christmas (we did that one year, made cherry liqueur from the cherries on our cherry tree).

Maybe it's 'cause I'm crafty. Maybe it's 'cause that's how I was raised. Maybe I'm just insane and overly ambitious to think that ANY of this is going to happen given my current to-do-list overload. Who cares? I want to do it. Let's see if I can.

OK, I promised food, so here.

I am sick of our food again. We are eating at home every night, because it's cheaper and because I don't want Boogie thinking that restaurant dining is a normal part of her week. It should be a special-occasion type of thing, not something we do all the time. Luckily she's been to enough of them that she is mostly inclined to behave herself. We don't go to fine dining restaurants, even if we could afford it, but we do stick to the types of chain restaurants and local places where there is the reasonable expectation that kids might be there and they might get a little rowdy. But lately we've been strictly eating at home, and eating homemade food, so we're starting to fall into a rut. Pasta, red meat one night, chicken or pork another night, meatloaf or some other ground-beef dinner (it was tacos this week), something a little different once or twice, then pizza. I always know we've hit the wall when we give up and order pizza.

So I'm sitting here thinking about what we can have that would be a little different, while also being somewhat affordable and quick to prepare, and I have decided on Teriyaki Beef. It's just as easy to make the teriyaki sauce as it is to buy it, and you can have the ingredients on hand in large quantities so you can vary the taste according to your preference. Teriyaki sauce is just soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, mirin (Japanese rice wine, or you could use sherry, which is what I do) and ginger, and it's easy to find recipes for the proper quantities on the internet. My recipe comes from a book called Substituting Ingredients- An A to Z Kitchen Reference, by Becky Sue Epstein & Hilary D. Klein. This book has been priceless to me- I bought it on a whim when I first moved out on my own, and it is just... people, I love this book. It's an alphabetical list of ingredients both exotic and commonplace, and the ingredients you can use to substitute if you don't have something or if it's something so specific that you just don't want to buy a lot of it. Like, say you for some reason ran out of ketchup. Look up ketchup and it lists all the different things you can use instead to achieve the same taste. Or if a recipe calls for something you don't have in your spice cupboard and you don't want to buy a quantity of it 'cause you're not sure when you're going to use it again. Look it up and chances are good there will be a substitution involving more common ingredients you have on hand. I don't usually gush about cookbooks to people-- I collect them rabidly and read them like novels, but it's not something I babble on about to others-- but this one is gold, people. Seriously go out and buy this book if you can find it.

But I digress. At length. I use their recipe for teriyaki sauce, which I will share with you when I have access to the book. The neat thing about making your own sauce, to me, is that depending on your choice of protein you can vary the quantities of the ingredients. I'm making beef tonight so I want a heavier flavor-- thus, more soy sauce. If I were doing chicken, seafood or tofu, I might put less soy sauce and more mirin and vinegar for a lighter flavor that doesn't overpower the food. For pork, maybe more ginger than I would put with other proteins just because ginger and pork go so well together, and I might add some citrus juice instead of the vinegar. It isn't the true Japanese way, obviously, but I'm not striving for authenticity here, just good tasting food.

A tip about ginger if you haven't heard it before. If you like to use fresh ginger but don't use it a lot, there are two ways to store it long-term. The first involves sherry and the refrigerator. When you're putting the ginger away, put it into a non-porous container (like a glass jar) and pour in enough cooking sherry just to cover. Store it in the fridge and you can save it for another day, up to a month. If you need to store it longer, put it in a zippered bag in the freezer and squeeze all the air out. When you need to use it just chop off what you need and put the rest back. I do this and the ginger is usually good for about 6 to 8 weeks before it gets all freezer-burny and dull-tasting. Fresh is always best, but wasting perfectly good food is never a good idea.

The preparation is really simple here. Put together the ingredients for the teriyaki marinade and slice your protein thinly. I am going to use a flank steak, cut across the grain into thin slices. Place the meat or tofu in a zippered bag, add your marinade and let it soak until the rest of your ingredients are prepped. I happen to have leftover white rice, so to perk it up before I serve it I'll be placing it in a big serving bowl, covering it with a wet paper towel and putting it in the microwave for one minute. Then I'll just leave it there til I'm ready to serve dinner.

The rest of the ingredients: Broccoli, garlic and scallions. The broccoli will be cut up into bite-size chunks, garlic will be minced and scallions sliced into thin ribbons. I've been watching Kylie Kwong lately and I like the way she chops things. Rather than slicing the scallions into rings, I will cut on the diagonal so the pieces are bigger but still thin-- more scallion in a bite. And pretty. Common stir-fry instructions state to cut up all your components and have them prepped before you cook. Do this. It's worth it just for not having to scramble while you're cooking, and you get to play Cooking Show Host while you make your dinner. But don't narrate unless someone's actually in the kitchen with you. Otherwise you look like a dork.

When you're ready, heat up your wok and drizzle some oil in it. Use a light oil- no need for the olive here unless that's what you've got on hand. Canola oil or another flavorless oil work wonderfully. Add the garlic and scallions and stir to release their flavor into the oil. Take the meat from the marinade- put the meat in the wok and the marinade in a separate saucepan to cook. You need to cook it to lose the chance there might be bacteria from the raw meat (not likely, but who takes chances with that?) and also so you can thicken it. Stir-fry the meat, add the broccoli and any other veggies you want- sometimes I add carrots or snow peas if I have them. Meanwhile, mix together a teaspoon of corn starch in enough water to make a slurry, and add it to your teriyaki marinade in the saucepan. Stir until thickened and pour the whole thing over the meat and veggies in the wok. Stir to coat evenly, then cover and let it steam until the broccoli is tender.

Go back to your rice in the nuker. Toss it with a fork, replace the wet paper towel on top and re-nuke up to a minute if necessary.

There you go! Tasty teriyaki dinner for me, and a recipe for you.

Have a special weekend!

Gettin' There...

Almost done with the poncho, and having looked at the yarn I believe it might have been a discontinued colorway or one that didn't come out as planned. It's not a perfect match to either Orchid or Peppermint Stick. It almost looks like Rhubarb... who cares- it's pink, it's fluffy, and it's almost done!

I need to have a finishing party. I've completed a Haiku cardigan and a Sunflower Dress for Boogie, and now her poncho, and they'll all need the finishing touches applied. The sunflower dress is made in Kraemer's Little Lehigh Pebbles, and needs blocking and some buttons. I got some little sunflower buttons, so my child will look like a minion from the Land of Precious. The cardigan needs blocking, assembly and buttons, so it's a little less done than the other stuff, and the poncho might just need a little steam blocking since I used stockinette stitch instead of the garter stitch that was recommended in the pattern. Kinda feel like putting ribbons through the eyelet increases for the arms, but it might be too much... or Boogie might eat them. Probably best not to.

Then I can get started on the earflap hat for my boss's nephew. I found a few patterns on Ravelry for them, and can begin the Frankenstein process of cobbling together parts that work to make the hat. My main concern is that it's for an 8-year-old boy, and he wants a Steelers color motif, so I want to make it fit the specs without being dorky. I think it should only take a little bit of time to make... hopefully maybe a week if I can get the time to do it.

We're getting the household routine down, too, and I have actually remembered to take my multivitamin and drink a glass of OJ every morning for the past two weeks. I'm feeling a bit more energetic, and having a neater house is kinda cool-- looking around surveying a shithole of a house is kind of a downer. After a while you just sort of look at the mess and say, "Screw it, I'll clean and it'll just be messy again, so why waste the time?" I think it might be the same deal with your body, too, at least I'm noticing it in my case. I've been trying to take better care of myself- eat better food, get more sleep, make a bit more of an effort to look nice when I get ready for work. I'm not a total style superstar or anything but I'm at least trying to do something with my hair besides put it in a ponytail, maybe put a little makeup on, accessorize. And I never would have believed it for myself, but I actually do feel a little perkier these days, even if I still crash out on the couch by 10 every night. At least nowadays it's not 9 at night, after an evening of running around and feeling like shit. It's a start...

OK, so I promised kitchen adventures and have so far not delivered. We haven't done anything adventurous lately. I am making cinnamon buns this weekend for my inlaws' visit, so how about tomorrow we tackle those? Not exactly in line with my whole self-improvement kick, but nobody says you have to eat the whole batch, right?

P-p-p-p-poncho!

So I'm makin' a poncho for Boogie, and I have to get it done soon. I'm using Kraemer Yarns' Bear Creek in what I believe is their Orchid colorway. Either that or it's Peppermint Stick, but it's not quite exactly that either. See, I live very close to their yarn shop, which is just so lovely, and they have bins filled with bargain yarn that I shop religiously. I also buy their regularly priced yarn, but I always troll the bargain bins when I am just coveting yarn but not sure what I'm-a do with it. Then it'll sit in my stash until I figure out what it needs to be. Originally I made a comically long scarf with it, figuring that it would be something bulky and cozy for our increasingly cold winters (whatup, global warming!). I cast on a ton of stitches using my size 15 circulars. I don't even know how many, it was probably around 100 or 150, just long enough that I could work the scarf longways, and just randomly started knitting. After two garter stitch ridges (4 knit rows) I did a yo, k1 row, then two more garter stitch ridges, then bound off. I share the pattern here basically because it did come out rather cute, but just way too long on my 5'2" frame. It was like, all scarf with a head perched on top. Too bulky.

But Boogie LOVED the scarf! She's 18 months old, and loves to play dress-up with stuff she finds around the house. My gardening hat, DH's big old shoes, the scarf and her musical learning purse, and she's all ready to go. The scarf, however, made me nervous as hell. She could trip over something on the floor, it could get caught on something, and she'd choke herself. Not good, obviously, but she loved loved loved the scarf! So I frogged the scarf and I am making her a poncho. It will be perfect for the late winter-early spring time frame, and if I knit it a little big, it might even take her into the summer- though the yarn is really bulky and warm (Kraemer describes it as being like knitting with roving, just a little better contained because it's wrapped round with a nylon thread to keep it together), it will be good if there are chilly summer nights, and she might be able to wear it even into late fall.

I'm using the Poncho Recipe from Knitlist. It is the world's most simple pattern, and since I'm not sure about the whole copywrong issue (and wouldn't want a dollipede attack at any time) I'm-a just link it so you can click. And when I am done, a picture of the Booginator will be posted. I have modified the pattern slightly. Rather than duplicate garter stitch by doing alternating knit-purl rows on the circs, I am just knitting each row. The colors in my Bear Creek are so pretty, and the yarn is already so nubbly, I just want to show it off with the simplest stitch possible. Also, the increase for the poncho is really pretty and should leave a neat little eyelet row down the front center and back center, as well as the two sides. I already know she'll be sticking her fingers through the eyelets on the arm sides, because she does that with her blankie already. When I get to the bottom of the poncho I want to include a bead row- since I will be at the end of the skein by then, I can just string the beads on from that end. I have to go bead shopping, but I'm looking for something that's wooden, a little glossy, and perhaps something in the pinky-brown range. Or not. Something entirely different might catch my eye. I need to leave enough yarn to do one bead row, and then I think perhaps 2 or 3 rows of seed stitch or garter. I forget how many rows of ribbing are at the neckline, but I think it should mirror that.

How do I know she's gonna love it? Well, I have no set plan on how long this poncho can be, it just needs to be "long enough." So every little while when I'm knitting it I have been slipping it over her head to see how long it is, before I start finishing it. Not to be Braggy Mommy or anything, but she's so damn cute when you put the poncho over her head. She starts wiggling back and forth and swooshing her shoulders around, and goes, "Lalalalalala" and tries to take off with it. Which I can't let her do right now since it's still attached to my knitting bag. Plus, the pointy needles. Toddler + pointy needles = trip to St. Luke's.

So that's why I gotta finish it- she needs it because I need to see her in it. Plus, I want to knit two baby blankets for some impending babies, an earflap hat for my boss's nephew (he wants Steelers, and I just need to find the right type of pattern to muck about with), and the Divi Toddler Hoodie from Caron with some Little Lehigh Pebbles I picked up at Kraemer. And the hat I'm making for myself ("Guinan," from Ravelry), the Monkey Socks I started before the holidays, and the diamond-square afghan I'm working on when I don't feel like working on other stuff.

Crap, I have a lot to do.

Bein' and Doin'!

Ah, my pretty, I haven't forgotten you... and I haven't been slackin' neither! I've been busy! For real! I finally decided that instead of complaining about my lack of storage space, I will use this wretched time of year to audit everything. Forthwith, my progress.

I'm sick of winter, sick of cold. Sick of dark at 6 and freezy-cold mornings! I want blooming! Sunshine! Life! Birds I don't feel sorry for! Spring, folks, I wants it. But Phil saw his shadow, so 6 more weeks of this crap, says he. I can sulk, or I can get doing stuff so that when my precious warm spring days arrive I'm not stuck dicking around in the attic getting rid of old crap, or reorganizing our closets, dressers and cupboards to make my house more tidy. I can be out digging in the soil, showing Boogie how the plants and flowers grow!

To that end I've been sorting through things. Perhaps it's just the result of having been a big slacker in my younger years, but I've accumulated a lot of garbage that I've been hauling from house to house. Instead of going through boxes and bags before we'd move, we'd wait until the very last minute and then, in a mad frenzy, lop everything into every vehicle we could wrangle to help transport things and hump it over to the new place, promptly depositing it into the basement, attic or spare room with every intention of going through it "someday." Then we'd run out of room, get pissed and start hating our current place, and start looking for someplace new, and the whole bloody cycle would repeat itself again.

Well, we own a house now. And we're far from being able to afford to move, pretty much for at least the next decade. Which is fine, since I love my house. So I gotta start getting rid of this crap. We have plans for many of the rooms in which we've stowed things we don't feel like dealing with, and we can't move forward until all the shit is dealt with. And I find my current self becoming extremely mad at my former lazy self.

I spent some time in the attic the other day. DH and I hope to eventually make this into our master bedroom with a full bath, but were you to see it right now, you would laugh at our obviously unattainable goal. We started ripping it up when we first moved in, and DH was able to pull off all the old lath-and-plaster walls, run proper electrical wiring, insulate and drywall. He even did the mud, which I then sanded--

A note here, a DIY FYI, if you will. When you are sanding a rather large room in your house on a warm sunny summer Saturday, it is never a good idea to keep the windows closed but leave the door to the room open. Rather, try for the reverse. Otherwise all the flying dust will coat everything in your house that it can reach. That is all.

So you get the drift- we are about 75% done with the room, but decided to move on to more important and immediately necessary projects. As it stands, though, the room is done enough that it makes wonderful storage for all our stuff. And lawd, do we have stuff, which is why I am going through it all, and why I find myself so extremely peeved at my former self. One particulary aggravating afternoon was spent as follows: See box. Open box. Find box filled with old celebrity and fashion magazines, old junk mail, stuff with pieces broken off of it, pieces broken off of stuff (not the same stuff, mind you, but entirely different stuff), cassette mix tapes (we do not own a cassette player anymore), cat toys, one stretchy glove covered in hair and lint, pipe cleaners, one partial skein of embroidery floss, blank paper, some pictures that are stuck together so you can't see who's in them, and some old bills from two apartments ago. Really? REALLY?? I needed to drag an entire box of absolutely useless junk from not one apartment, but two? To this house, where six years later I am finally going through it only to find that not one thing in it is of any use to anyone? And even if it at some time was important, it sure isn't now after it's been sitting in a box in my attic for at least the last 4 years since we bought the house! Really, old self, you were too damned lazy to just put the shit into a Hefty bag and throw it the hell away? Seriously. Post-diatribe, see another box. Open box. Repeat above.

I actually found four contractor-size garbage bags filled with Goodwill clothes. Stuff from my younger years, stuff that doesn't fit, some stuff that I'm not even sure why we own it. Clothes from my husband's various style phases. Things I actually took the time to remove from whatever receptacle it was in and put into a bag for Goodwill. Which I then left in the attic for four years. All that stuff has got to go- I'll be taking a trip over to Goodwill to drop off my discarded bounty this weekend. I've also found some new ways to deal with my junk-- they might work for you, too!

1. Underbed storage bags. I don't keep clothes in them because I tend to forget about them when I can't see them. However, I can never forget about yarn, so all my yarn is stashed under the bed in those cheap storage bags from Wallyworld. They're clear on top so I can see what's in there, and because they're soft-sided, I can smoosh them under the bed when I'm done using them. Also? When you buy bedding or curtains, a lot of times they come in those plastic zippered bags. I store my bedding in a spare dresser and my hope chest, so I use the zipper bags to sort out yarn for projects. They're big enough to hold both the yarn and the magazine or pattern book. Evidently I am not the only one who does this, as you can now buy these things from craft purveyors, with a handy-dandy pocket to hold your pattern in it. Or, you could just use the ones you have from the last time you bought a shower curtain or sheet set.

2. Our paper shredder is right next to where we read the mail. When the mail comes in I sort it out and all the junk gets shredded right away. Tax stuff has its own bin on my desk, and bills go next to the printer/computer setup. I keep thinking I should use the shredded paper as cat litter or something, but I think it would freak out the kitties because it was different and they'd end up peeing all over my laundry or something.

3. Speaking of laundry, everyone in my house gets a laundry basket of their own. When I fold clothes, they go in their specific basket so that I know where my stuff is if I don't get a chance to put it away right away. Or if I just don't feel like it. That way when DH is hunting for socks, he doesn't mess up my stuff, and when I am getting dressed for work I don't have to dig through 50 million band t-shirts to find one good pair of undies.

4. This one's a work in progress. As I go through my stuff, I create a container for it if I don't want to throw it out immediately. Like, when I went through the bookshelf to try and organize it, I got an old diaper box and as I came across a book I didn't want anymore, I put it right in the box. When I'm putting away Boogie's clothes I have another empty diaper box and started filling it with the clothes she's too big for now. When the box is full, it goes in the attic with the other castoff baby stuff for the next time we have a kid, and the box of books has already been shopped through by my mom and my best friend. Most of them came from my MIL, but I think I'll let her rifle through the box to see if she wants anything before I take it to work to unload at our lending library (it's not that fancy- it's just a bookshelf in the ladies' room where people take/leave old novels). When I find broken things, if I want to try and salvage it, it goes in the box of broken things and every once in a while I take the box and my Super Glue and play puzzle pieces for an evening.

I'm working on more ways to keep myself organized- these are just the things that have started to work. Maybe tomorrow- kitchen time? We haven't had kitchen time in a while.

Getting with the program is hard.

Heheh- I said "hard." Yes, I can be a thirteen-year-old boy sometimes.


So my mom and dad are coming this weekend to see me and E, and take us to my cousin's baby shower. They will be spending the night on Saturday night, which is why I haven't been blogging the last couple of days. My mom is a clean freak. There may be something seriously wrong with her- as she's gotten older she's become more... aware, let's say, of cleanliness issues. She doesn't just dust and run the vacuum. She cleans out the drawers, wipes them down and then puts the stuff back in them. She worries about the dust on the tops of cabinets. The TOPS of cabinets. Up near the ceiling! A few weeks ago she called me because she was embarrassed that, when she hosted the weekly card game at her house, someone noticed something up near the ceiling in her house and she hadn't had time to clean it, so they could all see that her ceiling wasn't clean! The ceiling!

OK, maybe it's me- I'm just becoming more... aware, let's say, of cleanliness issues myself. As E becomes more active and gets into more stuff, I find myself cleaning out the drawers more, keeping things out of the corners, and hunting dustbunnies on a more regular basis. Everything she sees that's different either gets put in her mouth or brought out into the light of day where others can behold its mysteries, so if it's gross or dead or crumpled up something-or-other, I try to get it out of the house before E discovers it. But I'm not so overly concerned with cleaning most of the time that I bother to clean under or over things-- mostly just the eye-level stuff. And the terlet, of course. One's bathroom must always be clean. After all, we poop in there.

So after I come home from work, fix dinner, feed me and E and she goes to bed, I have been cleaning. Mom and Dad will be staying in the guest bedroom, which also doubles as our catchall room. Don't get me wrong- I'm not rearranging the room and getting rid of all the crap. I'm just tidying it up enough that it doesn't look like the crap-catchin' extra room. And I have to clean the bathroom (again, 'cause we poop in there) and get the laundry hidden downstairs in the laundry room. At least for now, I have that luxury. Once we finish the mudroom/laundry room/half bath remodeling (I should blog about THAT. THAT's been quite the hilarious undertaking!), I will no longer be able to heap mounds of unwashed laundry downstairs in the basement where nobody can see it.

Awesome!

I made chicken quesadillas tonight, y'all. They were lovely. The only thing I did differently is that I warmed the tortillas on the stove, but then assembled the quesadillas on a cookie sheet lined with foil and then baked them at 350 until the cheese was melted. I think I'm going to do that from now on- it took less time and I could get an assembly line going- shredded mild cheddar, sauteed green peppers and onions, shredded cooked chicken, and cookie sheet. Cook up a tortilla on the stove, lay it down on the cookie sheet and assemble your ingredients while you cook the top tortilla. Then by the time you have one built you have the top ready. Be preheating the oven this whole time so when you have a tray ready you put it in the oven for about 5-6 minutes (just until the cheese melts) and then you are ready to eat. We just had boxed black beans and rice with it but it was just lovely, and a good way to give the finger to this ridiculous cold we've had these last few days. I know people farther north will think we're babies, but this is just annoying. I could never last in Alaska or North Dakota with cold like that. And the snow? Forget it. I used to get really excited about snow days, even well into my adulthood. But this year something changed. I am really looking forward to spring this year. I want to learn to garden, and I want to grow vegetables and fruits and beautiful flowers. I want to come home from work in the evening and be able to sit down in the yard and plant tomatoes. Or dig in the dirt with E. I want to be able to send her out there to pick something for dinner, or to water the plants at night. I think because when I was younger, before E, I used to do most of my fun stuff indoors, or at night, when it wasn't so seasonally dependent what we'd do. I wouldn't get up until noon or 1 anyway, so even in summer the sun was waning and the day was almost done. Now with E I am up by 6 most mornings, and I see the whole day through, and I find it awesome. When the weather's warm we pack up the to-go bag and grab the stroller, and head out for an adventure during the day- to the park, out shopping, to a relative's house to visit. This cold weather just makes me want to hunker down, make some soup and cake, and knit. Bleh. Those things make me happy but I'm ready to sit outside in the evening, eat something off the grill and catch lightning bugs at nightfall. I can't wait to share all that stuff with E!

Don't mind me, I'm all schmoopy today. Damn Sesame Street even made me get all teary today. Jeez.

We're definitely staying in tomorrow- it's cold as hale and the Steelers are going to hopefully beat the Ravens. Making chili, and putting away the last of those goddamn Christmas decorations. Almost done with the brim of my hat, so then it's on to the fun part with the concentric circles. Happily, I managed to find my size 6 circular needles, which are a lot better than the stainless steel DPN's I was trying to use. Knitting alpaca with those was too slippery to be fun.

Brr!

Ricardo Montalban 1920-2009

I just heard today that Ricardo Montalban died. Is there something wrong with me that the first question I had was, "Do you think that his coffin will be lined with fine Corinthian leather?"

Fine, I skipped a day.

But I had a really good reason! I was tired! Tired counts. Plus my kitchen was a mess, so it was either blog or clean up the dishes. Nobody ever earned bad mom points for not blogging.

I ended up making chicken and dumplings out of the cooked chicken from Wednesday night. It was lovely, and I have leftovers for lunch, which is good considering my bank account is overdrawn by $20 right now. But the mortgage is paid, the copay for the doctor's office went through, we have food and the car has gas. So I just won't be able to go out drinking until tomorrow when DH is home.

Oh, who am I kidding, I haven't been to a bar since before the baby was born. In fact, the last time I remember being at the bar was when I was about 7.5 months pregnant and had a bizarre and uncontrollable craving for chicken fries from one of the local college pubs. It was the middle of summer, hot and nasty, and I didn't want to cook. DH and I went over after work and all I wanted was a Diet Coke and some chicken fries. You should have seen the looks I got waddling into the bar. People just glared at me like I was fittin' to get hammered and pick up a random dude. I felt like screaming out, "LOOK, PEOPLE, it's Diet Coke! No rum, just ice! Quit judging me with your eyes, assholes!!!" But I didn't, mostly because I am only brave inside my head.

I used to be a lot ballsier, I think. And in the spirit of my last post, I'm gonna take time to examine that now. Feel free to check out now if you want. There won't be any recipes today, nor scandalous tales, just some thinkin' I feel like doing right now. See you tomorrow.

I grew up kinda sheltered- I wasn't really allowed to go to a lot of parties when I was in high school and pretty much was at home doing crafts and watching television throughout my formative years. I'm also not very competitive, so I didn't really stick with sports for very long, and only really participated in cheerleading because my parents said I had to participate in at least one physical activity. So when I went to college, I went a little bananas. I did the underage drinking thing, I experimented with drugs, I got myself involved in dramas- all the stuff you normally would spread out in the eight years of high school and college, I condensed into my freshman and sophomore years at my little Catholic school in the cornfields. I got the reputation of being a little maniac at school, and I enjoyed it immensely. After I met my (now) DH, I started to settle down a little bit at a time, eventually becoming the hermity little homebody I am now. That's not to say that DH settled me down (far from it, I think I experienced more crazy once he came along), but I had a sense of stability in him and our relationship together that let me hone my personality without all of the chaos or feeling that I'd be rejected for who I was. I made most of the friends I have now during that period of time, and we are a very close bunch, if not geographically, at least emotionally.

I don't regret a bit of it. I did some douchey things, one or two really horrible things, and a whole bunch of awesome things, most of which I remember vividly. Yeah, there were some wasted parts of those years (literally, I think we might have singlehandedly upped the THC quotient in the Earth's atmosphere during the 90's and early 2000's), but ultimately I think that all those choices and their consequences were my particular journey to take, and luckily I came through them with no serious after-effects. OK, my short-term memory may not be the best, but at least I don't have an arrest record or a life-threatening disease.

Ultimately, I think that's why I'm happy about my quiet little life, and what I meant by "I've seen enough fucked up shit." I had my crazy fun, got into my trouble, scared myself a little. Now I have a home I love, a beautiful daughter, a husband I adore and wonderful family, friends and pets. I'm not the rock star or the tycoon, nor will I ever be. We don't have a lot of ridiculous stuff - we own our cars and we're almost out of debt, so that's not so bad, eh? I am content, and I think that's what you strive for, isn't it? To be able to sit back, warm and happy in your cozy life and just chill. Maybe some people want more, and good for them if they do. I'm set.

It's Friday night, and I have big plans. I'm gonna go home and fix frozen Totino's pizza rolls for me and E to eat for dinner (OK, I did talk about food a little, so there), and play on the floor till bedtime. Then I might just have a glass of wine, put away the last of the Christmas decorations (yes, I am a slacker, shut up), and knit. And wait-- 'cause DH comes home tonight and I can't wait to see him.

Not bad!

OK, so 4 days now. This has to be a record. Of course this is a lot easier when DH isn't home because when he is, he gets all the random thoughts that fly through my brain. I really have no filter at all when I'm home- whoever's around is going to end up hearing everything I think as soon as I think it. Otherwise I get babble buildup and feel like I'm going to explode with pent-up thoughts. I believe this is why we have blogging. So our loved ones aren't exposed to all of our crazy all the time.

In case you haven't noticed I really do spend a lot of time on my own. It's made me kind of a hermit in some ways. A lot of this does have to do with our current situation- we're not really close to any family that can watch our daughter on a moment's notice, and while we have some wonderful friends who I know would love to watch my kid, because of DH's profession, our time to hang out is usually when everyone else is working. What we normally do is, when he's off I'll take a half vacation day from work. We leave the peanut at daycare, 'cause she's just having more fun with her friends anyway (and we're paying for that shit whether she's in school that day or not) and me and the old man go do something adulty and fun. Usually it's just a late leisurely lunch out at a restaurant. Those of you with children know what I'm talking about. 'Cause you may love your children more than you love your own life, but every once in a while it's nice to be able to sit down at a nice table with no crayons or booster seats, without having to portion out just enough chicken fingers or macaroni and cheese that most of it actually ends up inside your child instead of within a 5-foot radius of your family, getting snide looks from the other patrons 'cause you attempted to go out to a restaurant with kids in tow and they had the misfortune of being seated next to The People With The Obnoxious Little Kid.
So we frequent a local restaurant, and order beer and wine with our meal. I am one of those people who, in my pre-baby days, had no problem being just this side of sober in public. In fact it was probably my preferred way to go. But now that I have E, unless we're in an Italian restaurant, I normally won't have alcohol with my dinner. Part of that is the whole "Look at that woman, she's drinking in front of her baby!" fear, but mostly it's that I'm at the point where I drink for enjoyment, not to get fucked up. If I'm buying a glass of wine, it's going to be a glass of wine that I savor. I'm trying to expand my knowledge of wines so I don't want to just be slurping it down in Red Lobster with that fondue stuff they serve in the big bread bowl. That stuff is like crack from heaven, by the way.
It's a nice time to talk, since the restaurants usually aren't busy around 2 in the afternoon, so the wait staff is a little more laid back. We have conversations about all the adult stuff that we need to go over (having a spouse who travels a lot means you kinda have to have a staff meeting once in a while) and make any big plans we might need to make. We reminisce about life back in the day and talk about where people we love have gotten to. You know, a nice afternoon date. Maybe we go to the mall, or just go home and hang out, or take a drive out in the country. If the weather's nice we'll go somewhere outdoorsy or just sit outside at a cafe bullshitting until it's time to go pick up the product of our union.

Why don't we do this during everyday evenings? DH has been on a more regular schedule lately, enough that E finally is getting the sense of a routine in her daily life. Unfortunately this means that she's been looking for him all this week while he's in Dallas and I feel really bad for her 'cause she doesn't understand that Daddy travels a lot for work. But even when he's home, unless we're really bored or something's about to be really wrong, we just don't talk about everyday stuff. Mainly we just do the evening dinner-bathtime-bedtime routine with E, and then we snuggle up on the couch together and watch television until we fall asleep. There's really only two hours that we have together every day that both of us are awake and lucid and not distracted by our raging toddler. Why muck it up with daily business?

Which brings me back to now. I'm pretty much on my own a lot. I come home from work, feed the cats, dog, baby and myself, get her ready for bed and play with her on the floor for an hour or so, then after she goes to bed I do some light housework and have a snack, then go to bed. I am an old lady already. But I feel like I got the chance to do all my troublemaking and drama-having, and I'm good now. I have seen all the fucked-up shit I care to see, at least until my daughter's a teenager.

A wrinkle...

So my kid was sick today. I hate when she's sick- she just looks at me with these huge wet eyes and boogers streaming out both sides of her nose and she goes, "Beh," and then lays down on the floor cuddling her two blankets. I knew something was wrongwhen she wasn't hungry. She's her mama's girl- she's always hungry.

Off to the pediatrician we went and it was decreed that she has a "bronchial thing," according to the good Dr. H. Evidently the cure for bronchial things is hearty doses of azithromycin and a grape-flavored expectorant, followed by Tylenol and a good nap. I feel like I'm drugging my little Peanut, but you can't argue with the results. We followed the doc's advice after a light lunch of grilled cheese and ketchup (what can I say? It's good, people) and she slept for almost three hours. I had to wake her up for dinner.

I was going to make chicken corn chowder this evening, since I was home anyway, but decided to thaw out a container of alphabet soup I had stored in the freezer instead. I'd just cleaned the kitchen and didn't feel like messing it up again. Another culinary effort, thwarted by a desire not to make a mess. But I did make the alphabet soup and froze half, just for situations like this. Or for situations when the money runs low in our treasure chest. If you stockpile food in your freezer and pantry, you can nearly eliminate your food expense when you hit a dry spell. You will probably still need to buy bread, and eggs and milk, and maybe a fresh veggie or fruit to offset all the "storedyness" inherent in frozen food, but at least you won't be adding to that (already pretty pricey) expense. As you might infer, this happens to us frequently enough that I plan for it.

I'm makin' the chowdah tomorrow in the crock pot. I've already thawed out two chicken breasts and I have a bunch of homemade broth that I need to use by tomorrow or throw out. So I'm gonna stew the chicken in the broth all day tomorrow while I'm at work, and I'll add the veggies that will taste ever so good. Long-term stuff like carrots, onions, garlic, potatoes. And I think half the corn I want to use. When I get home I'll make a white sauce (flour, melted butter, and milk) and then stir that into the crock with the rest of the corn, maybe some frozen peas or limas, and pop some crescent rolls or biscuits into the oven.

I should probably not do this in the crockie. It will take forever to heat. I'll stir the broth into the completed white sauce, add the veggies, shred the chicken and then add the corn & such. From when I get home tomorrow to when I am feeding E, it should be no more than an hour, well within the not-freaking-out-'cause-now-she's-tired-and-hungry zone.

I sat up knitting last night and totally should not have. I'm making E a poncho out of this bulky mystery yarn I bought at Kraemer in Nazareth and it's so damn simple it's addictive. I got it from the knitlist, a great resource for knitting patterns that I used to turn to all the time before Ravelry and have now started going to again. It's like that old bar you used to go to all the time, then this new place opened up and you made a bunch of really cool friends, and then one day just for kicks you decide to swing into the old place to see what's up and run into your oldest friends from back in the day. Knitlist has a lot of basic patterns but they're written so elegantly, back before the time when knitting was recognized as a pretty normal hobby for anyone of any age to have. There is the assumption in many of the patterns that you understand the fundamentals of knitting-- kinda like Elizabeth Zimmerman's writing, where she'll say, "Cast on the appropriate number of stitches and begin knitting in the round," and there won't be a whole paragraph explaining precisely how that's done. Not that accurate and easy-to-understand patterns with detailed explanations aren't useful, and an asset to bringing new people to the craft. And not that there's something wrong with new people not totally getting all the terminology right away (not to mention the differences in terminology between languages!) I guess what I like about it is the feeling it gives me personally, like I'm at a point with knitting where I am comfortable just casting some yarn onto a set of needles and just sort of having at it until I see what it's gonna turn out to be. Like I graduated to the next level of knitting. So, totally not a "Ha, ha newbie," but a "Yay, me."

Not that I'm patting myself on the back for staying up late knitting a poncho for the beeb. 'Cause I knew as I turned out the lights last night and switched off the telly that that beautiful loveychild of mine was going to have the night from Hell, and be up every two hours trying to breathe, or trying to sleep through the coughing, and whimpering in her sleep. After the first two wakeups I started noticing that the poor thing was still mostly asleep and my attempts to come in and comfort her were actually waking her up and keeping us both up for an hour. So then it was just up to me to not go in there to check on her, because she was perfectly fine, thank you, and just trying to find a non-sweaty, not-cough-inducing spot to lay in.

So far tonight, not a peep, but don't want to jinx myself. Think I'll have a little snack, put away the leftover soup, make some lunches and go upstairs to bed. And probably knit. I'm thinking I can get the poncho done this week and then start on my hat, which I downloaded from Ravelry- if you Ravel, it's the spiral hat called Guinan, by Kim K. I have some Kraemer alpaca skeins in a camel color and a dark chocolatey brown, which will both go toward hats. Hopefully there's enough to make one hat in each color, but if not I can blend them somehow.

A quarter to ten. If I wanna cram all these activities in tonight, I gots to go. Might need to save the lunches for tomorrow-- wouldn't want that chore to interfere with the snacking...

This week's plan - January 12

So I'm a single mom this week. Again. But I think I figured this whole thing out. While DH is in Dallas filming a pharmaceutical conference, I will be responsible for the entire house and its various inhabitants, and I've discovered that if I plan correctly, this shouldn't really be that hard. I think my problem before was a lack of motivation. I always want to do things, but it's been only in the last few months or so that I actually see myself pulling it off. It's far from a perfect system, but here's what I've managed to figure out, and how I hope to accomplish it this week.

1. Make a plan for this week for all meals and chores.
2. Actually follow the plan. But if I don't get something done on the appropriate day, I don't carry it over to the next day-- that just mucks up the whole system. Instead, it gets moved to a more appropriate day, or to Saturday, which is for clearing up anything that didn't get done.

This system started around the holidays, and I like to think that I've become less of a slacker because of it. There's so much to do- cards, cookies, decorating, present-buying, present-wrapping, phone calls, family get-togethers, more present-buying, making cupcakes and cookies for school (yes, it's daycare, but we call it school 'cause she learns stuff there), blah blah blah. Just a flurry of activity that we put ourselves through in the name of celebrating the season. But I enjoy it, and aside from nobody getting Christmas cards this year (something to shoot for next year, I guess) I still managed to pull off Christmas Eve open house/dinner at my house this year for my family and friends, and my house was clean enough that my mother even noticed. And if you met my mother, you would understand how big a deal that is.

Something that hasn't worked for me is scheduling things on certain days. I think it's the Aquarius in me- if something's cast in stone, I feel the need to subvert it. So if I designate Wednesday as Laundry Day, chances are good that I will end up knitting or just looking at Ravelry or I Can Has Cheezburger for the three hours between when E goes to bed and when I go to bed, instead of doing my sock laundry. Instead, I just have a list of stuff I feel should be accomplished in a week's time, and make progress toward getting it done whenever I can, breaking it up into manageable chunks of activity so I feel like I've accomplished something but the end of the week.

This week, since it's after the holidays and I am feeling like me and E have just been eating junk food and snackies for months on end, we're aiming for relatively healthy, complete meals rather than Pizza Hut and Mickey D's. I am ashamed to say that we tended toward fast food quite a bit in the run-up to the holidays. Yes, I have been feeding my toddler McDonald's. Don't judge.

So here's the plan for this week, starting with meals. Since DH isn't home this week, we'll be focusing on bright flavors and colors, with some "sinful" thrown in.

Shrimp stir-fry. Luckily my E isn't allergic to shellfish, and she rather enjoys shrimp as long as it's not deep-fried (yay, her!), so I think we'll stir-fry some IQF shrimp with scallions, garlic, broccoli, carrots and peas, and serve it over some rice. I have white rice in the fridge, otherwise I'd go for the whole goodie-goodie meal and do the brown rice thing. E doesn't care as long as there's something veggie in there for her.

It's really really really cold here, so we'll do something comfort-foody one day this week. I made meat sauce yesterday and tried to lean it up as much as possible. I used ground turkey instead of beef and added lots of onions and garlic. When the meat was brown and the aromatics were translucent, I added a can of diced tomatoes and about a cup of some leftover cabernet (from Christmas Eve) and let it all cook down. Then I added a jar of marinara sauce and let the whole thing simmer.

OK, new favorite pasta? I think it's called "trivelle." Looks like you took about three or four macaronis and connected them into one fun long spiral. I layered some of this (cooked) in a casserole with my meat sauce and some part-skim mozzarella (sauce, pasta, cheese, sauce, pasta, more sauce, cheese) and baked it for a half an hour covered, then 15 minutes uncovered. E liked it, I loved it, and we have enough for another night this week. I tried to use the leaner ingredients and I probably could have used whole wheat pasta, but we don't have any. Next time. I hear whole wheat pasta is less weird to eat if you cook it with something, rather than just slapping a sauce on it.

So that's two meals, and we'll probably do leftovers one night, and one night will be a pasta or pierogi or something. And I cooked up some boneless chicken breasts, just to have them on hand, so we can have quesadillas one night, or chicken & dumplings or something. The aim is for filling meals that not only satisfy little toddler bellies but also keep me from snacking after she goes to bed. I have a terrible habit of snacking when I'm bored and lonely. Hell, I snack even when I'm not bored or lonely. It's a problem.

I'm also planning on getting some organization done this week. We have mountains of laundry both to wash and to put away, and I KNOW there are clothes in my dresser and closet that I don't need, or won't fit into ever, or am now just too old to wear. I don't want to be one of those sad wannabe-cougar types that keeps wearing the twentysomething clothes long past their expiration date. I'm not ready for coordinated tracksuits by any means, but really, I think I'm a little too old for skintight cheeky t-shirts that say things like "stop looking at my tits" right over the boobie area. Time to say goodbye. And some of the shoes I used to wear-- not really my thing anymore... Time to fill the coffers at the local thrift store so I can put the clothes I actually do wear in their proper place. We've already got a bunch of bags filled up with old stuff, but it's up in our attic and I keep forgetting about them, so that's gonna be a task this week- locate all thrift bags, load them in the Ford, and truck them the three or four blocks up the road to the thrift store.

Believe it or not, I will still have time for myself. I can't imagine not knitting something this week, and I'm working on some stuff that I'd really like to have sooner rather than later. More on that tomorrow, or maybe later on today. This post is long enough.

Yeah I deleted it. So?

It's not like I ever wrote it in anyway. In fact I just remembered that I had it when we got this year's first round of W2's. Plus I kind of started hating it and thought it was stupid. Not like this one promises to be any better, but I feel like my attempt to discuss food was a bit misguided, since after I went back to work I fell into my old habits for a while, then I got better, then sucked again, and now have found a lifestyle that works. I don't know whether I stumbled upon something brilliant or just grew the fuck up and got my head back out of my ass. But I feel like I have stuff to talk about and needed a new, seemingly less topic-restricted forum with which to express myself. We'll see how long this lasts...