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...
No comments:
Post a Comment