Monday, January 19, 2009

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.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

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!

Friday, January 16, 2009

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?"

Thursday, January 15, 2009

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.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

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.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

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...

Monday, January 12, 2009

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.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

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...