Online Confessional

Disney Photos!

2010-03-11T06:51:00.006-06:00

Eggnog Cupcakes

2009-12-21T20:58:00.003-06:00

Eggnog Cupcakes:

(double this recipe to make 24 cupcakes)
1/4 cup dark rum or bourbon
1 cup eggnog
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
scant 1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly ground
1 cup sugar
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 350F. Fill a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.In a small bowl, mix together rum, eggnog, vegetable oil, vinegar and vanilla.In a large bowl, mix together nutmeg, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Pour in rum mixture and whisk until just combined. Divide evenly into muffin tins (a 1/4 cup measure is a good tool for this).Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the cakes spring back when lightly pressed.Cool in the pan for 3-5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before filling.

OR:
Prepare a yellow "pudding in the mix", following directions but substituting eggnog for the liquid and adding 1/4 tsp nutmeg and 1/4 cup dark rum. Fill cupcake liners and bake, allow to cool.

Eggnog Pastry Cream

- 1 cup eggnog (do not use fat-free)
- 1 cup whole milk
-4 egg yolks
- 1/3 cup sugar
- ¼ cup flour
- ¼ cup cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Heaping ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup rum

1. In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, bring the eggnog and milk to a simmer.
2. While the mixture is heating, whisk together egg yolks, sugar, flour, cornstarch, nutmeg, salt and vanilla in a medium bowl.
2. Temper the egg mixture by slowly whisking in 1/3 to ½ of the heated eggnog mixture, then whisk the tempered egg mixture back into the eggnog mixture in the saucepan. Return the pan to a medium-low to medium burner, bring the mixture to a low boil, and cook, whisking constantly, for about 4 to 6 minutes total, or until mixture is very thick. (Be careful not to overcook or the eggs will scramble.)
3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl and press a piece of plastic wrap on the surface to prevent a skin from forming. Let cool to room temperature, then refrigerate to chill for at least 2 hours.
Fill cupcakes with pastry cream (thin with eggnog if too thick).

Whipped cream marshmallow frosting:

Funny story-- it was getting pretty late, and I only had less than an hour to get the frosting made and on the cupcakes (and get cleaned up and dressed for the party..). So instead of making stabilized whipped cream using gelatin (which doesn't always work out well anyway, especially when rushed), I remembered that I had a container of "Marshmallow Fluff" in the cupboard. So basically what I did was:
Whipped a pint of whipping cream until soft peaks began to form using a chilled balloon whisk attachment and chilled mixing bowl, and then added a small container of marshmallow fluff and 1/4 cup rum. Whip this until stiff peaks form, and then pipe onto cupcakes. Sprinkle with nutmeg to taste. Chill cupcakes until ready to serve, allowing them to sit at room temperature for one hour.

The Solitary Life, Lamb Orichette, continued:

2009-12-18T19:34:00.003-06:00

If I were on my own, I'd eat this three times a week (at least):

Pinn Oak Farms lamb sausage, removed from the casings and browned with red pepper flakes and fresh minced garlic to taste, sauteed with broccoli rabe, cut into 1" pieces until crisp-tender, and tossed with orichette pasta that's been drizzled with a good quality olive oil. I'd top this all with crumbled chevre and eat it with large quantities of red wine (which tastes mind numbingly amazing when combined with the goat cheese).

And I would never feel guilty about going to the gym. Or have pets that bark.

Things I would do differently were I not married (hypothetically speaking:-):

2009-12-17T22:34:00.005-06:00

On the cusp of being completely irritated with my family, I would like to compile a list of the things I would do differently in the event I only had my own self to worry about:
1) I wouldn't own a TV, just have a decent computer I can plug into speakers for my Pandora Radio and watch DVD's/Netflix streamed movies on.
2) I would almost never prepare an evening meal (except for lavish dinner parties in which I invite everyone I know and we'll laugh, drink wine, and engage in much debauchery). I'd live completely on large healthy breakfasts, medium sized lunches, and smoothies and juices for dinner. I'd be a vegetarian 85% of the time and only eat meat from local farmers.
3) My house would be small; I'd own very little except that which made me smile because it reminded me of something and plenty of useful things for preparing food-- and maybe some books.
4) My gardens would be lavish but manageable for a change.
5) I would invent my own holidays and ignore all the ones that I find tiresome: none of mine would involve buying anything unless it was something that could be used to make merriment after the consumption of too much alcohol. None of them will involve instant mashed potatoes or turkey, mythical animals, or guilt.
6) I would take at least 4 trips a year; somewhere different each time, with friends.

More later:

White Chocolate Ganache Buttercream:

2009-04-22T17:47:00.008-05:00

Recipe I need to write down before I forget:

1 bag white chocolate chips
8 oz whipped cream
1 stick unsalted butter
4 cups powdered sugar (+/-, depending on your desired sweetness and stiffness)

The momentary sadness I felt at being discouraged from participating in the harming of my body (hence the monniker "Bruisers", my husband reminded me with less sympathy than I felt was kind...) has now been replaced with the realization that bruises hurt, a lot;-) And limping at work, while entertaining for a day, got old pretty quick-- especially when I really and truly couldn't walk normally as I am usually able to feign when sustaining little peepee injuries in the past.

Without a doubt, there were aspects of the experience that were a ton of fun: feeling strong, fast, and incredibly powerful; the overall joy of skating that makes me high as a kite. Falling and bouncing back up as if nothing had happened was also very cool, as was the momentary sting of pain I felt that gave no true indication of how much I was going to hurt every time I needed to use that particular body part for the duration of the week.

Pushing myself has always been one of my favorite pasttimes, spin class being the best example of that; knowing how sick I can make myself after cranking my gears a little too heavily, spinning my wheel until I see stars, feel faint, and keep on smiling, begging for more. Abusing myself has been a source of good, clean fun for a long, long, time-- but have I finally crossed a line?

Part of me thinks that I made the three hour experience that much more difficult by skating two hours just an hour before the Boot Camp, because surely the only thing more difficult than skating "balls to the wall" for three hours is skating hard for FIVE hours in a day, no?

Was THAT stroke of foolishness the true cause of my misery today? Or was the experience itself just that much out of my league??

I would have thought that my daily abuses on the spin bike would have qualified me for a pain free post-Boot Camp experience (minus the falls I took cause I was getting overwhelmed and tired); haven't wiped myself out like that, not even after birthing a 10# baby in 45 minutes (in which I barely broke a sweat, btw) or hiking down a 15 miles trail into the Arizona desert in July completely unequipped (fringed, knee high moccasins and all). But there it was: my ass was kicked in a wholly new way, sending the fear of pain I've only nodded at blankly in my Pain Clinic patients deeply into my bones, my psyche (some of which hurt to this day...).

And so here I sit, faintly more prepared with my padded pants, better hand/wrist guards, a plan in place to take it easier, try not to overdo it in spite of myself... but for what?? Do I REALLY want to join a team? Do I have the time? Can my family withstand the impact of my life expanding in this way??

Questions for another day, because for now I'm just going to take it one moment at a time, to "just do, don't think", which has bcome my mantra (in addition to "do one thing everyday that scares you":

(A newspaper column by Mary Schmich, published by the Chicago Tribune on 01 June 1997):
Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing every day that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.Respect your elders.Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.But trust me on the sunscreen. Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Flux:

2009-04-19T10:56:00.003-05:00

Life has been in a state of flux lately, as it often is in spring. The world around me is heavy into the phase of renewing itself, and of course my DNA wants to get in on the party... it seems to me to be a perfectly natural thing to cycle through life: ups, downs, periods of insane amounts of growth, and then a slowing down, a rest...
Until the sap begins to flow again, the chicks arrive, and I start making plans to train for roller derby.
Yeah, just like you never know exactly when the spring rains will arrive or the precise moment the daffodils will open, you just never know when or where the winds of change will blow me, which for me, makes life a splendid experience worth waking up for.

Who knew back in December that when I strapped on those ugly brown rental skates for the first time in 30 years, I'd experience an exhilaration of my own propulsion I hadn't experienced since the freedom of childhood (which allows such things in ways adulthood never has, I've since discovered). And I'm finally old enough now where I don't care that I can't do it well, how I look, what other people think.
I always knew I'd love being 40 (or nearly 40), and my gal Mary Pipher sums up my relationship with my body these days quite nicely:

"Fortunately, with middle age, I granted my body amnesty. Nobody much noticed its shape anymore, not even me. It was well fed, exercised daily and taken to the doctor for regular visits... I didn't ask 'Am I pretty?' but rather, 'Can I still ice-skate, cross-country ski and carry a backpack up a mountain?'"

And my answer is, yes. I can do all those things, better than when I was younger and had other things on my mind. (Women go through these pretty predictable stages in their lives, and I wish we talked about it more, so we can make sense of it, plan for it, make no apologies, and move on unscathed to the next one-- especially for that "my kids are little, I'm socially isolated, losing my mind, and it's making me fat and depressed" stage. That one was particularly crunchy, and I'm so very glad to have put it behind me... but I digress;-)

The feeling of flying, moving through space is intoxicating, with the benefit of making myself feel infinitely better and making my body work better, improving my coordination and balance and confidence that I can be athletic and learn something new. How can that be anything but fantastic?
I plan on growing old kicking and screaming, broadening my horizons and expanding my world with each step I take into the future... but the family I've found myself a part of likes to stay put; it worries them to try new things, and because I am crazy about them, try to honor it. They dislike it immensely when I go off on these tangents, and even though they renew me, the guilt of leaving them behind and the exhaustion at trying to drag them along gets to be too much, and eventually I stop.
But how much of an obligation do I have to postpone healthy personal growth because it makes my family uncomfortable? There has to exist a balance between fulfilling my needs as a human being who deeply requires these experiences, and meeting my family's needs to feel secure. I just haven't found it yet, and it makes me a little blue.

I'm off to skate, bringing a son and a husband who'd rather stay home, who'd rather I'd stay home...sigh. Maybe someday they'll thank me for dragging them with me into the world, and I'll be all the stronger for pulling the weight.

In Case You Needed a Reminder:

2009-03-07T22:06:00.001-06:00

http://blog.beliefnet.com/viamedia/2009/03/i-didnt-get-close-enough.html#more

Routine/Pommes Anna, Date Nut Squares:

2009-03-01T10:35:00.002-06:00

I've always always admired people whose lives revolved around some sort of orderly routine; spaghetti Wednesday, pizza on Friday, Sunday dinner...

Me, I can't set up or maintain a routine if my life depended on it, despite my best intentions, as if the reigning chaos of possibility (which usually means we do NOTHING, truth be told) is preferrable to the predictability of SOMETHING, even if it's familiar.
But the lure of the familiar continues to pull, making me yearn for a life where just a little bit is already decided:

That being said, if I had to set up a basic routine for the winter months, this is (loosely) what it would look like:

Saturday: swimming with Jacob in the morning; cleaning the house with the kids/starting laundry; skating in the evening (or not if we decide to go out somewhere else)

Sunday: big Sunday breakfast, church maybe and/or skiing (winter), visiting with family, planning menus and grocery shopping

Monday: Spin class for me 3:30 or 5:30; Grace, Youth Group 6:30-8

Tuesday: Spin class for me 4:30 and/or $2 skating 6-8pm with Jacob and Grace

Wednesday: work until 7; Jacob, Youth Group 6:30-8; maybe skating for Jake and I from 8-10 (over 21 skate)

Thursday: Spin class for me 4:30; Jake has archery

Friday: Spin class for me 5:15; pizza and gym/swim night, Family time from 5:30-8

This works, and has plenty of wiggle room to cram extra things in there, novel stuff I always like to do but have difficulty dragging anyone to (my children are hopeless homebodies).

I'm hoping to broaden my horizons by checking out a Roller Derby game (show?) on March 14 if anyone wants to go; in my crazy scheming mind I picture myself joining a team someday but realize that I am probably too non confrontational to have any success with it;-)

On the food front, made some truly fantastic potatoes this morning to go with our Sunday breakfast (see? the schedule is already a rousing success!). Loosely fashioned after "pommes Anna", I just improvised it on the spot and it was pretty tasty:

3 large red potatoes, scrubbed and sliced 1/8 thick: layer slices in a single concentric layer, on microwave safe plate, sprinkle with kosher salt, and microwave for 3 minutes

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees and heat 12 inch cast iron skillet to barely smoking; when pan is ready, pour 2-3 tb olive oil and 1 large chopped clove garlic into pan, and slide potatoes on top, maintaining concentric, single layer of potatoes. Sprinkle with fresh chopped rosemary and pepper, more salt if desired. Place plate on top and cover with heavy lid (to weight potatoes down) and put in oven. Bake for 25 minutes until potatoes are browned.

Here's a REAL pommes Anna recipe, one I was too lazy to look up, if you want to do it up right:

Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds russet (baking) potatoes
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted
Preparation
Peel the potatoes and, using a food processor fitted with the slicing blade or a mandoline, slice them very thin, transferring them as they are sliced to a large bowl of cold water. Drain the slices and pat them dry between paper towels. Generously brush the bottom and side of a 9-inch heavy ovenproof skillet, preferably non-stick, with some of the butter and in the skillet arrange the slices, overlapping them slightly, in layers, brushing each layer with some of the remaining butter and seasoning it with salt and pepper. Cover the layered potato slices with a buttered round foil, tamp down the assembled potato cake firmly, and bake it in the middle of a preheated 425°F. oven for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake the potato cake for 25 to 30 minutes more, or until the slices are tender and golden. Invert the potato cake onto a cutting board and cut it into 8 wedges.

Later:
Also made some date nut squares, mostly due to the fact that I somehow ended up with a 5# box of chopped dates (Sam's Club, but why exactly did I buy it? No clue...)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Pulse in food processor until it has a sandy texture:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax
1/4 cup oat bran
1/4 +/- pecans
1/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter

Press into bottom of 8 inch square pan and bake for 15 minutes until slightly browned

Soften 2 cups chopped dates in enough boiling water to cover for 10 minutes, drain well. Mix with 2 eggs and 1/4 cup agave nectar (or brown sugar). Spread over crust and bake 20-30 minutes until center is set. So yummy and sweet, and somewhat good for you...

Elevation/Bands I Hate:

2009-02-27T11:11:00.005-06:00

I might have posted this video before (I never watch the videos BTW, just post them for listening...) but hey! They played this song in spin class this morning and it was sexy as all get-out, wow;-) If it's possible to pedal in a rhythmic, come-hither fashion, there we all were-- sweating and breathing heavily in some sort of Bono-induced sexual coma... fun!

Been meaning for quite a while to compile a list of bands I really can't stand, here goes:

I cringe when any one of these performers/bands comes on the radio:

1) Matthew Sweet

2) Counting Crows

3) Blues Traveller

4) Sheryl Crow: especially her most recent songs, i.e. "Out of Our Heads", like some sort of tone deaf pre-schooler is crooning in your ear, *shudder*!

All bands from the 90's, a period I consider to be a deep cesspool of Pretty Bad Music that I had to suffer through after living and breathing music during my adolescence. The absence of tunes I could connect with during my early years of starting a family left a great, big hole in my memories, too, since so much of my life can be remembered by hearing a song, sigh. Thanks, shitty music of the 90's!

The grunge phase itself was pretty depressing, too, seeing kids dressed in baggy, sloppy t shirts and jeans at a concert vs the glam fashions of the 80's, making it a completely androgynous, unsexy time in general. And with the exception of "Closer" by NIN, there wasn't a single song I can recall that you'd want to get naked to, making the 90's a pretty shitty time to get laid as well:

I'm sure I'll add to the list as I hear something that makes me rush to change the station...

5) Brett Dennen: took me a while to determine that this individual was a GUY: his melancholic, nasally voice drives me completely batty

Comfort Food:

2009-02-26T17:49:00.002-06:00

My mom gave me this gigantic container of tuna fish (seriously, it was like 6 cups of tuna, egads!)... so, it being a fairly crummy, rainy day, thought it would be a good one to make a little comfort food in the form of a huge tuna casserole.
Filled with good ole American foodstuffs such as canned soup, french onions, and cheeeeeze-- it was nothing short of disgusting, yet oddly satisfying in it's cheesy, carby assfatteningness.
I also made another apple cake and a batch of homemade applesauce, so we were plenty set to eat our way through the rain and gloom, however long it decides to last;-)

Speaking of gloom, was a little sad to plod my broke self thru the Aldi's today in an effort to try and save a little $$$. In my years now of stable employment, I've become quite the foodie of late, and am quietly mourning my return to the frugal days of my youth (but mostly grateful that I'm still able to afford my trip to Aldi's; the stuff there isn't *nearly* as cheap as I remember it...). My plan now is to turn the experience of saving money into a game like I used to so I don't get mired in the despair that seems to be running rampant now.
People are freaking out, and understandably so, but getting whipped into a fervor isn't going to help anybody, least of all anyone in crisis.

Got an abrupt wake up call this past week as well; was brought face to face with the notion that I am not obligated to have a relationship with anyone, regardless of marital connection: i.e. just because you're married to someone does not mean that you are married to their family, especially when they are adults and the relationships are still strained after years and years of trying to get along. After this recent encounter I've realized once and for all that instead of beating myself over the head and trying to make difficult relationships work, it's simply better to stop trying to force things and recite the "Serenity Prayer":

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

It's easy to mourn the loss of hope that your family will become close someday, but liberating to realize that some things are beyond your control, allowing you to save your energy for something more productive and move on.
(Maybe now, too, husband will take responsibility for his relationships with his own family instead of counting on me to nag him to call, celebrate holidays, keep in touch with everyone... he is so bad about those things but the bottom line is that it is his choice what kind of relationships he has with people--not mine--and that's a liberating notion as well.)

Grace's Birthday Cheesecake:

2009-02-16T21:15:00.006-06:00

Modified from the Wilton recipe, and pretty dang fabulous:-)

Crust:
1 1/2 cup (or more) crushed chocolate cookies (pulsed in the food processor until fine),
1/2 (+/-) cup melted butter
1/4 cup sugar
Mix all ingerdients, and press into bottom and sides of spring form pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 8-10 minutes, cool.

Ganache:
8 oz good quality semisweet chocolate, chopped (or milk chocolate, whatever floats yer chocolate boat)
1 cup whipping cream

Place chocolate in medium oven safe bowl. Heat whipping cream in saucepan or in microwave just to boiling point (or until bubbles start to form around edges of pan). Remove from heat, pour on top of chocolate. Allow to sit for a minute, then stir until smooth and glossy. Set aside on counter.

Cheesecake Filling:
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened (do NOT use low or fat free, which would be sick and wrong and would ruin the whole concept of decadence you're striving for)
3/4 cup sour cream (see above)
6 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 tsp real vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 pint fresh raspberries (or frozen, it matters not;-)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until light and fluffy. Beat in sour cream and add eggs, one at a time. Beat in sugar and flavoring extracts until mixture is smooth. Spread thin layer of ganache over the crust and top with the raspberries, saving some for garnish. Place spring form pan on baking sheet. Pour cheese mixture over raspberries. Place a small pan of water on bottom rack of oven. Bake cheesecake 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours or until set(the middle might be slightly soft).
Turn oven off and leave for one hour.
Cool and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
Spread remaining chocolate (kept at room temp or remove from fridge a good 2 hours before using) over cheesecake, refrigerating at least 30 min to allow ganache to become firm.
Garnish with fresh raspberries.

Jacob's Animation:

2009-02-16T17:15:00.000-06:00

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

Pretty Tasty Crock Pot Pepper Steak

2009-02-15T19:08:00.005-06:00

I am a wee bit if a food snob and soooooooo not a fan of crock pot cookery, but Grace requested this dish. And seeing as how I had no time to stand over the stove and watch it, into the crock pot it went.
Lo and behold! It was pretty darn good:

2 pounds beef sirloin steak or round steak, (cut on the bias against the grain) into 2 inch strips
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, cut in half and then into thick slices
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tb apple cider vinegar
1 tb beef bouillon
1/4 cup hot water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 large green bell peppers, halved and sliced thick
1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, with liquid
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste
Shake of hot sauce
DIRECTIONS
In medium dutch oven over medium high heat, heat the vegetable oil and brown the seasoned beef strips in two batches. Transfer to a slow cooker.
Place onions in dutch oven and continue to cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, and sautee about 30 seconds. Add apple cider vinegar, beef bouillon, and water and deglaze the pan, scraping up brown bits from the pan. Sprinkle cornstarch on top, and stir.
Pour into the slow cooker with meat, add remaining ingredients, placing green peppers on top (stir them in half way, if you can).
Cover, and cook on High for 3 to 4 hours, or on Low for 6 to 8 hours.
Serve on top of mashed potatoes...

Job Whore:

2009-02-14T11:45:00.005-06:00

Ok, I was sitting in my ACLS class the other day and running my mouth (as I am wont to do when I am nervous), telling the people there what I do and why I need to complete my ACLS. Well, come to find out that of course all the other staff there have real jobs that they're held for a while, in important areas such as the Neuro ICU, ER, Cardiac Critical Care; and then there's me, the girl who will do anything, regardless of my ability level, as long as the cash keeps flowing (I even offered to learn to teach ACLS and to my embarassment, they actually expected me to be experienced and qualified to teach it, geeeeez!).
And it struck me as kindof sad, that I really don't know how to do anything well, have no genuine accountability to any one discipline, no commitment, no mastery of ANYTHING in my field.
It became obvious that day that I will forever be stuck in this unhappy place, with no personal growth and very little confidence in myself as a nurse as long as I continue working the pool program...
Even my co workers, whom I've worked with for quite a while, treat me as if my presence there is temporary (which it is, I suppose..), give me no responsibility or opportunities to develop more than a rudimentary understanding of the job. I volunteer to work on committees and then am never included on the team (and why would they? I might not be there all that long....), and am tiredtiredtired of being told my hours are being cut, and then they aren't, and then they are, but not yet, maybe next month, wait and see, etc and etc.

Long story short:
It's LONG PAST time to put my committment issues aside, put my Big Girl panties on, and find myself my very own J.O.B.

I've applied to about 7 positions in the past few weeks, only to interview, win them over, fall head over heels, and then find out that either the job was pulled or they changed it and hired someone else-- gar! But I'll keep plugging away. I have basic qualifications to work many different departments (obviously), but those tend to be fairly specialized (GI, Walk In Clinic, Pain Clinic, Pre Admissions, Infusion) and pretty popular places to work, but ohwell.
And it doesn't help that my family is chronically in "fall apart" mode, i.e. no one is organized enough to keep their lives in order when mom isn't there to hold their hands, but ohwell again. I'm so very tired of feeling 100% resposible for keeping everyone afloat, as if I stopped paying attention for even a second, everyone here would drown (they will, they are, but it's long past time as well for them to learn to swim on their own and stop blaming me for their refusal to take responsibility for their own lives, sheeeeeeeeessssssh!)

Why is it so hard for women to feel like they can have lives of their own, I ask you? And truly, is the cause of my fear of committment to my jobs due to the guilt I feel that my family can't function without my constant atttention? Cause I don't think it's fair that all personal growth, meaningful employment and financial security for women have to be put on hold until their kids are grown...

A Matter of Allegiance

2009-02-10T09:09:00.000-06:00

And Why One Might Wisely Withhold It

by Fred Reed

I wish to propose a salubrious anarchy, a deliberate renunciation of fealty to country, society, and government, an assertion of independence from folly and moral decay. Permit me to offer a taxing political idea: When a society ceases to be worthy of support, it is reasonable to withdraw support. The time, I submit, has come.
Here I do not mean to urge crime or counsel treason, but to suggest quiet renunciation of the national disaster. Ask yourself how much of American life pleases you. The schools are run by fools to manufacture fools, government grows more intrusive by the day, and culture is determined by the triple cloacae of New York, Hollywood, and Washington. Freedom withers, not only in the ominous encroachment of police powers, but in the loss of control over schools, church, hiring, daily life. We are no longer our own. The United States is not the country we are told it is, and not the country it was.
How to escape? The beginning, and the most difficult, is a moral distancing. Those who care must disentangle themselves from the cobweb loyalties and factitious duties with which we have been unconsciously encumbered. From childhood we learn patriotism, that one must vote, that if our way is not perfect it is at least best, that we must support anything however bad because were were born in a particular place. Why?
Let me suggest that one owes loyalty to one's family and friends, to common decency, and to nothing else. Render under Caesar what you must, keep what you can, and swear allegiance to nothing. Here I do not mean just the government, but the zeitgeist, the miasmic fetor of trashy culture, the desperate consumerism, the entire psychic odor of a society in decomposition.
Begin with things so fundamental as seldom to be reflected upon. For example, do not imagine that you are under an obligation to marry, or to have children, or to raise them as the government requires. Procreate if you choose, but only if you genuinely want to procreate. It is not your job to perpetuate a civilization that is daily less deserving of perpetuation.
But: never let the government have your children. Once they are had, your responsibility is to them. Teach them at home. Better yet, go abroad. Other countries do not force you to pay for an academically retrograde moral cesspool and then to drown your children in it. You might be astonished to know Argentina, for example.
Ask not what you can do for your country, but what it can do for you—you ought to get some of your taxes back.
Do not tie yourself to…anything. The price of freedom is poverty: freedom grows as your needs diminish. Less apothegmatically, if you believe that you need a vast house in a prestigious suburb, then you will need a lucrative job to pay for it. Having tied your psychic contentment to such an abode you will also believe that you need impressive cars and will therefore be tied to a retirement system and, bingo, the door of the trap falls. This, we are told, is the American Dream. I fear it has become so.
I lived years ago in a second-hand house trailer in the woods. I do not know what it cost, or would cost today, but perhaps fifteen thousand dollars. It was perfectly comfortable, warm in winter, air-conditioned in summer. Mornings were blessedly quiet unless you regard birdsong as noise. A brick barbecue provided a place to produce ribs and drink bourbon and water. A couple of companionable dogs rounded out the ensemble. They had the run of the trailer, as was right.
Now, living in a trailer is to the consumerist sensibility simply too degrading and so…I mean, my god, how could you face the neighbors? (There weren’t any.) But aside from damage to a servile dependent vanity, what is the drawback? A couple of hundred dollars buys a remarkably good stereo, music is free, libraries are good, and I for one am more comfortable in jeans and tee shirt than in Calvin and Klein trappings.
When your expenses are few, your susceptibility to economic serfdom is small. You do not need to work miserably in a pointless job for a boss you would gleefully strangle. Yes, you need money. The first principle is never to work in a job that you cannot afford to quit. This means avoiding any job with a retirement, of which you will become a prisoner. The second principle is to work at something portable that you can do independently and, preferably, without capital. Retirement? Save.
Dentistry pays well but requires pricey equipment, and it is not easy to build a clientele. An automotive mechanic is always in demand and the employer will usually provide the tools. Writing is a serviceable gig and can be done from anywhere. Many varieties of technicians readily find jobs. Remember that white-collar work, aside from tending strongly to entangle you, gets boring. Get a commercial-diving ticket, take a serious course in the repair of marine diesels, and spend your life in the Pacific.
Here again the obstacles are fear, inertia, and vanity. If you come from a family on the suburban-death track, the thought of being a mere mechanic or dive-shop owner or what have you may be disturbing. "Don’t I need a college degree to hold my head up?" Look at the universities, at what they have become, and ask the question again. (Anyway, respectable in whose eyes? Your own are the only ones that count.)
Finally, work the system. The government, if you let it, will take roughly half of your income, give much of it to useless bureaucrats, much to various forms of welfare, use much to bomb countries you may have no desire to bomb, and much to force upon you services, such as horrible schools, that you do not want. The central question regarding government is whether you can take more from it than it takes from you. It is much better to receive than to give. Live cheap, work only as much as you like, enjoy life, and keep your taxes down.
You will still read of the rot and running sores of a declining culture, but it will bother you less. These things are your problem only to the extent that you feel yourself to be part of the society that produces them. Don’t fight the government, as it will win. Don’t try to reform society, because you can’t. Laugh at it. Live well. Read much.

May 31, 2005

Working on something...

2009-02-08T22:44:00.003-06:00

can't really make it come out right, I'm having a strange sort of a writer's cramp or something.
In the meantime, have a little fun with this:

Haaaaaa!

Went for an amazing bike ride today in Kenosha; it was a little cold, but what a wonderful reprieve it was to be riding outside in the first week of February. The memory will have to hold me over the next several weeks as the weather fluctuates it's way towards spring...
Have to say tho how much my riding muscles have changed over the past few months. I rode as hard and as fast as I wanted to (since the trails were empty), in the highest gear, tearing it up, and barely got winded-- it was an incredible thrill. Where you can go in the summer and ride that hard I have no idea... it's addictive, exhilarating, and maybe it's time to get myself a helmet;-)
Went to Frank's Diner as well and had a lot of fun hanging with people who are fun and sassy in a way I only get to pretend daily that I'm NOT. Grace and I have been fighting lately, so it was nice to take the girl out to see the world as it isn't, but could be. It breaks my heart that her world is so small...

Pictures of You:

2009-02-03T18:56:00.002-06:00

Heard this on satellite radio tonight, and it struck me cold:

Seems like any time the world has something to say to me, it does so in a song. Could be a tune I've heard 100 times and glossed over, but for some reason at that moment in time, it resonates, gets my attention, and turns out there's a lesson in it that relates to something I've been trying to figure out. Strange.

This song was released in 1989, the exact year I inexplicably picked up and left my life behind and never looked back...

Only to discover years later that a portion of my head is still stuck back there, trying to make sense of why I went away and filter through the effect it had on the people and places I left behind. But I'm finding now that this process of remembering, looking back, trying to recall: "why did this happen?", "how did this all come together?", is hard to do on your own.

Over the past few months (years, really) I've spent a great deal of mental energy trying to put all the pictures in my head together, figure it out, over and over again... and I've finally come to realize that it's beyond my reach; my memory is too spotty, it's all too far away. But now, with the acknowledgment that there's a whole community of people outside my head who have in their possession *exactly* what I'm missing, I've determined:

What I need is a reunion of my very own, comprised of all the people within our large, yet fairly contained assemblage of misfits to come together, bearing photos, memories and stories to help bring it all full circle. From my new perspective, it's amazing to see the connections; those who were linked directly, those in the periphery, all connected, each with a story to tell.... from the suburbanite preppy guy with the new wave hairdo to the grungiest of the punk scene, there's a link somehow.

I'm not completely sure how it would come together, a party of sorts. Rent a warehouse, set it up with a conversation room, a crazy dancefloor a la Medusas, photos scanned and projected on the walls (have I been to too many raves? Maybe..)? But for me, hearing it, feeling it, being in the moment for just a few hours in contact with the people I knew when my world was being formed would be just what I need to feel that it actually meant something... something worth remembering, that strangely continues to make its presence known all these many years later.

Smoove B's Recipes for Seduction:

2009-02-01T00:16:00.004-06:00

From the Onion:

Carrot Chocolate Chip Muffins
Smoove B
Many a novice love man errs on the side of putting too much emphasis on the dinner as a means of seduction. This is a mistake. One must remember that all snacks and courses that you prepare for your girl are part of the larger seduction. Often missed but highly important is the fare you provide for her after a long night of sweet lovemaking. The correct breakfast-time food can be the ticket that she will redeem for another night of seduction and doggy style sexing.
Smoove likes these Carrot Chocolate Chip Muffins in his morning meal, easy to prepare and moist. Enjoy.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
2 large eggs
2/3 cup of sugar
1 1/2 cups of finely shredded carrots
1/4 cup orange juice
5 tablespoons of warm, melted unsalted butter
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts
1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips
The first thing that you will want to do is pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. While the oven is heating to this temperature, you will want to grease a 12 muffin tin pan with either butter or non-stick cooking spray. I prefer the cooking spray as it is easy and does not add flavors you may not want. If you prefer your muffins extra buttery, I would then recommend the melted butter.
The next step to take is to mix the eggs and sugar together in a small bowl. Add the finely shredded carrots to this bowl and let the mixture sit for 10 minutes. If you have any doubts as to whether the carrots are shredded finely enough, ask yourself, "Are these carrots shredded finely enough?" If the answer is no, then I suggest that you discard the ones you have and shred some more. Many questions about cooking can be answered if you look deeply within yourself.
Next, grasp a larger bowl and mix together the flour and other dry ingredients, including the spices. Set that bowl aside.
When the carrots have been sitting in the mixture for the required 10 minutes, add the orange juice, butter, walnuts and chocolate chips to that bowl. Now add the contents of that bowl into the bowl containing the flour and seasonings. Make sure that you mix gently. It is important that the mixture is not over mixed. Unlike yourself, the batter should not be smooth.
Add the combined mixture to the individual muffin tins. Let the muffins cook for 15 to 20 minutes, or if you think they are done insert a toothpick into the center of one. If the toothpick comes out clean, the muffins are completed. Let the muffins cool for five minutes, then remove from the tin.
One thing that you may want to do is make a loud noise about five minutes before the muffins are done so that your girl wakes up and walks into the kitchen just as the muffins are cooling. Have a selection of juice and expensive coffee ready for her. And also have cream.
Smoove out.
More recipes:
Lobster For Two
Quail For Two
Corn For Two

Smoove's kind of politics :

Oh! And it's *finally* happened... another of my fantastic ideas has been burgled, stolen out from under me. I've said many a time over the past few months that my beloved iPhone has identified and met my every need: to satisfy my curiosity (Google), find my way (Mapquest), chat with friends (via Facebook), even to get a little jiggy with the husband via texting, wheeeee!
But there's been one leetle tiny thing that's missing.
Enter the iPhone vibrating massager app:

Gee... I wonder what THAT's for???

I really don't think I'm ready to take my relationship with my phone to that next level, but since it was free, I downloaded it anyway;-)

But I'm totally not getting this: well, not today anyhow...

Beat box:

2009-01-28T21:44:00.005-06:00

If I could pick one song to illustrate what's going on in my head at any given moment in time, I think it would have to be this:

Which should hopefully explain why I always seem to be a little distracted... it's nothing personal, you see;-)

I was THRILLED to discover yesterday that there are people roaming the planet who remember Medusa's; was starting to think it was a figment of my imagination...
Turns out there's a whole Facebook group devoted to the place, with tons of music to download to assist me in my reminiscing. I guess the best part, in addition to being able to hear the music again (which is one of the few ways I am able to remember things) is the realization that I am not the only one who has found the last 20 years of adult entertainment to be disappointingly pallid in comparison to the strange, wonderful times we had.
Or does the very experience of being an adult just spoil things anyway?
Sometimes I wonder if that's why I stopped my travels, because I just got to be too old and no longer able to see the point of it anymore.
Ohwell, can't beat one's biological destiny, not usually at least... now I'm just waiting to get older and move past this phase, when I hope that the process reverses itself and I can go back to having fun again;-)

Until then, I'll keep playing Beat Box in my brain and looking a little distracted...

Have a little fun with these:
The Main Room
The Video Room

Oh! And this too:

Happy, Happy Day!/Middle Eastern Lentil Soup

2009-01-25T19:36:00.006-06:00

Couple things:
First, not only was I able to confabulate far enough in advance to plan and coordinate a trip for the kids today that was super awesome (and actually WORKED OUT; how often does THAT happen?!?), but was able to find a decent recipe for my favorite Middle Eastern soup:

PUREED LENTIL SOUP - SHAWRBAT `ADAS MAJROOSHA
(Serves from 8 to 10)

1 Tablespoon olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
1 small hot pepper, finely chopped (I used red pepper flakes)
8 cups water (I used 4 cups chicken broth, 4 cups water and a little bouillon)
1 cup split lentils, rinsed (I totally cheated and used yellow split peas, which was plenty tasty...)

2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cumin (I toasted 1/2 tsp cumin seed and added it as well)
1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Pinch of saffron
2 Tablespoons white rice, uncooked (skipped this, might add a couple carrots next time..)
1/4 cup lemon juice

Heat oil in a saucepan and sauté onions and hot pepper over medium heat for 10 minutes. Add remaining ingredients, except lemon juice, and bring to boil. Cover and cook over medium heat for 25 minutes. Puree; then return to saucepan and reheat. Stir in lemon juice; then serve.

MMmmmmmmm! Shahrazad-a-licious!

Oh, and most importantly:

After enough collective moments of pontification and random bits of insight, I was FINALLY able to make some progress regarding the teenage angst that I've had such a hard time identifying and resolving all summer, and it's about freaking time...

To wit; I've recently joined Facebook, which over the past few days has brought to the forefront ever so painfully how bad I have been over the years at establishing and maintaining relationships with *anybody* thru the course of my lifetime. Whereas the few people I've "friended" have set up their pages and have gone about getting scads of people here and there to become their "friends" (it's an evolutionary process you can see unfolding as people you're friends with make other friends and then can see the friends of their friends and add them once they determine that they sat next to them in the third grade, etc and etc), I've pretty much reached my saturation point pretty early in the game. To make matters worse, I've spent quite a bit of time now wracking my brain trying to remember the names of people I've known over the years, and to be honest-- either I have no recollection whatsoever of their identifying characteristics such that I can find them, or it's highly unlikely they will remember me any better than I remember them, gar! And in addition-- and perhaps worst of all-- as I've been peeking into the pages of those I'm closely related to, I've come to realize that I had NO IDEA how little I know about them, their lives, their families, and how little they know of mine (and then vacillating on wishing that MORE of my family had Facebook pages so I could peek into their lives as well).

I've said in one of my few lucid moments of self awareness over the years that one of the strangest aspects of my life is that there are very few witnesses to who I've been-- very infrequent visits to the homeland, contacts with childhood friends, old boyfriends, school teachers, etc. All the ghosts of my past are far far away, and are rarely-- if ever-- revisited, barely remembered, and over time the memories have faded into nonexistence. New life experiences quickly took over the void that was to become my past, and then POOF! It was as if the first 18 years of my life never happened.

When you add the fact that I have the worst memory ever and barely remember the details of really *anything*, it's not hard to imagine how I was able to develop over the years the ability to keep reinventing myself-- new jobs, locales, people I've interacted with in a superficial and temporary way for years and years, none of whom I've really kept in touch with as I kept mindlessly putting one foot in front of the other. Logistically, I have turned my back on as many as 10 different lifetimes, each full of coworkers, neighbors, jobs, life experiences... never to return. And it's not as if I had set out to do it intentionally-- it's just what I'm good at, what comes naturally to me.

So with the recent advent of my school reunion (sorry to beat THAT horse for the 80 millionth time but it's what got this ball rolling in the FIRST place...), and now this existential Facebook crisis, I've come to realize that I've spent the past 20 years drifting through life in a constant state of new people and new things, day after day after day, while never looking back, expecting to settle down, make friends, put down roots, or touch anything in an meaningful way. I get too close; I get nervous, I keep moving. Life is messy, and I prefer not to get involved... and now it's becoming a pattern: I avoid doing the same things over and over, going the same places, because I don't want to be recognized, be accountable. And strangely, without my even knowing it, what was once a novelty has evolved into a pathology... and so it goes.

And all these many years it's worked for me, never been a problem-- until things like reunions and social networking sites force you to pause and look back on your life, take an inventory, and make you realize that while the past 20 years may have offered you an interesting amalgam of life experiences and novelties to chat about wittily at a cocktail party, you don't have much of substance to show for it.

And that's IT! That's the angst that's been driving me to distraction for months now on end.

Yippie yahooey, hip hip hooray, I figured it out!... And while I'm glad to have THAT mess all sorted out into a tidy pile, the real work begins of how to fix it, start forming relationships with people that will "stick"....and I have no idea how to go about it.

Zip.

Nada.

Zero.

But what is it that they say? A fault recognized is half corrected??

All I can do is hope that the same Facebook mojo that helped me discover the origin of my internal conflict will also assist me in finding a resolution, that magically after all these years I will overcome my distrust of all things human and finally settle down;-)

It can happen...

No no I can't change...

2009-01-19T20:19:00.004-06:00

After the summer of revisiting my unresolved teenage angst (which remains unresolved, I tell you-- gah!) and the daily experience of moving amongst my fellow peoples, trying to keep them blissfully unaware of my constant inner struggle to be a responsible grownup: stay in one place, work one job, and not flit from one thing to another to another... I'm a wee bit tapped out.

(I finally cleaned up my resume today to make it look less schizophrenic for yet another job interview... but how to mask the fact that I am working 3 different places concurrently? And does that look attractive to a future employer or just scary flaky? Mental note to self, tho: make sure not to reference those jobs I took off the resume...)

Every day I try try try to not fantasize about packing the car and heading west, resist the urge to troll the on line catalogs of the local technical colleges in search of another occupation or job skill to add to the pile, or say "screw it!" and book a one way ticket to Disney World (they need nurses, don't they?) But again, suppressing those urges is a kindof exasperating, neverending mental journey: I look at all the nice, grounded people around me and wonder how they can stand living in the same place, doing the same things, working where they do for 20 some odd years AND NOT LOSE THEIR FREAKIN MINDS.

Yeah, I wonder that all the time... wonder how many other wander-y type folks are out there hanging close to home in the name of security.

But enter the Verve, and their most splendid song that was played in spin class tonight: We were all chugging along, spinning around 90-100 rpm's, at the highest resistance we could tolerate-- the perfect, crystalline kind of intensity and level of exhaustion that causes your brain to lock onto the lyrics--anything-- just to get you through...

yeah, THESE guys get it:

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life

Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die

I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down

You know the one that takes you to the places where all the veins meet yeah

No change, I can't change I can't change, I can't change

But I'm here in my mind, I am here in my mind

But I'm a million different people from one day to the next

I can't change my mind

No, no, no, no, no, no, no,no,no,no,no,no

Well I never pray, but tonight I'm on my knees yeah

I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah

I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now

Free, yes--if only for a moment-- and then it's back to the grind tomorrow...

But by my calculations, there's only approximately 2,364 days left before I can run away and join the circus, giving me *plenty* of days left to practice my trapeeze act;-)

p.s. the way this guy walks through the crowd in step with the music reminds me of how it feels when you wear your iPod to the WalMart, very surreal, and far more entertaining than it would be otherwise;-)

Bad, Bad, Blogger!

2009-01-18T21:48:00.003-06:00

I must admit wholeheartedly that I suck lately as a blogger... only blogging once a week or less is unexcusable-- bizarre almost-- for a constant blabber and ruminator such as myself. I've started blogs, but finding them too morose or deep or someothersuch unpleasant stuff, have archived them in my "drafts" pile to be laughed at another day (or deleted, whatever comes first).
Anyhoo, that's where I stand when it comes to blogging lately, and if you are a regular peruser I do apologize for being a disappointment and all, as there are far too many things of a dull and disappointing nature this time a year and I certainly regret adding to the pile;-)
I have been languishing lately myself with the winter doldrums; nothing to do, too cold to venture out, tired of staying home with my frienemy the "Blockbuster rental club" (which to me is only the saddest and smallest step above watching television, sigh!) I discovered that you can watch bootlegged movies and shows on your computer recently, which was a naughty thrill for a minute or so, but with the fear of getting in big-ole trouble and not being too terribly interested in sitting there anyway, I quickly lost interest and was back to being pretty bored again:-(

So long story, short: I dragged the boys out to go ROLLERSKATING last night!!!
Soooo cheezewad, yet so dang cool, all at the same time.
Used to be we'd kick it old school style at the Red's Roller Rink back in the day, going round and round and round and round, over and over, bla bla. I remember the really odd arcade games they had-- old ones-- pizza and nachos at the snack bar, the dice game, Hokey Pokey, whatever.

I never was a very good skater, per se, never had the "moves" (and I vaguely remember taking a skating class of some sort there, wonder why??). Sooooooooo fast forward to today, where I'm once again the dork on skates, albeit older, and still trying not to fall on my ass and make a fool of myself (and all too excruciatingly aware of the $$ iPhone in my pocket).

And who'd a thunk it, but there were kids there who were the most AMAZING skaters: dancing to the funky beat of the music, skating sideways, doing choreographed moves, etc, like a really entertaining flash from my childhood in the 70's. I never knew that kids still hung out at the skating rink perfecting their moves, that white kids from the county were capable of gettin' their groove on to hip hop music, and it was completely fun to watch and not so bad a workout for my long neglected skating muscles. Jake and I even held hands and skated together, one of the most fun dates we've had in a while, yay!

Jake his own self then insisted that since he was sucha good sport with the skating, we were somewhat obligated to try something of his choosing: So off to Lapham Park we went today to try cross country skiing, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Now of course I have no idea how to ski, being somewhat of a hater of cold, frozen toes and the likelihood of breaking a bone. But it was a good time... Jacob did his little "Jacob thing" of making everyone wait over and over and over for him to catch up (no, he doesn't know how to ski either but the kid does that on the bike trail as well, making every trip somewhat lomger and less fun that if he weren't mr pokey), but all in all, it was a good time. I can totally see Jake and I taking up some of these sports and really having a good time with them, and I can't express enough how nice i is to be excited about the prospect of something new for a change:-)

Being the shopper/researcher, I had to check out the costs of some newer skis, some of those "skate skis" that almost everyone else had (which looked like a TON of fun!) online tonight. But wow! Expensive! And since I'd really like to go back, here's a list of groomed trails in Wisconsin for you to marvel at...

Tired! Have a good night, y'all:

Pizza (and Madonna)!

2009-01-07T17:36:00.005-06:00

Now I'd be the first to admit that I am no fan of Madonna-- never liked her tinny, babygirl voice, her persona... not even waaaay back in the 80's when I was young and impressionabe (as opposed to now, when I'm old and impressionable, no?). But I like this remix, the melody is haunting:
(there's no video, so just go about your business as you listen)

Pizza for dinner!
Used a Martha Stewart recipe for the crust, +/- a few variations:

Mix together and allow to sit until yeast proofs:
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tb sugar
1 1/2 tb dry yeast

and then add 1/4 cup olive oil (I used the stored oil from the chicken confit and tossed in 4 of the garlic cloves baked in the confit, making this quite possibly the best pizza I've ever eaten...my mouth is happy happy happy)

Pour into Kitchenaid mixing bowl fitted with bread dough attachment and add 2 cups whole wheat flour and 2 cups unbleached flour. Knead on medium for 2 minutes, adding flour if needed until dough pulls away from sides of bowl.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees and turn oven off. Cover mixing bowl with plastic wrap and place in warm oven on a potholder for an hour to rise. Then have at it!
**It's a sticky dough, so you'll need to use a good amount of flour on your work surface and rolling pin, and use cornmeal on your baking pan**

Using the dough, I made a pepperoni (bake at 450 until done to your satisfaction) and an artichoke goat cheese pizza , day-um! They were both fabulous:-)

More Food Blogging/French Food

2009-01-05T19:00:00.004-06:00

My 11 year old is becoming a Francophile-- strangely and unfathomably enamored of all things French, especially those things he can put in his mouth.

More specifically, he has developed a fascination with confit, a type of meat that is slow poached in it's own fat (yes, you read that correctly). Kid's been bugging me to make it for weeks... I bought a duck for this very purpose ($9.99/lb!), but found a cheater recipe using chicken leg quarters and olive oil, so mr ducky can stay in the freezer for a while longer while we contemplate his fate.

Never one to follow a recipe, I had to be the knob who has no idea what she's doing and mess with hundreds of years of French cuisine. So instead of just putting the chicken in the olive oil as instructed, I covered it with a thin layer of hen of the woods mushrooms and baked the whole mess for two hours at 300 degrees. Once it was done I made this for dinner, tossing in some of the wild mushroom confit, chopped, in addition to sauteeing some fresh portabellas as instructed. Pretty tasty, I must say. The sauce was lacking a little something in the way of moisture... maybe I need to toss the pasta with a little olive oil, add more pasta water, I dunno. But the dish had a depth of rich flavor that I've never experienced before, and was well worth the effort and/or yuck factor of eating oil poached food.

I am also on a mission to make a tarte tatin sometime this week and an apple cake for Emily's birthday. I also have to make a key lime pie for a co worker who is due to have her baby this week and a strawberry rhubarb apple pie for a party on Saturday.. egads! It's like Christmas baking all over again!
I loves me some tasty pie!

Another Ode to Winter:

2009-01-03T13:08:00.004-06:00

Probably my new favorite band of late, gives kindof an epic band/renaissance faire sort of vibe (and I really don't care for that place, so go figure..).
I've been trying like crazy to find ways to appreciate the season, pay tribute to it in some way other than bundling up and getting out in it, a very counter intuitive, fairly unsuccessful method, but the best I can muster. It's almost maple sugar time coming up in a few weeks, so I'll have to bite the bullet and get used to spending a fair amount of time sitting out the cold tending the fire, if only in anticipation of another large batch of tasty, homegrown maple-y syrup.

Also, in the spirit of the season, I've decided to post my "resolutions", such as they are. Here goes, scoff if you must:
They cut down on the # of spin classes they're offering at the gym, maybe due to the recession and dwindling memberships, dang! So I've decided to select 3 days a week where I'll try like hell to get there and do spin class and whatever other classes/weight lifting I can squeeze in on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. I can fit in other days as well as my schedule permits, but those are going to be the core days I know I'm pretty likely to go. On the off days, I'd like to do a yoga/bellydance/pilates DVD for at least 30 minutes a day, and any other push ups, mini workouts--whatever-- I can fit in here and there throughout the day. The goal here being that I would like to get down to 130-125# (if I can) and maintain that weight forevahhhhhh!
Other things include:
Putting up a chickenwire fence along the property line so we can let the chickens out to graze daily for a while. Turns out if they don't get to eat a fairly routine ration of grass, their eggs won't be all that rich in gamma linoleic acids and other beneficial stuff that make them better than store bought. They get outside now every so often, but the naughty little biddies always end up going to the neighbor's yard and trashing their gardens, not cool! Not sure why they insist on leaving-- it's not as if we don't have enough space for them to roam-- but their grazing got seriously curtailed of late since they decided to leave the yard on a routine basis.

Oh! And this may sound cruel to you non-country folks, but I want to start getting my pullets in November and raising them in the basement/garage thru the winter until they get big enough to go out to the coop. That way, they'll lay from March until it gets really cold (November/December), at which point we'll cut off their little heads and turn them into stew/stock chickens. I hate tending them with a mad passion in the freezing winter, always feel terrible that they're out there freezing their lil' chickie girl cloacas off. Oh yeah, and they don't lay for crap, either. One or two eggs a week???? With feed prices at $14/bag???
Ah! What tasty stock they will make!

I'd also like to get a spring pig to live in a little corner of the garden plot; he'd help amend the garden soil with his rooting and manure in fabulous ways, and then be ever so appreciated once he made it to the freezer, oink;-)

You see, I've been doing all sorts of library perusing lately--my favorite "avoid the cold" activity-- including all the Michael Pollan books and films, and recently, "Anti Cancer, a New Way of Life" by David Servan-Schreiber. Over the years I've adopted most of the methods contained therein: avoiding chemicals that have mutagenic properties (all household cleaners, instead using Dr Bronners and vinegar; no non stick cookware; no artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets; very little artificial sweeteners other than stevia, low exposure to high fructose corn syrup, etc and etc), but it's been hard to switch over to primarily grass fed meats and dairy, which is downright ridiculous in this area since we are awash in local farms who employ healthy farming practices--moreso than probably any other area of the country! Last time I went to the local coffee spot, in wanders a family from 3 towns over (Racine) who were on their way to pick up their unpasteurized milk from a local farmer and I thought "wow! How lucky we are to be so close" (and also had to laugh at how weirded out the people were that everyone in the shop was talking to them as if they knew them. Ho Ho! Welcome to the country, where we're not afraid to talk to strangers, lol;-) In a 15 mile radius alone, we have an organic dairy, grass fed beef ranches, free range chickens and eggs, turkeys, a CSA, and an organic bakery.

In any event, it's a great place to live and we're very blessed to be here, and since I've been working so much it's more than time for me to put my $$ where my mouth is-- literally. I want to get set up with the dairy people, order 1/4 grass fed cow, and hike out to my chicken lady, and be even more conscious about how we eat so not only we can live a more healthful life and pass those values on to our kids, but support local farmers who are risking *everything* to do the right thing... the trickle down damage of commercial agriculture to pollution of our waterways, soil, greenhouse emissions, etc and the damage it is doing to our health is staggering. Just about any acquired disease you can name has it's roots in the quality of the food we eat... bla bla bla bla blah! Ok, rant over.

I want to plant more berry bushes, including blackberries and blueberries, in the side prairie areas of the property, making more of a natural and useful barrier... I've planted a ton of bushes already, and it's been hit or miss as to whether or not they will survive, depending on the season. My theory is that you probably have to plant 3 before one will take, given our soil quality and my spotty tending abilities (it's not exactly easy to water certain parts of the propery). I also want to get more asparagus in as well, fun stuff to harvest once it gets established.

I''m going to be taking over the vegetable garden again this year, since I wasn't terribly thrilled with how Jake was handling things over the past couple years;-) We had more weeds growing than the plants were able to compete with, mainly 'cause I don't think he ever connected with the idea that weeding is an ongoing thing you have to conquer from the get-go, and wrestle with until the end of the season. That, and eradicating the slugs, and potato and cucumber beetles that destroyed everything, etc and etc. Dude can plant the heck out a garden, but tending is clearly not his forte. I'm going to use the straw mulch method again this year, since there are so many weed seeds in the soil that I'd probably lose my mind and break my back trying to keep abreast of them. I'm going to have to figure out what to plant that will store well, and then set up a storage area that we can use (the garage, we're finding, is MUCH too COLD). I'd also like to harvest more of the apples and pears and save them/make pie apples for the freezer and apple/pear butter for winter. Oh! And a cold frame to plant lettuces and spinach, and maybe beans and beets as well.

I'm sure there's a lot more, but I'm tired of sitting here when I have a million things to do... I'm working a ton over the next few weeks, and in addition to still needing to cook and keep the house and kids in order, I'm still going to hold myself to exercising to keep myself sane and all the other things I like to do to feel like a human being (read, sew, knit, plan gardens... I have wayyyy to damn many hobbies, no?).

More later:

The Final Pig Out:

2009-01-01T23:25:00.000-06:00

It seems as if everything lately can be described by what I am preparing, putting in my mouth-- and maybe that's appropriate for this time of year.
It's been a busy past few weeks of working too much, at the hospital and a few days at camp, and I can't even begin to put a recap on it since it was all happening too fast and I wasn't probably paying very good attention anyway;-)

Christmas was quite nice, one of the best parts being the dark chocolate volcano cakes I made and served with espresso bean ice cream (seriously, it was nothing short of dreamy). Camp was also good, despite the suck-o weather (50 some degrees and pouring the day we got there, but it improved pretty quickly. The kids still got to ski and sled, and no one got hurt, yay! And the camp food was ever so camp-a-licious..)
I got called in to work on all the days I was told I wasn't going to, including New Year's Eve, when my wonderful co worker saved my ass by calling me 15 minutes before I was scheduled to start my shift vs the night before as the charge nurse was supposed to do (and believe it or not, I was only 3 minutes late, not too shabby. I looked like a scary hag with major bedhead, but all my patients were sedated and no one complained...). So instead of running up to the Milwaukee Public Market and picking up some sushi grade tuna that day as I had planned (to make this super yummy dish a la "Heaven City"), I ended up running around like an idiot trying to create a new menu from thin air and purchase food after a killer, no-dinner-and-no-potty breaks-nonstop workday.
Since the meat markets were already closed, Jake and I flew over to one of the few places other than WalMart that was still open: a strange little store in New Munster called "Best Bargains" that is an impormptu cross between a restaurant supply company and maybe a Mexican market (sans Mexicans, go figure).
Anyhoo, here's what we came up with by the seats of our pants:

Grilled strip steaks with a thyme and Cotes du Rhone reduction sauce (so tasty!)

Alaskan King Crab legs with drawn butter and lemon

Scallops fra diavolo with linguine-- amazing!

Oven roasted asparagus

Wild mushrooms(from the groovy mushroom store) with carmelized onions

and finally, a really yummy chocolate cream pie (and not so hard to make from scratch as the folks from Jello pudding would like you to believe).

Oh! And a Raspberry Tart brew from the New Glarus Brewing Company, so SO good!

And so now I'm done, back to the old grind of low carb/whole grain dieting, to drive the new layers of holiday blubber away that I worked so hard to pile on. The gym has sucked lately, too, since they've been closed a lot with the holidays and all the bad weather we've been having. That, and the spin classes have been PACKED, making getting a bike more competetive than I like at 8 in the morning.
All in all, probably one of the best holiday seasons EVER; low stress (+/- the huge family blowouts we had Christmas eve/day, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!), hanging out with friends and family (and we need to do MUCH more of that this year, it's a whole heap o fun).

Hope yours was just as nice... and if not, we have plenty of leftovers (if you're sweet, I may even let you have a taste of the Raspberry Tart brew, *maybe*...).

Happy 2009!

Winter Song:

2008-12-30T15:39:00.000-06:00

Dinner Par-Tay!

2008-12-14T23:15:00.003-06:00

Tonight's dinner event was a fantastic success, some of the best food I've ever prepared, some of the most fun I've had in quite a while:-)
To recap, I made:
A brined and butterflied turkey, baked at a high temp on a bed of homemade challah bread stuffing: the turkey was moist and flavorful, the stuffing hands down the BEST I've ever put in my mouth.
Praline sweet potatoes (of which I made waaaaay too many. There'll be leftovers for manymany days to come)
Kobucha squash (a bit overkill in the squash department, but it was a savory complement to the sweeter stuff)
Mashed potatoes and gravy: the gravy was *delectable*. Honestly, it was tasty enough to eat plain with a spoon, which was good considering it took about 3 hours to make.
Roasted brussell sprouts with brown butter and hazelnuts: excellent, truly. And well worth the hour I took to crack 80 gazillion hazelnuts 'cause no store in boonieland had shelled hazelnuts. Ow! My poor, sore crackin' hand:-(
Toasted rolls
Homemade cranberry orange sauce
I made the other cookies, too, that I listed previously, but man! What a waste of time and valuable cream cheese... the cocoa nut (?) and phyllo cookies were just plain gross, flavorless, nasty. The date nut balls more than made up for the yuckkiness, but what to do with all the other cookies??? (can chickens eat chocolate? I guess we're about to find out...maybe it'll inspire the little leakers to give me more than an egg every few days, those naughty girls.) I also made waaaay too many of those maple nut cups, hope the ladies at work are hungry tomorrow...
And to top it off, I made the bittersweet chocolate roulade cake, which was okay. Perhaps a little too much on the *bitter*sweet side, and very, very rich. Gorgeous, tho, and a lovely presentation.

It frightens me how well I can cook.
Yesterday, I baked from 10 am to just about 10 pm, sometimes prepping 3-4 dishes at the same time. I was cool as a cucumber, incredibly focused as I switched from one dish to the next, all the ingredients lined up, all the tools in order, the recipes on all the counters around me. I felt a bit like a conductor in the midst of my concoctions, tweaking flavors, enhancing this, blending that, putting it all together into a fantastic medley that was really incredible today, better than I could have ever imagined (altho with almost 20 hours of prep work and cooking, what else could it have been?).
Good, good stuff!
Note to self: the Heath dinnerware was handy, so so glad I was able to pick up about $3000 worth of it for $50 at the local resale shop, yippie yahooey! The serving pieces were perfect for all the side dishes, and we had more than enough place settings. We just need to pick up some glassware, pretty napkins, and more stemware, a few items I noticed we were lacking as Jake was pulling out the McDonald's commemorative Disney glasses (ack! My dirty little secret... those suckers NEVER break, and as such are some of the only glasses we own right now).

And finally, for all the work and effort, it was the most fun ever to have people over, having folks talking, eating, having a good time. Jacob was kindof frazzled to have to entertain little kids, but it's good for him, a bit like the little brothers I didn't provide for him;-)

33 Miles:

2008-12-09T21:20:00.005-06:00

I've fallen off the "Fat Flush" wagon in a major way today, making (and eating) cookies, scarfing on Triscuits.. (I <3<3 me some munchy crunchy triscuits!)

And after that admission, be both entranced and horrified at my new favorite spin class song:
"Up 2-3-4, Back 2-3-4, Sit 2-3-4..." over and over and over again, wheeeee! I could do it all dang day~

On a whole 'nother note, I made the date nut balls (recipe below) yesterday, and I have to tell ya, they're AMAZING! Kindof like the center of a 1000 Grand Bar, wrapped in coconut instead of chocolate. Yum like times a million... you can really taste the butter and richness of the dates, the vanilla, and the airy crunch of the Krispies, sooooooooo good!
I also made the "Chicken Kick" recipe (below), but skimped to make it a whole lot more time friendly: I couldn't find Andoullie sausage in these parts, so I bought some artichoke/mozzarella sausages instead and some jarred Bertolli Alfredo sauce, tossing in a chopped tomato at the last minute (vs making the relish). It was one of the few meals that ms. picky puss ate in months and months that she didn't grumble about; so for a brief shining moment, it was if the heavens themselves had parted and all was well with the world (cue hallelujah chorus, i.e. one of the less dim adolescent moments I've had in a while. Now if I could just figure out a way to include Captain Crunch and Alfredo sauce in every meal, it's sure to be bliss 'round here).

Oh, and I got a call tonight 'round about the time little dude's bus was to arrive back at school from skiing. Turns out the little goober went missing and was holding up the WHOLE SHOW. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be worried or just feign surprise for the lady who called, knowing that Jacob is mr. disappear-o when he doesn't want to stop doing something. Great. Three years ago he got lost on the ski hill when he and another 8 year old buddy somehow ended up on the biggest, baddest run they had (the dreaded Black Diamond, OooooOOoooooooo!). But other than looking a little freaked out, those boys were no worse for the wear. ME, on the other hand, OY! Anyhoo, all my little bugs are getting snug, and since the pellet stove is hooked back up, I'm ready to cozy up myself.

Gar!

2008-12-09T07:22:00.000-06:00

More of My Favorite (Forgotten) Recipes/Teriyaki Chicken Pita, Chicken Kick

2008-12-07T18:08:00.004-06:00

Chancery Teriyaki Chicken Pita
4 chicken breast halves (about 5 ounces each), cut in bite-size pieces
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup pea pods, stems removed
1 cup broccoli buds
1/2 cup red bell pepper strips
1 cup cut yellow squash, sliced in half-moon shapes
1 cup cut carrots, cut in very thin julienne strips
1/2 cup teriyaki glaze (see recipe)
8 slices jack cheese (1 ounce each)
4 pieces Greek pita bread
4 large lettuce leaves
4 pickle spears
In large oven-proof skillet, saute chicken pieces in oil. When chicken is almost cooked through, add vegetables and cook an additional 1 to 2 minutes. Vegetables should be bright and firm to the bite. Do not overcook. Add teriyaki glaze to coat vegetables and chicken. Shingle cheese over chicken and vegetables and set under broiler. Broil until cheese is melted, 1 to 2 minutes. Microwave pita bread 10 seconds. Pour vegetable-cheese mixture over pita bread. Fold pita over and secure with decorative pick. Set on large leaf of lettuce and garnish with pickle spear. Serve with french fries, 5-bean salad or pasta salad.
Makes 4 servings.
Teriyaki glaze:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup plus
2 tablespoons sugar
Pinch of minced fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons dry sherry
1 1/2 tablespoons pineapple juice
2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
In small, heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic powder, pepper, sherry and juice. Bring to simmer. Combine water and cornstarch; whisk together. Add to simmering liquid to thicken; continue to simmer 10 minutes. Put small, heavy-bottomed saute pan over medium heat. Add oil and seeds. Toast seeds until lightly browned. Immediately pour seed mixture into thickened teriyaki glaze to stop seeds from overtoasting; mix to combine. Use 1/2 cup with chicken/vegetable mixture. Reserve remaining glaze for another use.
Makes about 2/3 cup.

Chancery Restaurant Chicken Kick
Spicy tomato relish (see recipe)
Alfredo sauce (see recipe)
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cubed
1/4 cup vegetable oil
6 ounces julienne-cut red bell pepper (1 large)
8 ounces cooked andouille sausage (or precooked spicy Polishsausage), sliced on the bias
11 ounces dry penne pasta, cooked
1 tablespoon Poultry Magic (Cajun seasoning blend forblackening)

Prepare spicy tomato relish.
Prepare alfredo sauce and keep warm.
Saute chicken in oil in large, deep skillet. When half done, add red peppers and sausage. Cook over medium heat until chicken is cooked through.
Add Alfredo sauce, cooked pasta and poultry seasoning. Cook, tossing regularly, until mixture comes to a boil, then pour into serving bowl. Garnish with tomato relish.
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
Spicy tomato relish:
1 to 2 fresh jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely diced (or to taste)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/4 cup finely diced onion
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon Lawry's seasoning salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup diced fresh plum tomatoes cut into 1/4-inch pieces
Juice from half a lime
Combine all ingredients in bowl. Mix well.
Alfredo sauce:
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons chicken base
3 cups whipping cream
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons water
Place garlic powder and chicken base in saucepan. Add cream and heat, stirring occasionally. When hot,add Parmesan, stirring regularly until cheese melts. Add cornstarch that has been dissolved in water andcontinue to cook until sauce thickens enough to coat back of spoon. Remove from heat and keep warm.

Gone in the Morning:

2008-12-06T15:52:00.009-06:00

Just heard this song on the local radio station (WBSD, again the coolest radio station around)-- never heard it before, and what o what could it be??
Well, how great is it that I have this nifty application on my iPhone that can listen to any song and tell you what it is, and then gives you the option to purchase it via iTunes. So within like 15 seconds I not only knew what the song was, but bought it, watched the YouTube video, and then looked up the hilarious lyrics and laughed and laughed ("I'm gonna live inside a tiny zoo"???? Bwahahahaaaaaa!).

Lovelovelove my iPhone, glad to see that all the things I thought should have been invented eons ago finally exist.

One last thing:

I think I finally have my St Nick dinner menu planned. I'd like to make:

**Turkey a la Cooks Illustrated, roasted at a high temperature (with the breastbone removed, the turkey pounded somewhat flat, placed on a slotted rack over a tray of homemade challa bread and sausage stuffing)

*Praline sweet potatoes (more like a dessert than anything, but oh sooo goooood)

Oven roasted kobucha squash

**Toasted hazelnut and brown butter green beans or brussels sprouts

Mashed potatoes (yuk! but the kids like 'em...) (can you tell I've been reading Cooks Illustrated? Can't wait to try these):

Boil 2 # scrubbed russett or yukon gold potatoes in pan filled with water, covering the potatoes one inch. Bring to boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium low and simmer until potatoes are just tender, about 20 to 30 minutes. Drain. Set food mill over warm pan. Spear potato with dinner fork, and then peel back skin with a paring knife. Working in batches, cut peeled potatoes into rough chunks and process with food mill into pan. Str in 8 tb of butter, melted, 1 cup warmed half and half, and 1 1/2 tsp salt. Add pepper to taste.

*Gravy

**Baked Brie with cranberries

*With an assortment of cookies and a dark chocolate roulade cake for dessert.

Turkey???? You might be asking yourself... but since we don't host Thanksgiving, we don't get any leftovers, and thusly we were all left craving turkey and the subsequent Wild Rice and Turkey soup that's sure to follow (see post below for recipe) this year. So a fabulous brined and roasted turkey it will be!

*these can all be made in advance, **these can all be prepped in advance

Christmas Sweets/Date Nut Balls, Roulade Cake:

2008-12-06T11:18:00.005-06:00

Date Nut Balls (can be made ahead and stored)
Makes about 6 to 7 dozen

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 ½ cups sugar
2 cups finely chopped dates
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, well beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped nuts
4 cups crispy rice cereal
Sweetened shredded coconut (about 3 cups)

In medium pan, melt butter and sugar. Add dates and cook until mixture boils. Remove from heat. Whisk eggs into milk and stir into hot mixture with salt. Return to heat and boil 2 minutes. Remove from heat, add vanilla and nuts (tester used pecans). Cool completely, then stir in cereal, mixing until well coated. Shape into 1-inch balls, then roll in coconut.

What I'll be making for St Nick dessert:
Bittersweet Chocolate Roulade (from Cooks Illustrated): (make day before)

6 oz bittersweet (semisweet) chocolate, chopped fine
2 tb cold unsalted butter, cut into 2 pieces
2 tb cold water
1/4cup dutch process cocoa, sifted, plus extra for unmolding
1/4 cup unbleached, all purpose flour, plus more for baking sheet
1/8 tsp salt
6 large eggs, separated
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cream of tartar

Adjust rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Spray 12 by 17.5 inch rimmed baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray, cover bottom with parchment paper, and spray parchment with nonstick spray; dust surface with flour and tap out excess.

Bring 2 inches of water to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Combine chocolate, butter, and water in small heatproof bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Set bowl over pan, reduce heat to medium low, and heat until bitter is almost completely melted and chocolate pieces are glossy, have lost definition, and are fully melted around edges, about 15 minutes. Do not stir or let water boil under chocolate. Remove bowl from pan, unwrap, and stir until smooth and glossy. While chocolate is melting, sift 1/4 cup cocoa, flour, and sat together into small bowl and set aside.

In bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment, beat yolks at medium high speed until just combined, about 15 seconds. With mixer running, add half of sugar. Continue to beat, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary until yolks are pale yellow and mixture falls in thick ribbon when whisk is lifted, about 8 minutes. Add vanilla and beat to combine, scraping bowl once, bout 30 seconds. Turn mixture into medium bowl; wash mixer bowl and whisk attachment and dry.

In clean bowl with clean whisk attachment, beat whites and cream of tartar at medium speed until foamy, about 30 seconds. With mixer running, add about 1 tsp sugar; continue beating until soft peaks form, about 40 seconds. Gradually add remaining sugar and beat until whites are supple and glossy and hold stiff peaks when whisk is lifted, about 1 minute longer. Do not over beat. While whites are beating, stir chocolate mixture into yolks. With rubber spatula, stir 1/4 of whites into chocolate mixture to lighten it; fold in remaining whites until almost no streaks remain. Sprinkle dry ingredients over top and fold in quickly but gently

Pour batter into prepared pan; using an offset icing spatula and working quickly, even surface and smooth batter into corners of pan. Bake until center of cake springs back when touched with a finger, 8-10 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking. Cool in pan on wire rack for 5 minutes.

While the cake is cooling, lay clean kitchen towel over work surface and sift remaining tablespoon cocoa powder over towel; with hands, rub cocoa towel. Run paring knife around perimeter of baking sheet to loosen cake. Invert cake onto towel and peel off parchment.

Roll cake, towel and all, into jelly roll shape. Cool for 15 minutes, then unroll cake and towel. Using offset spatula, immediately spread filling over surface of cake, almost to edges. Roll up cake snugly. Set large sheet pf parchment paper on overturned rimmed baking sheet and set cake seam side down on top. Trim both edges on diagonal; spread ganache over roulade with small icing spatula. Use fork to make wood grain striations on surface of ganache before it sets. Refrigerate baking sheet with cake to set icing, about 20 minutes.

Filling:
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp finely ground espresso beans
6 tb confectioner's sugar
16.5 oz mascarpone (or cream) cheese

Bring cream to simmer i small pan over high heat. Off heat, stir in espresso and powdered sugar; cool slightly.
Beat mascarpone cheese and cooled cream until fluffy. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Dark Chocolate Ganache:
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tb unsalted butter
6 oz chopped bittersweet chocolate
1 tb cognac (optional)

Microwave cream and butter in measuring cup in high until bubbling, about 90 seconds. Place chocolate in heatproof bowl (or bowl of food processor fitted with steel blade). Pour hot cream mix over chocolate and sit of a minute, then mix until well incorporated (or pour hot cream thru feed tube and process about 3 minutes). Cool at room temp about an hour until spreadable.

Holiday Food that Rocks/Praline Sweet potatoes, Maple Phyllo Dessert Cups, Wild Turkey Soup, Baked Brie:

2008-12-03T16:09:00.009-06:00

Tried and true holiday food that will make your eyes roll heavenward in fits of ecstasy, but your booty more -licious than you might prefer:

Praline Sweet Potatoes
6 cups baked, mashed sweet potatoes (I mash 'em in the mixer, lazy girl style!)
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 tb pumpkin pie spice (or equivalent)
1 tb grated ginger (we likes the ginger!)
4 eggs
1 cup heavy cream

1 stick butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups chopped pecans

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a mixing bowl, combine the sweet potatoes, syrup, vanilla extract, spices, eggs and cream. Whip until light and fluffy, and spread evenly in buttered casserole dish.
Prepare the topping by combining the butter, brown sugar, flour and pecans (I used the food processor and pulsed until crumbly). Sprinkle over sweet potato mixture.
Bake for at least an hour in the preheated oven, maybe longer, until casserole is puffy in the middle and pecans are toasted.
Eat until the point of sickness like a little piggy.

Maple Phyllo Dessert Cups
two, 8 oz packages of cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup (real) maple syrup (preferrably from your own maple trees, he he. Martha ain't got nothing on this girl!)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp maple extract
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

40+ phyllo prebaked phyllo shells

1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup pecans, toasted and finely chopped

DIRECTIONS:
Blend first four ingredients together until well mixed. With balloon whip attachment, slowly drizzle in 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream until fluffy (3-5 minutes or so). Place mix into pastry bag fitted with star tip, and pipe into phyllo shells. Chill at least 3 hours. Drizzle each cup with remaining 1/4 cup maple syrup (1/4 tsp or so for each) and top with the pecans shortly before serving (any leftover mix is pretty fan-freaking-tastic on plain bagels the next day, mmmmm~).

Someone made a Baked Brie with Orange Cranberry Sauce for our work party yesterday, it was AMAZING. I'll try to weasel the recipe somehow and post it when I can:
(Updated ACTUAL recipe follows... I was close:)

1/2 package Puff Pastry Sheets
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup +/- cooled cranberry sauce (recipe follows)
1 (13.2 ounce) round Brie cheese, rind intact

DIRECTIONS
Thaw pastry sheet at room temperature 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix egg and water.
Unfold pastry sheet on lightly floured surface. Roll into 14 inch square. Cut off corners to make a circle. Spread preserves to within 1 inch of pastry edge. Sprinkle cranberries and almonds over preserves. Top with cheese. Brush edge of circle with egg mixture. Fold two opposite sides over cheese. Trim remaining two sides to 2 inch from edge of cheese. Fold these two sides onto the round. Press edges to seal. Place seam-side down on baking sheet. Decorate top with pastry scraps if desired. Brush with egg mixture.
Bake 20 minutes or until golden. Let stand 30 minutes to allow cheese to set. Serve with crackers, or a fork, whatev. I was craving this the whole dang week after I had it.

Cranberry Sauce (modified from Cooks Illustrated)
3/4 cup orange juice (or water)
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tb grated orange zest

1 bag fresh or thawed frozen cranberries (12 ounces)

In a medium saucepan, combine first 4 ingredients; bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring constantly, until sugar dissolves.
Add cranberries and continue simmering until cranberries pop and mixture has thickened; about 5 minutes.
Off heat, stir in 2 tb orange liqueur (Grand Marnier or Triple Sec)

After Thanksgiving Soup:
(best when prepared with Jake's wild turkey, but he didn't get one this year, bummer)
Place turkey carcass (as much of it as you can fit) into a large crock pot. Cover with water and a splash of apple cider vinegar (leaving room at top to boil), and heat on high until mix starts to boil. Turn on low, and forget about it for a while (or overnight).
Strain the broth, picking out all the decent meat off the bones, and save for the soup.
*The vinegar removes a lot of minerals from the bones, making the broth super rich and the bones really soft. I feed the softest, mushiest ones to the dogs for treats.
Cool the broth until the fat is solid and can be removed with a spoon; put fat aside in a bowl.
In large dutch oven/soup kettle, sautee in 1/2 cup of the reserved fat (or butter) until tender but crisp:
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 carrots, sliced (+/-, we like a lot of carrots)
2 cups sliced mushrooms (the hen of the woods we find across the street are always nice, but you can use white or baby portabellas, whatever you can forage at the grocery store, lol!)

Reduce heat, and sprinkle in 1/2 cup flour, stirring until bubbly and well mixed. Add broth slowly, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil, and add:
2 cups cooked wild rice
2 cups half and half (or heavy cream, or even whole milk if you prefer. It's all good.)
2 cups cooked, diced turkey
Parsley, pepper, garlic powder, dill, and chicken base to taste
Simmer for 30 minutes.

Jacob wanted me to add this one:

Jacob's "Da Bomb" (don't ask) Peppermint Fudge:
2 bags (11 oz) Ande's Candies chips
2 bags (12 oz) chocolate chips (your choice: milk, chocolate, semisweet, whatever you fancy)
2 14 oz cans sweetened condensed milk
dash salt
1 tsp peppermint extract

Heat the above in a large, heavy pan (we used our largest dutch oven), stirring constantly until melted and well incorporated. Pour into a 9x13 inch pan lined with wax paper. Crush as many peppermint candies as you feel like (up to a cup), and press into top of soft fudge. Cool slightly, and cut into 1 inch squares. Chill.

Floor, part deux:

2008-11-30T21:26:00.005-06:00

We're just DAYS away from having a new hardwood floor in the living/dining room, yay! Jake has been working at an insanely industrious clip, getting the particleboard ripped out, the plywood cut and nailed in place, and now is putting the planks in place.... what an amazing guy <3<3<3:-) We've really improved this rinky dink house 100 fold, having gone from particleboard floors, thin, barely insulated walls, and painted (!) countertops and cabinets that were falling off the walls to ceramic tile floors, gorgeous maple cabinets, stone fireplace (that used to have a pressed faux brick face that was ug-a-lee!), and soon, a beautiful honey oak floor. Now if we could only get the basement finished and the master suite done, we could rest easy for ever and for always and maybe FINALLY have people over (naahhhh, we can have people over once the furniture goes back to it's usual spots. I just really stink as a hostess, vacillating somewhere between Martha Stewart and Roseanne).

I would have preferred to put in a maple floor, but the oak was such a good bargain that we could hardly pass it up (almost 1/2 off per box!). And now that it's down, it looks perfect, a nice match for my Heywood Wakefield furniture (which is maple, but the color of the finish matches the floor pretty well, yippie yahooey...) Maybe an endless sea of maple throughout our tiny house would have looked tres monotonous, so the serendipitious bargain may have saved the place from looking goofy (like when my initial choice of countertops, the "black with groovy reflective specks in it" was no longer available...prolly would have given me a seizure or flashback every time I glanced at it).
Tired! More later...

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2008-11-26T10:04:00.007-06:00

This song made me really sad, and I can't articulate exactly why.

Here's a comment from another viewer, which is great, since I'm completely dense and missed all these nuances:
"Maybe I'm just up late, but I've been watching the Mes Aieux video several times, and, coming from a very rural area, I find it so poignant -- the teen girl trying to stuff the soil in her purse and running and running, yet stopping to get the purse when it falls -- symbolizing either trying to escape the land into modernity while not being totally willing to relinquish it, or desparately trying to hand it on to the young boy, who simply uses it to bury the picture? Either way...it moved me."
More discussion here:

I'm a big time cutter and paster today since I am engaged concurrently in a heated text discourse with my teen, who desperately wants to be ungrounded. I let her out for a couple hours yesterday after school, and sure 'nuff, shows up with a group of guys (where are the girls???) who look 'less than wholesome', shall we say.

I am sooooo tired of the overabundance of parents who could care less about their children, who have created a world of no rules and no expectations that has become an intoxicating lure for my daughter.

If I had my way, we'd have the basement finished and set up for the kids so they could have a (semi) private area to go when they have friends over. As it is, the kids have no privacy except in their rooms to visit with their friends, our house isn't too "kid friendly", and I don't know how to fix that. I hear stories of parents who have all their kid's friends over *all the time*, and I wonder what we're doing wrong.

Here's my best guess:

Neither one of the kids have friends whose parents are still together, and they have next to nothing in the way of limitations or boundaries. One boy's dad lets him watch rated "R" movies, play "M" rated video games, etc, "'cause I want to expose him to the world and so we can talk about it if he has any questions". Um, yeah. (and that was when the boy was 9. He has "girlfriends" now that he is infatuated with, kisses even, and the little guy is only 11 now. What's next?)
And I don't think any of the friends ever have chores or family responsibilities, so compared to other families we look like mean tyrants, making Jacob wait to play until his homework and chores are done, eat wholesome meals (with VEGETABLES, much to the horror of his friends, who are terrified to eat with us. The neighbor boy has to forage whatever leftover macaroni and cheese/bag of chips he can find on his own when he's hungry, doesn't often have family meals), and not allowing him to watch certain movies or play certain games. No wonder no one wants to come over:-(
We've tried to get the kids involved in local church activities over the years to meet kids who come from traditional families so we don't seem so foreign, but with only 1-2 kids of compatible age or gender who attend, it never seemed to work out. Now, the oldest one will only seek out kids whose lives are in chaos, doesn't even approach straight laced girls... (or girls at all. She likes to hang out with groups of scruffy guys, go figure).
In addition, my family is too far away, and after all these years am starting to feel really isolated on our beautiful 3 acre spot far out in the country. Boo.

Ok, melodramatic rant over.... I just feel a little sorry for my kids, is all. But that doesn't change the fact that girl child is still grounded, much to the pain of us all.

I've tried to isolate some of the issues we've had with her lately, and it's all common knowledge stuff for me, who has tried to keep certain crap out my house forever. After months of begging (from my husband, no less), I agreed to get better cable a few months ago, and so it's been a steady stream of junk TV in the house, stuff that's gross and vile: anything on MTV (that "Sweet 16" show makes my stomach turn, and it's not even that bad..), those modeling shows (again, not so bad. But a show that tears a girl's heart into pieces and stomps on it is just wrong), "Bad Girl's Club", "Housewives of Whatever County", ick and ick. I know the world is a soulless pit, and I don't want to be intimately exposed to it hour after hour (girl watches a lot of television, flipping and flipping and flipping the channels, it's completely maddening. And since the only TV we have at the moment with our remodeling is adjacent to the kitchen where I spend most of my time, I have to be a witness to it a great deal more than I care to).

In an effort to get my house back, I cancelled the extended cable today, but would find it the fulfillment of my greatest dreams to get rid of the stoopid cable altogether. I hatehatehate TV with a mad passion, and have since I was a kid. Never in a million years would have thought that I'd be assaulted with an idiot box in nearly every room of the house... gar! Grace is going to be even MORE mad when she finds out... but the remaining issue is that she makes it next to impossible to regulate anything, flies into shrieking hysterics anytime we restrict or limit access something she wants. So instead of saying "you can watch this show, but not this one" and having her honor that without much drama and misery for everyone, I know I just have to cancel it. Which is too bad, 'cause some of the shows on the History and Discovery Channel are pretty nifty, but we didn't get to watch them often anyway with girlchild forever stationed at the helm of the remote.

I also did something very dumb, but don't know how to rectify it. A couple years ago, daughter got an MP3 player and it was nothing but grief for the entire family. The music she put on it was ghastly (seriously, it was BAD-- really, really bad.) and it was a constant struggle to find out what she was pumping directly into her brain at all hours of the day and night. She completely disengaged from the family every chance she got, wearing that thing so she never had to be present with us, and made every limitation of volume, listening times, a battle to the death. Finally, one day it suffered some sort of tragic accident (can't remember if I was responsible or not, girl is pretty hard on her stuff) and life has improved greatly ever since then. Now, she just listens to her "gangster rap" (wo knew so many songs could be devoted to women's vaginas?) on the dreaded "My Space" and tries to push the envelope that way, sharing it with the whole family so we can be collectively horrified at the vagina songs. But it's better than it was, there's no denying that.

So what does yours truly, Queen of Stupid, get her daughter for St Nick???

Another MP3 player-- gar! It's not like I've given it to her yet, so the stupid can be undone, but WHAT DO I GIVE HER INSTEAD??????? It's the only thing she requested, so the sheep in me was more than happy to pick one up and not have to think too hard, but I KNOW it will be a tool of my undoing in a few months when her attitude becomes even more unbearable-- and I will only have myself to blame.

Any and all suggestions will be graciously appreciated. Seriously. Her only interests are television, My Space, and really bad music. I'd love to sign her up for an activity or lessons, but have no idea what to try anymore (tried to get her interested in being in a band a couple years ago, gave her a year of $$ bass lessons, to no avail).

Jacob got a season of skiing, how cool is that?

Let It Rock:

2008-11-24T20:03:00.008-06:00

Another profound spin class song, frought with meaning:
Even tho the lyrics are sort of disturbing, the beat gets you in a sexy frame of mind... and before you know it, your floppy spots are flapping, sweat starts dripping in your eyes, and you and everyone else in the class is making sweet bumipty love to their spin bikes.
Gawd! I loves me some spin class!

Having recently recovered (sortof) from a GI illness this weekend, every time the instructor had us bend over and hover low in the seat tonight I could feel my stomach contents start to churn, and I had to keep telling myself: "If I hurl during spin class, I'll be too humiliated to return. Don't barf don't barf don't barf." So even though it was a pretty wimpy, no-barf workout (but 21 miles aren't so bad for a sickie chickie, no? I just didn't crank it like I usually do), I give myself snaps for making what was involuntary at home a bit less so, albeit temporarily.

Not pooping in spin class is ever so much appreciated, too...another one of those useful things you take for granted until your body decides to go a little wonky.

Sooooooooo, all I can say is after the past few weeks of suckitude: I can eat now (1 day post GI illness), I can chew (1 week post root canal, finally healing), and I can breathe (after 2 months of a sinus infection); I'm all healed up, so it's time to BRING ON THE TURKEY!!! Yayyyyyyyy!

Have a good one, y'all!

The Things We Said Today:

2008-11-22T17:03:00.014-06:00

I totally recorded this with my phone at the concert the other night... lol!

Don't thing I've ever heard this song before, and it's quite the catchy tune. I stumbled upon it while trying out new channels on satellite radio in hopes of finding one that comes close to "Sirius Disorder". Today, it's been the "Underground Garage", a welcome relief from my days of previewing "The Loft" (which is NOTHING like Disorder as it's been touted to be, BTW--it's more like the REM sleep inducing "Coffeehouse"-- ack, bleck!). I've grown so attached to my satellite radio that it's been hard to cut the cord, so to speak, and call and cancel since it's looking like all my favorite channels are gone forevermore. Sigh!

I've been kindof stuck in the house today, even though the weather wasn't too bad. In my efforts to be superwoman and work while I was sickly all week, it seems I picked up yet one more affliction that requires me to stick fairly close to home, wheeeeee! Not like there's a whole lot going on in these parts (I really missed bowling last night with the Irregulars tho; ironic that this is the crux of my troubles of late, ho ho no!)... but I wouldn't mind going shopping and pick up a few more cold weather clothes. Since I've been shrinking, I don't have all that many shirts that fit me properly-- the most fun and least fun part of dieting (I'm not much of a shopper, go figure! And my favorite store is packed to the gills on the weekends). Mebbe the latest installation of my sickitude will bring me thru my weight loss plateau in spite of all my carb eating, the silver lining I'm trying to find at the end of a pretty nasty week;-)

p.s. the neighbors got a dog, so ours of course has been barkingbarkingbarking all the day long-- gar! Make her stop!

p.s.s. what is it about this time of year that makes me feel like a crabby old woman? Everything irritates me, and it's not even that special PMS time... I guess for starters: I hate the holidays with a mad passion, and I don't even know why-- it's not like my parents didn't buy me a pony for Christmas or got all sauced up on Christmas eve and beat us or *anything* like that. I have a deeply held suspicion that it's because I'm the cheapest and laziest girlie in all the land and don't want to spend any money on anyone or go out of my way to do anything I don't feel like. And sadly, once the mercury dips below 65 and there's no sunlight, I don't wanna do ANYTHING except maybe eat and sleep (so maybe a trip to parts south would increase my festive spirit-- no?)

On a serious note, a large part of it right now is that I see all these appeals for food drives, making donations, etc, everywhere-everywhere-everywhere and it rankles me, offends my stingy sensitivities... and then of course, throws me into fits of guilt for the rest of the season that I don't move out of my comfort zone and give my stuff away. And what would be more painful: giving away my $$ and missing it, feeling like an ass, or the guilt I feel at not donating? Cause for me, both are about the same.

I used to be bone poor, too, and it was a very traumatic experience for me; hated it, fear it constantly to this day, and thus my fear motivated me to take the opportunity to return to school. I was a single parent to a very demanding baby, racked up all kinds of school and living sorts of debt, had to drop my precious baby off at the daycare (which broke my heart of course), and now make as much in an hour as I made in a DAY at the job I was working just prior to starting school. Did I want to be a nurse? Was it the fulfillment of my dreams and hearts desire to be exposed to infectious body fluids and have my heart ripped out on a daily basis? Nooooooo. I picked nursing from the community college catalog and Occupational Outlook Handbook, calculated the choice carefully to select the best paying, most mom friendly occupation, and have wrestled with the benefits and consequences ever since.

So I think I'm just the slightest bit bitter when I hear of people living in poverty, not taking advantage of the opportunities to better themselves that they have, that I had, that would pull them out of poverty such that I wouldn't feel obligated to give above and beyond the programs funded by my tax $$. When I was poor, I lived a very spartan life and thus always had enough so I didn't go looking for free turkeys or presents; I didn't smoke, go to bars, wear brand new clothing, drive an expensive car, bla bla bla, so when I see people with nicer things than I even have now lining up for free stuff it kindof bugs me-- and it bugs me that it bugs me.

Even now, we watch every penny, have little debt, so we will be prepared if the economy bottoms out even more than it does (and it will, I have no doubt): so when the fun-living, recreating, "live for today", and/or self-actualizing folks start lamenting, I'm sure I'll feel even less charitable, and I'm tired of feeling bad about that. Cause at the heart of all this angst is my contention that when you make poor decisions (as I did when I married a meatball and ended up a single parent), it's precisely the pain of those bad decisions that will motivate you to better yourself: get an education, get a better job, pare down expenses, make wiser choices. And every time someone rushes in to save your ass and take care of your responsibilities, how motivating is that? Feel the burn: learn a lesson, change your life, the lives of your children. My Existential Dilemma of the Moment is not so much that I don't want to part with my hard earned money (although that's certainly part of it, I won't lie to you), but that giving it away won't be terribly useful anyway.

I would rather shove a stick in my eye than give my children a gift someone donated, eat beans out of a can for two months straight before asking for free food with a $4 pack of smokes hanging out of my leather jacket I got from the mall (even now, most of my jackets and those the kids wear are second hand); I would suck it up and take that opportunity to teach the kids about responsible spending and the true meaning of Christmas, and hopefully leave them with a lesson about how un-fun it is to be poor. And I'm tired about feeling bad about that, too.... it's not even fricken Thanksgiving yet, and I'm already awash with guilt and wrestling with the conflicting messages of the season. Maybe I'll donate to the local church that's holding a holiday meal and be done with it, until the appeals for saving the starving children in Africa start rolling in. At which point, I can get thrown into an even faster twirling tailspin at how large and hopeless this problem really is, and wrestle with even more complex issues such as saving AIDS babies, rapes in refugee camps in war torn Darfur, the conditions in Iraq, and make this season even *more* filled with soul scorching angst. I'll be sure to send an extra special thanks this year to the little bebbe Jesus for candy cane martinis and Tom and Jerry's... looks like I'm going to need a steady infusion from now until January 1st, oy!

On a while 'nother note, if our economy is so washed out that the elderly can't pay their bills, afford their medications, etc, then we need to take a look at that and fix whatever it is that's the cause of it. I'm guessing a large part of it is the medical system for these folks, the consequences of how the pharmaceutical industry is run and what our medical system has become as a result of it, etc and etc. I have a lot more charitable inclinations regarding the elderly, but even less resolution for them than the able bodied people standing in the turkey lines.

Is it too early for a cocktail (it's 10 am the following day...)? Really?

Train Wreck:

2008-11-19T18:30:00.005-06:00

First off, I have to apologize, for it seems that every time I have anything to say lately, it comes out all whiny and negative... but what can I say? It's been a fairly craptacular past few weeks, and with my recent root canal that hurts like a mother (a repeat from January, boo), and a case of full-on laryngitis, not to mention a big old honkin' bunch of oozing, weeping cold sores on my nose, I've been feeling ever so much like a train wreck. I need the $$$, too--BAD, so instead of calling in sick and resting my sickly head with it's draining, swollen orifices like I SHOULD have, I've worked the **busiest days we've ever had** (on record, no lie!), croaking and squeaking and generally scaring the nice patients who think I'm "Laryngitis Annie", all set to infect them with my boojum.
I've enlisted every remedy I could dig up from my enclave of natural remedy texts, even resorting to swallowing cloves of raw garlic to scare up my immune system into shaking the crud from my nose, lungs and throat. The peridontist gave in to my appeals to prescribe me an antibiotic, a big leap for an au naturale girlie such as myself, but desperate times call for desperate measures... and the 4x/day yeast infection pills can start to work ANY-TIME-NOW (really, any old time. Now would be great!).
After two sleepless nights, the guy also finally prescribed me something-ahem-a little stronger than ibuprofen today, so I'm hoping tonight I can sleep like a wee, little baby (who's stumbled upon mommy's vicodin stash), yippie!
I'm off tomorrow, so things are looking up all over... I hope to lay in bed and surround myself with a brand new box of tissues and all the magazines I haven't had the time to read, so I can honk and ooze and snooze, all by my lonesome, all day long-- heaven!

Suspicious:

2008-11-13T06:37:00.008-06:00

OOOOkkkaaaaaaayyyyyy: What is a parent to suspect when her kid gets up early (that alone is frought with implications... early?!?!) and catches a ride with a kid you've never met an *hour* before school, and only just tells you 5 minutes before the ride arrives? Hmmmmmm? Granted, it's a guy she works with, and I made her bring him in the house so I could grill him (and make him a tasty cappucino, gar! So not a good intimidator...).
Well I hope the girl makes it to school in one piece, makes it to school AT ALL. I'm running out of punishments... child is grounded, no TV, no car, and now is volunteering once a week at church, not sure where I could go from here (someone mentioned a year long missions trip, but I suspect there's plenty o trouble to be found even in the swamps of the Everglades, and then I wouldn't be available to levy my limp wristed hand of discipline and be the cappucino-bearing heavy...).

It's getting to be that time of year when I want everything to hurry up and get here so it can get gone: shorter days, longer nights, occasions frought with festivities and too much food I shouldn't (and won't) be eating: last night, a coworker had a bag of some peanut butter/chocolate bells that I tried-- yuck! Tasted all waxy and plastic-y--bleck! Good to revisit junk every now and again, makes me appreciate a worthy splurge when it presents itself (think I'm going to make this cranberry ribbon pie and see if it's up to my "good standards", lol). It's not that I've given up on my diet, but acknowledge that this is a nearly impossible time to refuse sweets, so I'm going to be very selective, and indulge when the right occasion presents itself. I also plan to keep going to the gym for spin and other classes at least 3 times/week... and when we've FINALLY passed the winter eqinox, when the days start getting longer and the holidays are over, I'll crank back up to the first stage of the "Fat Flush Plan" or something, and hopefully jump start myself back into losing that last 10# I'd like to.
On a whole 'nother note: I recently got a book promoted by a magazine I read that claims that I need to be 120# to be my "ideal weight". Wow! I can't even imagine being 120#, not even in my wildest fantasies! Cause even with months and months of low carb, no sugar, hard core spin classes, I've not even come close, ohwell. It's not a goal of mine, realize that that short of a large-limbed amputation or a virulent GI illness, this weight wouldn't be healthy for me, and am surprised that a well respected weight loss book would recommend a weight that seems highly unrealistic for someone who wasn't even that heavy or out of shape to begin with (maybe there's a chapter on "Bulimia: Weight Loss' Greatest Secret" that I haven't gotten to yet that might explain this).

You know what else won't be helping me make it through the impending darkness?
My favorite Sirius radio station "Sirius Disorder" (and all the other few stations I actually listened to: "Boombox", "The Beat", and a few others).
What am I going to do without David Johansen's "Mansion of Fun" show??
There was a time when I would rearrange my work schedule so I could be off on Tuesdays and listen to his show throughout the day while I was home, but no more.. and wouldn't you know it, the DJ's shows that I didn't care for are still going to be on other channels (i.e. the loquacious Vin Sclesa... good lord! The only DJ who rambled and rambled and rambled more than he played music-- he drove me nuts, and to change the channel to other stations once I couldn't stand his talking for one second longer). Did Larry Kirwan end up somewhere?? I loved his show, too.
I like change as much as the next guy, but am now stuck listening to stations such as "80's at 8" (which is kindof fun for a few songs, but after a short while makes me feel like a stalker of my youth and overly reminiscent, which I'm not; I'm just too lazy to keep changing the channel to give me a Disorder-like music variety).
And they don't even have channels that play some of the fantastic oddities David J did, boo!
Mebbe much like the flavorless chocolate peanut butter bells, satellite radio for me is no longer splurge worthy. I'll give the new line up a try, but unless they come up with something more interesting than what I've seen so far, I'm likely to cancel and save my $$ for iPod downloads, especially in this economy...

P.S. I just realized that I've been home now for 2 hours, and haven't turned the radio on *at all*. The thought of a day of endless 80's tunes is just, well, depressing. David J, Larry K-- wherefore art thou??
Sigh!

New Leaf:

2008-11-08T21:41:00.007-06:00

I've spent a lifetime renewing my batteries in the bath: everytime I've felt sick, or sad, or confused about something in my life, I've retreated to the warm, secure waters of the tub to soften the rough edges and clear my head.
It's also one of my favorite places to read; and as such, my favorite books all have warped pages (and why I own more than a couple library books, oops!). One such book is "Parenting With Fire", a book I've eagerly read, digested, wrestled with in the bath, and then promptly forgot about, as if I had never read it. Contained therein is the most marvelous, transformative parenting advice I have ever been exposed to in my life, but is so contrary to the lives we have all created for ourselves to date that implementing even the most minor of suggestions would require more than a couple painful adjustments, and more soul-searching than I am able to muster at the moment.
Buy it. Read it (it's on sale. How could you not?). Just be prepared to be challenged to a higher and more meaningful level of parenting, if not discover more than a couple reasons why your kids are struggling, and no one's having any fun.
Ask yourself, as I've been asking myself all weekend: why even have kids, if you aren't going to parent them? Even if you aren't very good at it, the very least you can do is stop making excuses and try.

I've spent the entire summer in a horrible cloud of narcissism; with the advent of fall, the reflective season of our lives, I'm more than long past due to turn over a new leaf.
Time to discover ways to renew my committment to my family and get back more of the life I didn't even realize I had lost (which had nothing to do with school, btw... but certainly didn't help).
More later-- I'm off to Wii Bowl with the kids:-)
Delightful and stirring coincidence here:

Spin Crack:

2008-11-07T10:28:00.006-06:00

I discovered a new form of spin crack, a delightful combo that revved me up for class quite nicely this morning:
To prepare, you must first stop drinking coffee for a few days (I tell ya, I burned out my adrenals over the last couple weeks with the school stress, drinking too much espresso, and taking this stuff. I went into work on Monday this week all amped up, almost shaking, for no good reason except a lingering adrenalin high from writing those papers in a panic, the post-trauma from the surgery, and 1/2 cup of coffee. Sheeeeeeooooot. Me no likee.), and then:

1) sip a nice, strong espresso.

2) and eat one of these.
Mmmmm! Crack-a-licious! And guaranteed to keep your wheels spinning for *21* miles, a new record (and without the fans! I know a lot of people hate those, so I didn't run over and turn them on today..).
I'm trying to get the kids rustled together to do something fun today, since we're all off. But the teenager doesn't want to do the "stoopid" thing that the 11 year old wants to do, and vicey-versey. Getting these kids together to do something is worse than wrestling a sack full o monkeys, sheesh!
Had an epiphany momnent in the afterglow of my workout this morning, which made me realize how funny it is that it takes weeks and weeks after something happens to make sense of it sometimes. I realized that I like to keep a visible undercurrent of chaos in my public life (changing jobs, shifts, etc) to serve as a foil to conceal the genuine chaos I have in my head all the time. It's a (deeply flawed) ADHD coping technique, one that seems to have backfired (according to the therapist), since the kids can't handle it. Bummer. And what do you do when there's a mismatched fit between kids and parent? That's the question of this stage of our lives, one that's not likely to have an answer:-(

I'm off to wrestle some monkeys, hope we get out the door sometime soon:

Quitter/Apple Pie in a Bag:

2008-11-06T20:06:00.006-06:00

Cyndi's Totally Copied from the Elegant Farmer Apple Pie in a Bag Recipe (made with our very own apples, how cool is that?)

Whenever you get around to it, preheat oven to 375.

Filling:
10 apples, peeled, cored, and thickly sliced
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (+/- to taste)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (+/-)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg (+/-)

Pour into deep dish unbaked pie crust (I just buy them. Who the hey can make good pie pastry anymore?? I sure can't...)

Topping:

Pulse in food processor until crumbly and pile on top of apples evenly:

1 cup butter

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

Slide pie into a brown paper bag that's placed on it's side. Fold up the opening a couple times and staple, and nip and tuck the back part of the bag and staple so it doesn't touch any part of the oven once it's placed inside.

Bake on a large baking sheet for one hour; cut large circle in the top part of the bag so the crust is exposed, and bake for another 20-30 minutes until the crust is toasty to your liking.

Cool for a while, and serve with vanilla bean ice cream.

MmmmmmMMmmmmmmm! Another totally wonderful and evil cheat-worthy dessert, damn!

Why o why am I baking, might you ask, when I am still trying to diet and be a good girl??

Because I've had a rough week and I'm soothing my poor, battered soul (ok, that sounds pretty dramatic, n'est pas? but it really did suck):

My vision is still a little wonky; have received tons of conflicting information about whether or not the haloes will improve. Don't think I'll be able to drive ever again at night if it doesn't get better, and am already the big fat scaredy baby when it comes to night driving (driving in general, really, so it makes me sad to face a lifetime of sitting my ass home night after night if I ever DO get a life...) I can read better now, so that's a plus...

But I still spent THREE completely awful hours last night working on a research article, to only come up with TWO LAME PARAGRAPHS. I was soooo relieved to even get that done, but once I compared it with those the other students wrote, I knew in my heart of hearts that I just don't have what it takes to work on my degree right now. And after talking with a coworker, I was no longer convinced that I wanted to be a nursing instructor, anyway. I like to teach, but am honestly not the finest representative of my profession (never having kept the same job for more than 2 years, never worked Med Surg or ICU, the meat and potatoes of our craft, and what I'd likely get stuck "teaching").

Consequently....... after being a total witch (no pun intended) to the kids as they were getting ready for Trick or Treating (the day I was furiously trying to write my last round of last minute, half assed papers) and working SO HARD last night, it dawned on me that I just needed to quit/call it a day/throw in the towel/whatevvvaaaahhhhhhhh.

And so today, I did.

Ahhhhhhhhh! Wonderful relief, to have my life back; to cook dinner, make a pie, eat with my family... go the gym, hang out with friends, clean my house, even BLOG-- free from guilt that I should be doing something else.

Yay!

I still have to pay 300 some $$ since I didn't quit a couple days earlier (story of my life...), but it's PRICELESS to have my life back, with a fresh perspective on how nice it is to just be me:

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! And damn proud of it, too!

Waaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

2008-11-02T08:16:00.007-06:00

I only worked TWO days last week (plus my little 1/2 day at Gateway..) and I'm horrified to report that I got little to nothing accomplished; my house is a MESS, didn't blog nary a single day, didn't hardly get any of my assignments done (I find I'm sucking at being a student so far, quite the slack off procrastinator.... I had only TWO medium sized projects to do all week, and guess how many I have done? Um, none of them. They're both due by 11:59 pm today and I'm just hoping I can squeak them in before 11:57 or so...) It's not for lack of trying to get things done this week, but I had my LASIK eye surgery to anticipate on Friday, which had me in such a dither (and not of the fun, KK kind I'm afraid) that I couldn't focus on any one thing long enough to get anything completed... boo.
SO here I am, two days post eye-zapping, which was ony the tiniest bit traumatic-- between the fact that they clearly wanted to get to lunch asap and stuffed 4 people in this creepy little room with the lights dimmed, took our glasses away so no one could see how freaked out we all were, put funny scrub caps on all of us, slipped a tablet of something under our tongues... there was a chick in there with a bad perm who craftfully dodged every quesion I asked (HEY! Thought I was the only one who was good at that...), and we had to sit there while they played the WORST new age-y music ever (like whale sounds under water, quite nausea inducing) and wait as they took us, one by one, into the even smaller creepy room to get zapped. It reminded me of something out of "Logan's Run", as each of us saps was waiting to get made into soilent green. I was third, so I had to sit there, and sit there, and sit there, listening to the people in the other room shout something undiscerable to the patient, listen to the loud "zap zap zapping", and then see the disconcerted patient stumble out of the room in a daze...
I know they slipped me a mickey of some sort, but I wanted to scream "it's NOT working" as they came to get me, but instead like a good little sheep, wandered in the room and laid on the table like they wanted me to, ready to pretty much pee on myself with sheer terror. I had no freaking clue what they were doing to my eyeballs, only that I probably wasn't doing it correctly, likely risking permanent blindness and/or disfigurement as they kept (really loudly) reminding me to "look into the orange light, look into the orange light Cyndi"-- well, sometimes I couldn't see the damn orange light-- in fact, they did something after getting that suction cup thingey on that made me only see stars for a while. Man! Was I freaked out.. I could smell the delicate flesh of my eye being zapped off and I was fairly certain I was about to pass out, when all of a sudden, it was over. The only thing I could see was the guy painting the flap back over my eye, but couldn't see all that well afterward; perm girl showed me a clock as we left the room and I suppose I was to be overwhelmed with joy at how well I could see it sans glasses, but didn't see it any better than before (everything was all coudy, as if I was down in the ocean with those damn whales). I got scooted out of there pretty quick and Jake and I found a Panera to grab a sandwich, and all I remember was having him lead me out of there like a drunken sailor, as my drugs must have finally kicked in, wheeeee!
Next thing I knew, it was 8 pm, I had a couple children climbing on me and Grace was blasting some gangster rap in the room next door, and Jake was asking me to come and eat PIZZA of all things... in my drug induced haze I wasn't about to turn down forbidden carbs, so my ass blames the ativan for eating 2 pieces of tasty, spinach artichoke pizza. Somehow I was then able to help the kids make caramel apples, roast pumpkin seeds, drink a (forbidden) martini, and then wander back off to bed.
Anyhoo, I tried for several hours to stare at the screen to write one of those damn papers last night, but I can't focus enough to really read what I write to discern if it's completely legible. I know that's normal, and anticipate a full return of my vision, but for now it's really really hard to write anything--the screen glows too much (I tried to drive home last night from Racine, yee-haaaa~ the lights were all haloes and it was pretty hard to see, gar!)

So I had a request for a new blog, and here it is, in all it's whiny glory. Bet you'll think twice before asking again, no?

Ok, one last whine before I get my ass in gear:
As I lay in bed this morning, I came to the awful realization that because I voluntarily chose to become a student again, I will be cursed to have a monkey on my back forever and always for TWO WHOLE YEARS!!!! WAHHHHHHH!!!! Never again in the next 24 months will I have a moment of free time that isn't frought with angst and/or guilt that I should be working on this project, writing this paper, bla bla bla. Dumbass! The only good thing I can see at the moment is that I'll have enough $$ left over from my student loans to pay off the kid's medical bills that insurance won't pay, and maybe enough left over to pay to have my root canal redone (since I had it in January of this year, and it's apparently still infected, insurance won't pay for it. But if I wait 3 years until the bone is degenerated and I need radical surgery, it'll probably get paid for, der!). Mebbe that's why I've felt so crummy the past few months despite all my herbal concoctions... my body has been brewing up a low grade infection for all this time and I've stayed fairly healthy, so hey! My immune system DOES kick ass, after all--some good news, finally:-) I think I'm going to throw caution to the wind and give the dermatologist a call tomorrow, too; as long as I'm swamped with medical debt, might as well get that biopsy done I've been putting off for years, tee hee. Get the whole schlomozzle done, so I can greet 2009 with a healthy, yet debt ridden, conscience, yippie-flippin-skippy!

Let The Games Begin:

2008-10-26T21:47:00.003-06:00

Today was the day I was all set to download the documents I need for the first week of my classes, and all was well with the universe... until the Road Runner decided to up and quit on the only other working computer in the house (other than the phones, tee hee).
So I got to put life on hold *yet again* for another hour to mess with cables and wires and connections behind the dusty computer, but finally got it working (and clean!) again, wheeeee! It's great to be techno-savvy, but soooo perplexed as to why this process of starting school seems to be frought with monkey wrenches of all sorts (I must got me some bad Master's degree mojo goin' on, woo wooooooooo!).

So now, at the end of another busy day filled with more cupcakes (the co-workers weren't sated with the vanilla cupcakes and soon demanded chocolate... I'm too busy to get very creative, so I just made chocolate espresso cupcakes with whipped hazelnut ganache buttercream, no filling), visits from the grandbaby, loads of laundry, dinners planned, shopped for, house cleaned, organized, kid's lives in order for the school week, activities/transportation arranged, and now I *finally* have pages and pages of syllabi, assignments printed and highlighted, textbook chapters marked... all in anticipation of turning in my first assignments in a couple days (first 3 page paper due by Friday, gar!). Sigh!
And life is good... just wish me luck, k? Still need to get those &%$@# cupcakes frosted, and it's getting late:-(
p.s. exactly one hour later...
If my encounter with the vanilla cupcake last week was a wee little affair, what I've since done with the chocolate cupcake could only be classified as a full blown romance: I had no shame WHATSOEVER eating a whole one (covered in chocolate sprinkles, no less!) and even licked the beater with great, sinful delight after the last cupcake was frosted.
My rationale for the big cheat was that it was best to enjoy it while the gettin' was good: I was there, it was there, the moment was *perfect*-- the cake fresh, the frosting creamy and soft... I plan on absolving myself of my indiscretions tomorrow with a 2 hour session at the gym after work, but will no doubt be replaying the scene over and over in my head, hoping to relive it a little as it will be my last for a long time to come, tee hee.

A Boy and His Dog:

2008-10-26T15:30:00.003-06:00

Maggie and Jacob's first pheasant; awesomely, fantastically cool, and 100 times better than sitting on the couch (even if it IS cold and windy outside, no?).

p.s. Click on the picture: doesn't Maggie look a little freaked out? And what's up with that boy's hair? Oy!

I wish I knew you...

2008-10-25T17:44:00.010-05:00

This tune came on the Celtic Crush show early this morning and it got stuck in my head. Something about that note she hits when she sings "and we'll meet some daaaaaaaaaaaay" and the simple guitar riff she plays over and over that my brain got fixated on (which, after many hours of deep thought, I realized reminds me of this). Should pull out the violin and find out what note it is... my niece had her teeny tiny 1/4 size violin out last night and it was fun to try and knock out a few tunes on it, even downloaded a tuner onto my iPhone so I could make the little thing sound like it's supposed to (tough to tune a wee instrument like that, was hoping I wouldn't pop a string).

Much to my sadness, I able to access my classes today, even tho they don't officially start until Monday:
I found out yesterday that my laptop is, in fact, dead, as the new cord didn't bring it magically back to life as I had hoped....but-HEY! Called the folks at Compaq and was thrilled to discover that not only do they now employ tech support people that speak an understandable form of English, but that my sad little laptop has *30* days left on it's warranty (vs 30 days out as I had feared)! Woo hoo! There is a slight suckage factor that I'll have to start classes using the kid's computer (with the wonky keyboard), but hope it's only temporary. Oh, and that it doesn't look like going back to school will be much fun, lol... one of my instructors is located in Saudi Arabia, which I don't hardly even understand, but ya gotta love technology nonetheless... here's to hoping the guy speaks English.

Fascinating discussion here: This is my favorite blogger in all of Blogland, always good for thoughtful discourse. But I must warn you: if you get lost in the comboxes, you'll quickly become mired in despair at how soulless we've become as a society and how far we've fallen... but the good news is that as long as there are people like Rod around, there's still hope for us (and not of the creepy, political variety). Major snaps to Rod for reminding me each day that all is not lost.

Obama vs McCain Dance Off...

2008-10-24T12:58:00.003-05:00

http://view.break.com/592648 - Watch more free videos

Tap that ass? Bwahahaaaahaha!
More people have told me that I look like Sarah Palin in the past week (cause I've had a lot of older, vision impaired patients at work lately perhaps?).
Politics at it's finest...

Say Hey!

2008-10-22T12:05:00.004-05:00

Heard this song on the way home today, and instantly, I really liked it... has a nice island feel to it,which I'm sorely craving as the weather turns colder and colder each day. And the performer doesn't look like the type of guy who would run the streets singing "I love you, I love you, I love you", does he? Makes the song even more fun.

"Seems like every where I go, the more I see the less I know"; so, so true.

So Far Away...

2008-10-21T16:39:00.007-05:00

from my brain, that is...

Maybe I shouldn't have gotten the flu vaccine while I'm still feeling rotten... dang that hospital peer pressure! They have a list up on the wall at work with the names of the people who have/have not gotten the vaccine so it's apparent TO ALL if you've been a wussy bad girl and therefore open to all forms of nagging. If I was the hypochondriac type I'd say I could feel the viruses hooking up and mutating in my brain, creating the fog I've felt all afternoon, sleeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppyyyyy!

But being the fully rational and unimaginative girlie that I am, I'd prefer to think it's just 'cause I had quite the whirlwind of a weekend; entertaining visitors, running amuck, preparing for a busy week-- not to mention recovering almost 20 patients yesterday all by my lonesome. Fortunately, the work dried up early in the afternoon today so I was able to get home a little sooner and rest my weary head to ready myself to do it all over again, and again, and again. In the big picture it's all good, I'm so grateful to have a decent job in these goofy times, but I REALLY wanted to extend my week of leisure just a few days longer, waaaaaahhhhhhhh!

Also, my laptop died a few minutes ago, and am hoping a new cord will bring it back to life before my class begins next week; really, it's my own fault at this point, since the dog chewed up the cord months and months ago and I should have replaced it then. Jake did such a nice job of MacGyver-ing it back together that I took it off the "to do" list, I'm just glad it croaked now vs. in the middle of a 20 page paper... yippie yahooey, and thank God for Ebay ('cause I got one for $17 postage paid vs some $80 at Best buy, and this girl doesn't want to go there anyhow).

Addendum: I have a confession to make...

After many painful and wonderful moments of loyalty, discipline, and devotion, I'm ashamed to admit that I cheated.

And who ever would have thought? I was never the kind of girl who lacked in self control, never one to cave in to temptation, even when something lovely was right in front of me, enticing me...

But I did it... and in the grand scheme of things, in spite of the risks, it was quite nice, *completely* worth it :-)

I can't say that I'm looking forward to getting myself in that situation again, but if another vanilla cupcake brushed with lemon juice, filled with raspberry jam and topped with a mountain of lemon meringue frosting comes my way, I'll be better prepared (damn my good baking skills, and my nice coworkers for being cupcake worthy! Who ever could guess that I couldn't bake a few dozen and never eat one... it took a couple days, but I finally caved, sigh!)
My next object d' affaire:

OOOoooooooOOOOOooooooOoooo! So dirty, yet soooo delicious;-)

p.s. Was it cheating if I thought of a salad while I was eating it? What if I ate it in the bathroom so no one could see??

Yay!

2008-10-16T22:36:00.004-05:00

It's amazing how many people are on the roads at 6:30, at how dark it already is at this time when at the beginning of the week it was still light...
Getting up early to get the girl to the bus isn't my ideal early morning scenario, but so far it hasn't been bad. There's a dreamy quality to jumping out of bed the instant the alarm goes off vs laying in bed for 1/2 hour and waking verrrrryy sloooooowwllly:
For the first 5 minutes of so after you roust yourself, it's almost as if you're still dreaming, carrying the remnants of your last dream in your head as you rush to get ready, trying to make sense of who you are and where you are.
And it's GORGEOUS outside at this time of day; also dreamlike, misty, like the narrow and soft space between sleep and awake. Plus, it's wonderful then to have 20 minutes all to myself before the boy gets up and round 2 starts.
Speaing of wonderful, have I mentioned how fan-freaking-tastic it has been to have most of this week off? I am still a little sick (sinus infection?), but feel rested, better, more like myself. I couldn't have this amount of time to myself all the time, and it rots to get to the point where I need a break so badly, but it's another one of those push-pull situations in life where suffering thru the difficult things makes the wonderful things that come after so much more appreciated. So, YAY! And back I go next week to the grind: 44 hours, bummer:-( Hope I make it to the gym after work for a little sanity time...
Speaking of the gym (sorry, segueways don't come easily at 6:30 in the am..), I received the *best* compliment I've probably gotten in quite a while:
My spin instructor got off her bike 1/2 way thru class yesterday to check and see where our gears were, how hard we were working. With my cold, I've vacillated this week between working reallllly hard to knock the goo out of my head, and being pretty wiped out, yet still cranking it--but you still wonder where you stand in relation to the other people who have been taking the class a lot longer than I have.
When she came by my bike she said "wow, you're really working hard", and then pulled me aside after class to comment on what a strong rider I was, on my level of athleticism. And while I know my body has changed a great deal after a summer of heavy riding and daily spin classes, I have no idea if my change from an overweight, out of shape person to an avid cyclist (20# lighter, wheeeee!) is apparent to anyone else. Or if the new muscles, no longer covered by a layer of chub and lots of clothes to hide them, can be seen vs only felt (my glutes feel *really strange*, maybe it's from doing a few too many of these:

Time to get dressed and enjoy my last day of freedom, to one last morning at the gym for a while...
LATER: went shopping today, since my belt has become a fashion necessity again, and lo and behold, I'm down another pants size (the smallest I've been since the kids were born, yee-ha!)... LASK eye surgery scheduled for two weeks from today, too, but not sure how I feel about that; we're such pragmatists that something unnecessary like cosmetic eye surgery is hard to do without much guilt.

Be Ok:

2008-10-14T13:32:00.004-05:00

This is the theme song of the day, serendipitously chosen by the local High School radio station (WBSD 89.1, best radio station *anywhere*) as it was the song that woke me from a deep sleep this morning:
(I couldn't have picked a better one if I tried)

This was the day where I was going to try and get my equilibrium back after the events of the past few days: getting sick, cars breaking down, children's secrets revealed... and as such, I've had to expend a great deal of energy to fix/arrange/organize things with only half the brain capacity and a full box of tissues at my side. Add to that the lovely weather that fairly screams "get outside and get stuff done!", and I'm so sooooo glad to have this day off to recoup and get my head straight.

Gracy pants' behavior and broken car earned her a month and a half of bus rides, starting this morning: wheeeee! It was a pain to get up at 6 to drive her maniacally do the bus stop, but I made sure she had something to eat, a little spot of coffee, and a jacket (yes, she's 16; tell me about it... but even naughty girls need some mommy time), so when I got her on the bus knowing she was going to make it to school on time for a change, a wonderful peace descended upon me. Getting home and having all that quiet time all to my ownself was very nice, too.
To put it in perspective:
I was in such a panic yesterday before I got the bus set up, wondering how I was going to drive the girl to school every morning at 7, run home, get Jacob ready, myself in order, Jacob dropped off at 7:50, and myself to work all before 8 am. Really, it was quite the dilemma, made my head spin. I've done it a couple times before, and it's no way to start the day, esp when work is soooo hairy right now.
But I have to tell you, getting Grace on the bus, having some time to myself, getting Jacob organized and fed, off to school, and my sickly self to the gym with nary a hitch this morning was bee-you-ti-ful, and for a brief moment as the autumn sun shone its warmth upon me this morning I truly felt at peace with the world, and it was GOOD:-)

Gardening tidbit (there weren't that many this year were there? Poor gardens have been neglected..):
In my boogery, sudafed induced haze I mustered up enough energy on Sunday to cut down the seed heads from all the perennial gardens on the property and wheel them up to the prairie (a necessary evil if you don't want to expand the gardens each year, takes at least a couple hours). How I pulled that off, I'll never know... drugs-- powerful stuff, I tell ya!
I used to really enjoy that task, too (somewhat... it's dirty and scratchy and hot), loved breaking apart the 80 gagillion seedheads one by one and distributing the seeds throughout the prairie in all the promising spots; I'd take a look and see where some rudebeckias might look good or where some echinaceas needed to go, like some benevolent God of my own little domain. But Sunday, I just dumped the plants in big piles and wandered back, glad to have it over so I could crawl back on the couch:-(
Feeling much better today, I tore out the huge tangles of morning glory that climb on the deck railing, chicken coop, and everywhere else it wasn't supposed to go.. they look so pretty and romantic when in full bloom, but after a frost look desolate, and are so covered in seeds that they need to be taken somewhere else. These insanely vigorous plants and their spawn are from plants we grew from seed at our old house 6+ years ago, crazy! They obviously love it here...
I threw the plants up by the fence in the front prairie, wonder how long it'll take before they take over up there, too?

For some reason, I lost all interest in the gardens this year, but hope taking a season off will get me yearning to dig new gardens and get my hands dirty next year... we'll see.
In the meantime, I'm just going to try and be ok:-)

Oy!

2008-10-13T20:44:00.005-05:00

Did ya ever have one of those days where you felt like you could never focus on any one thing long enough to get anything done?
Believe it or not, I got all the crap stuff on my daily list accomplished (laundry, phone calls-- all the big items) but the *little* things like "remember to grab your vitamins so you can take them before you go into the other room" sort of stuff, the kinds of things that keep you from wandering aimlessly from one room to the next, over and over and over again in fruitless pursuit of what you were going to do... *that's* the stuff I've been having a problem with today.
And now my brain hurts now with all the futile remembering and forgetting and re-remembering; think it's time to grab a glass of wine and call it a day;-)

Sick:

2008-10-11T11:18:00.005-05:00

So totally bummed, cause I'm siiiiiiiiick! My head is aching, nose running, froat sore, and worst of all, no energy to pretend like I'm fine (which is what I usually do).
This always seems to happen after a long stretch of working too much, as I have been the last 3 weeks: with all the changes at work, the stress of anxious co workers, uncertainty about my job (who knows what my job even *is* these days-- things are 360 degrees different over the past two weeks since they've restructured everything... used to have at most 9 patients to recover in the morning, which made for a mondo-schitzo morning, but now we are recovering 13+ patients in the same time span, with no breaks, no help--crap! You head into work and wait for someone to tell you how things are different today since yesterday, and hope that it all comes together and no one has a meltdown, wheeeee), it's made for a hairy past few days, and my body is crying "uncle"!
So very glad to have nearly a week off now to recover, before it all starts back up again and I pile on the stress of starting school in a couple weeks. Hopefully, when I am back to the crazy hours they will have it all figured out and I can become acquainted with whatever it is they want me to do and I can return to my happy autopilot that motors me numbly through each day.

Ya know, what truly rots is not the sickly part, but the fact that it is GORGEOUS outside, and so feel double the weight of getting off the couch so I can fully appreciate this fleeting weather; feel pressured to do something "fallish" like take Jacob to the pumpkin farm (he hates it anyway), or to a corn maze (ditto that), or really just anything other than being bundled up and shivering and wasting the lovely sunshine away.... gar! I would love a nap, if only to ease my headache, but feel too GUILTY about closing my eyes and missing a moment of this nice day... would love a tylenol, too, but can't seem to get off the couch:-(
(and in the meantime, Maggie keeps sneaking over and stealing my booger-y kleenexes off my pile; hope she eats them in their entirety so I don't have to pick them all up later when I finally muster the energy to get moving).

So here lays I, trapped between being unable to move and feeling too guilty to fully embrace any attempts at recuperation.... lame. We have Jake-events to attend this afternoon as well, boo. If I go, I'll be blowing my nose constantly, feeling tired, freezing, not at all in good form to socialize with strangers; but these events are *so* few and far between that I need to make an attempt: Need to eat something, need to wake up, need to get some tylenol.
Need to lay on the couch, need to close my eyes, need to nap away the afternoon... yeah.
(Also need to figure out how to get Grace to school all next week and then pay for her $$ car repairs, but that's a whole 'nother story...)

Endorphin Block...

2008-10-10T20:26:00.007-05:00

Ok, first it was blogger's block, which all by itself was fairly sucky...

But now I've extended the suckage to include an inability to kick my ass at the gym:-(

I did a 30 minute sculpting class on Monday that hurt me bad for a couple days, but since then I haven't been able to reach the level of intensity in my spin class that I've really grown to crave (allright, it's more like an endorphin high that I've become addicted to, seriously).

I used to sweat so much during spin that it would drip on the floor under me and soak my clothes (gross, I know-- and at first it really creeped me out). Then after a couple weeks the perspiration dropped off a bit, but it was still enough to get in my eyes and fog up my glasses. But NOW, even tho I've been cranking up the resistance to crazy high levels (19 today) and spinning my pedals as fast as I can, I can barely break a sweat, barely get winded... in fact, instead of collapsing yesterday after my spin fix like I usually do, I still had so much pent up energy that I did a sculpting class AND Zumba afterwards, and could have probably done one more class if I wasn't overdue for a meal and a little dizzy. Gar! I felt so dissatisfied.

Is it all that common to max out so soon in fitness classes? Or have I just hit a strange plateau, where all my muscles have grown accustomed to their daily abuses and are like "yawn, bitch. Is that all ya got?"

Granted, I am on cold medicine cause I can hardly breathe as I have something nasty a brewin...

Is sudafed like some sort of exercise meth? And if I keep taking it before class, will I end up looking all haggard like those people in the "after" photos you see on the Oprah show??

Cyndi before spin class:

Cyndi *after* spin class:

Sheeeoooooot! Maybe it's time to cease with all the exercising for a bit and chill out on the couch with a tasty box o donut holes.... for my health, after all. I mean, I already feel like an endorphin withdrawing crack whore who can't score her next fix, no matter how many tricks she turns; don't want to find myself on an intervention episode of the Tyra Banks show, dressed in spandex... (at least not until I lose those last 10 #, tee hee).

Kabir:

2008-10-09T06:20:00.007-05:00

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty:
You do not yet see that the Real is in your own home,
and you wander from forest to forest listlessly...
Here is the truth!
Go where you will,
to Benares or to Mathura;
If you do not find God in your your own soul,
the world will be meaningless to you.

I used to like that poem, ages and ages ago... and every so often it pops back into my brain for one random reason or another--in fact, it woke me up this morning at 5:30 and I haven't been able to sleep since, go figure.
Personally, I think God took an extended vacation from my soul and thus have been moving about in a haze ever since... and unfortunately, even tho church and its accoutrements are a nice filler material, they haven't had the staying power to keep me from wandering the forest all these years...
And altho I enjoy the travails of wandering, find neither purpose nor direction lately and would like to focus my efforts, find a guidemap so I can make sense of where I am, where I've been, and where I'm headed.

Dreamed of my hometown last night, of no one event in particular... just of the feeling I get sometimes when I'm there, when I was there, and woke up with Kabir in my head.
Strange.

Another spin class song; usually I'm not one to form a connection to a song right away, but when you have the resistance cranked up to 17, your legs are on fire and you can barely breathe... closing your eyes and focusing on the beat, the voice, and the lyrics can really pull you through:

I See You Baby...

2008-10-05T10:11:00.008-05:00

Ok, for about 32 seconds I thought I would be able to pull off a wee little bit of a writer's strike, but even tho I am in a dry spell, blog-wise, it's far too difficult to NOT blog than it is to dry blog, so bear with me:

Not completely sure if this is meant to titillate those of my gender or not... but with my newly established identity as a gym dweller, made me laugh just a little...
Here's the original, if you wish to draw some parallels:

Being able to identify which one is your favorite will be very telling...

Me, I would love to get in on the girlie "stripper aerobics" class-- reminds me of my favorite pre adolescent television program "The 20 Minute Workout", woo hoo, in which I discovered that it was waaaaay fun to abuse my body to a perky, choreographed beat (and who knew you could find episodes of the show on line? I've been watching a few and it really explains a lot...)

I have many more things of a highly profound nature to relate, but it's all stuck in there and doesn't want to come out, boo. Maybe I need to let it fester for a few days until it's ready to explode... we'll see. In the meantime, I'm feeling achy and cranky and a bit blue today; clearly blog constipation has created a toxic overload to my brain and body.

Just for funs, I'm going to include this video:

This is the sort of stuff I pump into my head before starting work, trying to set the tone for the work day. The version I have stored on my iPod is a little more... nas-tay ("'cause you gots to be nasssss-tay!"), but I like the Fat Boy Slim nuances they added in this one. Since I'm leaving soon to see an 8pm Ani Difranco concert farfar away today, lord only knows what's going to get me revved up for work tomorrow morning-- double espresso with added espresso powder, with a side of amphetamine, perhaps?

p.s. even tho I hate to be cold this time of year, I just can't muster up the gumption to wear warmer clothes. Wearing jeans makes me feel like I'm suffocating in yards and yards of fabric; had a sweater on for a brief few moments yesterday and felt like I couldn't *breathe*. My clothes don't fit so great these days, and the low rise jean issue doesn't help: I'm yearning for a pair of fully fledged mom jeans that will cinch my waist so the pants will STAY UP. Hate the sensation that I'm only a bend at the waist away from some ass crackage, hate always having to crank the pants up, yank the pants up, pull the damn pants up all day all day all day...

Allright, wanted to change my original morose video to a more fun one, and discovered that there are NO Prince videos to be scrounged off YouTube.. guess Mr Prince doesn't allow such pilfering, ohwell:-( Seriously tho, they played a Prince song in spin class this am and I realized at that moment that I MUST get the "Purple Rain" soundtrack in it's entirety.... what a nerd!

p.s.s. the Ani DiFranco concert was very nice; she had a great xylophone player with her that really mellowed out her set... I could have 100% done without the political rhetoric, but what do you expect when you go to the most liberal town in a 500 mile radius to see the most liberal performer probably in existence-- and during an election year, to boot? I was just askin' for it, so I will limit my complaining, but it was painful and irritating and I will surely know better for next time;-)

Ya Know...

2008-10-01T22:13:00.005-05:00

If you leave comments, I might be inspired to blog a little more.
You can even do it anonymously, and I will only delete them if they're ungodly vulgar (or not, who knows, tee hee)..

Therapy...

2008-09-29T20:34:00.005-05:00

... has turned my brain to mush, and now all I can do at the moment is drink a lovely chardonnay and listen to the "Milkshake" song, over and over and over again on my iPod (in my defense, it's the DJ Zinc version, which is somehow way cooler and makes this less creepy).

I've known for many a year that it's best to keep my personal pathologies under wraps, deeply buried, away from the prying eyes of spectators. And as a venerate naval gazer from waaaay back, I'm already well aware of my problem areas, diagnosed three generations back, with those even in the periphery sorted into tidy DSM IV classifications....
So why, o why, do I need the validation of strangers to confirm what I already know?
And what exactly will I do when all my scary parts are dangling in the open air, exposed for all to see (yick! once those beasts are unleashed from their restraints, will I ever be able to tuck them back into the tidy package they were crammed into all those years? Doubt it)?
And once my analysis really gets rocking, does this mean that I will be forced to stop smoking crack, beating the children, and sleeping with random men I meet at the local truck stop?
Soooooooooo unfair!
Or will it mean that I'll end up living in a cardboard box by the railroad tracks once my selfish attempts at self actualization fall flat???

Sounds fan-freaking-tastic, and I get to pay big ole $$$ for the fun of it all!
PMS+ analysis=one shitty day:-(

I leave you with this synopsis of my inner turmoil du jour, one of the more entertaining ones:

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Bleah!/Pumpkin Pie Custard

2008-09-28T21:10:00.008-05:00

Lazy Sunday, not much going on... amazing how much and how little you can get done in the span of a day when you're slogging thru, barely paying attention.
Didn't make it to the groovy outing this weekend, which bums me out a little; but I don't know exactly how I would handle more evidence that I am wasting the best of my years worshiping at the feet of the Blockbuster movie club, or more acknowledgement that some people's worlds are interesting and large, and mine... well, mine is not.

Ah, PMS! I feel your sweet embrace!

Perhaps THAT could be why I am insatiable lately, didn't even consider it until I pulled out my appointment book (phone) and mapped it out-- damn! When I worked at a women's health clinic years ago, I was always amazed at how 14 year old girls knew with amazing accuracy when their "friends" would arrive... me, I'm pushing 40 and still have no clue.
Could be why everything is making me crazy, including this stupid keyboard in which the space button, for cripes sake, isn't working correctly. Considering that this is where the children play their games/do my space, etc, there is likely enuff food under the keys to feed a hungry toddler... it's a wonder it works at all and I should be grateful, instead of wanting to throw the whole thing under a moving train-- gar! Soo getting tired of having to go back and put all the spaces in between the words, wahhhhhhh!

Interesting weekend, to be sure. Grace's counselor suggested that we try and do something with the girl, something she wanted to do, in an effort to spend time with her/get to know her/etc. Never you mind that every time we try to talk to her, she tells us to either "shut up" or "go away", and tells us "I don't know" when we ask her what she would like to do.... so in the absence of the slightest idea, we gleaned a little:
She was talking earlier in the day about some shop she and her friends had travelled to the day before, which had some items she really liked.
So off we went, in search of things to buy to demonstrate our parental interest and love.
So where did my daughter take us???
To a head shop in Racine, ick!, which reeked of patchouli, incense, and other such things I swore off years and years ago. I mean, really-- is this crap genetic? Girl knows very little about my past (she could care less, as surely it was lame and of no interest to a hipster like herself, lol!); about my travelling with the Grateful Dead (had to chuckle at the vast array of Jerry and GD merchandise... um, most of those geezers are long gone), and my opening a shop much like this one (only like 1000x nicer; no drug paraphernalia, nasty piercing stuff... it was all handmade artwork and imports from India, Guatemala, Bali, etc).
So I'm standing in this shop with my kid and I'm thinking: "I don't have any clue who this girl is anymore", this teenager who (unbeknownst to me) has been dilating the piercings in her ears (my appeal that she will have droopy gramma holes that will never heal fell on deaf earlobes; she pulled out her piercing and I almost fell over when I saw the gaping hole, so gross!), this girl who is standing on the precipice of being just a little too much like me as a young person-- only way younger, much more immature, and much too eager for all the trouble that surrounds her.
Me, I was so much more of a spectator: found things fascinating, yet was unwilling to commit to any one lifestyle and would move on to the next shiny and interesting thing as soon as I felt I had figured the old one out (I was also somewhat concerned about getting in TROUBLE: didn't want to really get too involved in anything that might be a problem later, you know, if I wanted to run for public office later in life, tee hee).
Daughter, however, loves it all, and it makes me a little nervous.
We ended an unsettling afternoon by stopping by the Old Country Buffet, where Grace used to love to go with her grandpa. Place is quite the melting pot, I'll tell ya: there was a 450# lady who was talking about her pregnant 14 year old and how she needed another trip to the dessert bar, if only her arthritic knees could carry her there; a booth of fine Hispanic men who looked like they wanted to eat my daughter for dessert (and my husband, the sweet talker said "they were even checking YOU out", as if a booth full of men who would screw any drunken thing they could immobilize for 45 seconds wouldn't be so desperate to oogle an old broad like myself-- hey! If you don't have enuff sex appeal to entice those sorts of guys, you might as well just sew it up and move in with the nuns next door).
Oh! And then there was the group of ladies who were with a baby shower who were standing next to me at the salad bar wearing nametags that said: "Baby Poop", and "Spitup", etc : mmmmmmmmm! That's a tasty visual, ho ho ho. Good thing the folks from NAACOG weren't meeting there, with humorous nametags that read:"Pap Smear", "Genital Warts", or "Herpetic Lesion", might have been a little yucky... but I suppose, now that I think about it, me and the ladies from work could get in on the fun: I could be "Irritable Bowel" (get it? PMS???), and someone could be "Colon Polyp", and another could be "Bowel Prep", wheeee! We could hang out by the gravies and gross people out into eating their mashed potatoes dry...

Anyhoo, told ya I was bitchy!

Fabulous PMS food (and low carb, for the most part..)

Heat in a pan for 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly with a spatula:
1 15 oz can pumpkin (I threw in a cooked sweet potato that we had left over from dinner the other day, too)
Bunch of ginger (1-2 tbs fresh or 1-2 tsp ground)
1/2 tsp cinnamon, to taste
1/2 tsp nutmeg, to taste
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup sugar free vanilla syrup

In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup milk with 4 eggs until well blended. Whisk in pumpkin mixture until smooth.
Bake at 325 degrees in a casserole dish that is immersed in a larger pan filled 1/2 full with water. Bake for 50-60 minutes until center almost set; prop over door open with a pot holder and allow to sit for 20-30 minutes until custard is set. Refrigerate overnight, and try not to eat the whole thing for breakfast... Jacob really liked this served with extra maple syrup, lucky little dude! Soooo glad we have a gallon left until we can make more next spring:-)

p.s. my bad knee is getting wonky, completely blue about that as well. WTF will I do if it blows out, and I can't participate in my acts of daily absolution?
Won't end up doing all 3 classes tomorrow in an effort to be cautions, just spin and swim. Pretty sure it was the stoopid scuplting class "walking with resistance bands wrapped around your feet" thingey that messed up my ligaments, boo. And I've been trying to be so careful! Anyway... I remember reading something somewhere (hazard of reading 6 things at once... minimal retention) about your joints and ligaments being more labile during your special girlie time, bah! Stupid hormones!

Constant Craving...

2008-09-27T00:01:00.007-05:00

The diet has been clipping along nicely the past few weeks; haven't lost a pound in like forever, but the tidy sensation of self control is highly gratifying, even if it amounts to little more than self induced S&M:

I have been SUCH a bad girl lately tho and in much need of discipline, craving food like crazy... and not necessarily foods I can't eat per se (went to an ice cream shop tonight with the fam and didn't bat an eyelash), but just wanting to *eat* and *eat* and *eat*. Maybe it's all the spin classes et al ramping up the appetite, but I don't like it AT ALL; much easier to whip myself into submission when I could care less if I ate or not, but not so much fun when I sit during an entire 2 hour movie and have orgiastic fantasies about bunless cheeseburgers and chocolate raspberry ricotta smoothies (eating one now, as a matter of fact... blend 1/2 handful of frozen blackberries, 2 tbs unsweetened dark chocolate powder, 1/4-1/2 cup skim milk, 1/4 cup lowfat ricotta, a glug of sugar free Kahlua syrup... eat with a spoon and try not to moan so loud you wake the kids up).
I am *sorely* in need of a plan, where to go from here so I don't keep feasting on nuts and sprouted grain crackers every time I'm at a loss for what to put in my mouth.

Sing it, KD; girl knows just what I'm talkin about:

Guess Who..

2008-09-25T21:44:00.005-05:00

...I ended up sitting only a couple feet behind while I was on my scooter, waiting for the light to change?
Sporty Guy!!! (ooOOooOOOOooooooo!)
Seeing that he wasn't moving at a high rate of speed for a change, didn't have mirrors to catch me peeking, and wasn't looking back, I took the opportunity to investigate at length the muscles of his famed dreamy thighs, his sinewy arms, his complete lack of body fat... sigh! Even his bike is slender and sexy looking, a far cry from my Pee Wee Herman put-put bike with my big ole mom basket.
Why do I see this guy almost every day, every where, allover the place?
One of the great mysteries of the world, no doubt...

Something completely unrelated:
You know what I miss???
I miss living in a low budget girlie pad, where none of the decor costs more than $6.99, and the "window treatments" are nothing greater than cool pieces of fabric strategically pinned to the curtain rods. Being a fully fledged grownup is certainly weighty in a number of ways, keeping up with the Joneses a fine aspiration, but give me a place where there is little worry about how sterile the joint is vs how cool and interesting your stuff is, and I'd be a happy happy girl. Bah! Being a member of the middle class is HIGHLY overrated.

Or your house, neither, cause I'll prolly mess it up and make it look like Pee Wee's suburbanite ranch, bike and all.

Ow!

2008-09-23T22:45:00.002-05:00

Discovered something new yesterday:
Sculpting class is wicked evil; I could hardly walk properly today...
And another fitness tidbit to mention: when you are already having difficulty walking, doing an hour long spin class is soooooo not a good idea. It felt GREAT while I had the endorphins flowing, but they all seem to be absent now and the ibuprofen has since become a weak balm.
Had a wee little stressful sort of day, had a million things going on, and didn't have time to eat dinner. Thusly, upon arriving home at 9:30 PM, starving like mad, I had a scarf of desperation that would have made even Dr. Atkins hurl:
4 slices of bacon (cold), a scoop of cottage cheese (directly from the container), a handful of nuts, a 1/2 package of sprouted wheat crackers (it was small..), 3 sugar free chocolate candies, and a sugar free fudge bar. Damn! I guess if you're going to cheat and eat like a cow, you should do it up properly... at least I didn't gorge myself on carbs.

Politics (as much as you'll ever see from me)...

2008-09-22T13:03:00.008-05:00

Bwahahaaaahahahahaaaahahahaaa!

Did that "3 hours at the gym" thing today again, and feel a whole lot better than I did the first time 'round... in fact, this morning I was sweating it out in spin class (which is normally not my thing that early), and I'm doing just great, really getting into it, and the guy says: "Ok, this is our last song"... I was like: "say what?" and cranked my resistance up as high as I could stand it.
How'd that happen??

Love love loving getting back in shape; it's become quite the fun little addiction, and I'm totally not hating the results, either. I started a bellydance class this past weekend as well, but sadly am not sure if the class will continue, since there aren't enough participants. Maybe it's just karma trying to keep me from humiliating myself, from shaking my thing (thang?) on stage someday for all to see, but it's been fun practicing my lil bellydance moves all over the house. I've known since waaaaay back in my club hopping days that I was a closet hoochie dancer; get this girl some platform heels, a mirror, and something to twirl around (oh! and a martini..), and I'll be happy for hours on end....but best to keep such things private;-)

One more thing:
More oddball fun! Anybody want to go with me? Guaranteed to make you scratch your head in consternation for weeks to come; a wonderful diversion from politics, the collapse of the economy, chronic boredom, and other such unpleasantries. Plus, you get to hang with me, which is usually good for a chuckle, wheeeeeee! (I'll leave the platform heels at home, promise...)

Friends:

2008-09-21T19:24:00.009-05:00

Not 100% sure I've drank enough wine to get the creative juices flowing... some days, the posts just flow from my fingers into creation; other times, they need a little jump start...

Can't even begin to express how nice it was to *finally* have company over today; there's something about sharing where you live with other people that makes you see your life in a new perspective (sometimes good, sometimes bad, tee hee).
And I truly do feel that if it wasn't for company, I'd NEVER clean beyond the most obvious:
Starting at 7 am, in frenzied anticipation of witnesses to my poor housekeeping skills, I was cleaning the faces of the cupboards, washing the grates to the stove, etc and etc... we women are ruthless when it comes to domestic self abuse, so no matter how much I cleaned, dusted, tidied, and downright *hid* piles of clutter, it never seemed like it was enough. I even gave the chicken coop a quick brush up and weeded the gardens a bit, der!
And who really cares? Cause unless Martha herself was coming to call, no one would likely notice.
Can't tell ya, either, how much fun it is to hang with our old/new friends, Todd and Lynn:
Is it really that strange to be friends with your teenage boyfriend and his wife, even if the teeny bopper romance ended over 20 years ago? Really??
So do you think Jerry Springer will be showing up at the door anytime soon...
and will he notice that the chicken coop is in disarray and the gardens are a mess????
Sigh!

Friends are hard to come by, especially those who knew you before life got so complicated, so I'm not going to over analyze...
*Fun* people are hard to come by as well, so I'm glad that any awkwardness can be overlooked and we can enjoy the newness of friendships begun and those small bits of familiarity of the best and oldest of friends.

Damn! Now I've drank too much, and I'm sleeeeepy:-(
There's so not a set formula for liquid inspiration, and it seems I've overdosed... off to bed, to face a chaotic week of working too much and catching up on my finances, wheeeee!

p.s. read something interesting tonight, written by a man who recently ended his own life:

" Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out."
http://reno.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html

25 Miles:

2008-09-18T07:25:00.004-05:00

The weather in the Great North has been gor-ge-ous the past few days... and as such, have not been the least bit sad when getting sent home a little early from work, even tho I am on the verge of being broker than broke;-)
Yesterday, I lounged outside in the shade and felt the breeze on my face, the indirect warmth filtering thru the leaves of the maple tree; I leaned back in the lawn chair, closed my eyes, and tried my hardest to pretend it was still summer. Lovely!
Today, I got an itch to make a run to the library, my 7 mile easy loop, as a prelude to my evening spin class. I was sloow and tired, didn't want to push myself too hard knowing what was in store later at the gym (hell, that's what). Picked up so many good books and a pair of yummy shoes from my favorite thrift store (they were quite the slutty find, considering they came from the Christian Charity resale shop, tee hee), that I could barely get everything home-- thank God for bungee cords...
It's funny, in a weight loss/fitness situation, that plateau you reach when you've lost quite a bit of weight and are more fit than you've been in a long time... and thus are fit and slender enough to start comparing yourself to *everyone else*, bummer. Which then begins to illuminate how much more weight you need to lose, and then that rosy glow of accomplishment begins to fade.
Tired! More later...

Hey Ya!

Gar!

2008-09-15T19:36:00.008-05:00

Girl needs a cocktail, like, 2 hours ago...

Between the children's drama and other such unpleasantries, here sits I, trying to concoct a low-carb girlie martini in lieu of dinner: unsweetened cranberry juice, stevia, vodka... or should it be: sugar free irish cream coffee syrup and vodka?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, just hope I can choke it down.
And here's to hoping the hangover doesn't keep me from spin class and my trip to the police station tomorrow... cheers, motherfuckers!

Awkward:

2008-09-14T18:25:00.013-05:00

Every once in a blue moon, life presents you with evidence that whilst you are numbly making your way through the average middle class experience, some very interesting things are afoot... that while you are doing laundry or watching another lame movie from the Blockbuster on another Saturday night, people are interacting, having heaps o fun, and experiencing life in strange new ways.
Enter the Miltown Kings with Dead Man's Carnival up at the Miramar, beloved venue where we saw the Ditty Bops last year:
Not 100% sure what the evening's entertainment had in store, just that it was some sort of vaudeville drag show-slash-carnival-- how could it NOT be cool?

I was the slightest bit confused when I saw that the ticket taker was a gal with a mustache (or was it a dude with boobs??) and wondered for a second what the deal was... and then when a couple really solid, squarish women with manly haircuts kicked us out of our seats it started to become more clear (how bullish! there weren't assigned seats, tee hee).
Well, slap me silly, but I had never heard of a "Drag King" show... and I thought I was at one point quite the worldly girlie, bummer. Anyhoo, the show was well done, the emcee absolutely hilarious, the performers really talented (the striptease with the ample bootied, small breasted woman was, hmmm, interesting... not the source of titillation I suspect it was meant to be, but inspiring that another woman from my tribe of "chubby girls with no breasts" was comfortable enough in her own skin to strut her stuff on stage for all to see). Since it was my stepdaughter Emily who suggested our evening out, I leaned over at that point and reminded her how lucky she was to have us for her parents, or the whole experience might have been a little..... awkward;-)

The fire juggling act-- cool! The skinny dude in the dress who stripped down to a thong that was clearly too grande in the pouch-- not cool! (sorry, skinny dude.. my open mindedness of body imperfections is fairly limited to women).

As we were walking out of the theater and eavesdropping on a group of gals, I overheard one of the ladies say: "yeah, I think I may have met you already-- we made out one time outside a club, but I never got your name"... snort!
Overall, a fascinating experience, and long overdue.
And much kudos to the husband, who was willing to be dragged--yet again-- to something that would make the average man run screaming into the night.. it's why I married him, after all:-)
In homage, I present to you Ms. Ani DiFranco:

p.s. got me some Ani tickets for her Madison concert next month, oh yeah!

18#:

2008-09-11T15:13:00.005-05:00

As of a couple days ago, I'm down 18#, can't hardly believe it:-)
Only 10 to go.... (ok, is that starting to get a little creepy, 'cause that # is never going down? As a former Miss Annie Rexic I guess I'll need to watch that, but figure I'm pretty darn safe for about 30 more # or so, tee hee)
In fact, pulled on a pair of those jeans from the shop-a-thon the other day, and even out of the dryer are a little baggy now. Hmmmmmmmm...spin classes clearly rock as equally as they suck major butt.

SO crazy busy these days, and as a result screwed up Grace's Dr's appointment AGAIN: between the gym, work (+ new job), school (and my school, which hasn't even started yet), the kid's schedules, maintaining the houshold, etc, life is kicking my ass right now, and we's just getting started.

Speaking of ass kicking (and I'll list these in order of importance): got me butt kicked in spin this morning, go figure. Maybe I'm just not a morning person, but slogging thru and then doing swim aerobics really hard works out well...
Oh! And I also bought 3 esssspensive Aveda lipsticks at the salon today (quite the splurge for me) in dark, rich shades. Husband, in addition to not completely liking the 'do, sniffed at them and asked why I didn't get a frosty pink one instead-- gar! Thought guys liked full, dark red lips. Men... what a mystery (the mystery being how long it will be before he gets any again, truly)!

Here's something a little silly:

And something a little sad:

Just for funs, I rode my bike to the library at full speed in my highest gear-- the ENTIRE way. Sheeeeee-ooooot: Just a few spin classes and I've already kicked up the self abuse a notch. I was doing pretty darn good, too, until I got to that last gigantic hill. I had hoped to sprint up, but instead crawwwwlllled up-- but still in the highest gear (used to be spinning my wheels and panting at 2 or 3, a different creature altogether at 7, wheeeeeee!). Love love love to kick my OWN ass, too, I guess. Prolly need to take a number these days, tho-- yah.

Woo Hoo!!!

2008-09-09T22:23:00.007-05:00

Normally, I would think a song like this was totally saptacular (being a fairly non sentimental person, except recently..), but this was the song that pulled me thru a *really* intense spin class tonight, and who would ever have thought???

This would be class #3 for me (4 total; the first one scared me off spin for *many* years..), and only wound up in spin after being tricked into it today, as I swore to my limpy self that I would take at least a day off.

I was feeling antsy after my day of shopping and cool restaurant-ing (details to follow), so felt a need to run to the gym to do a quick Zumba class to give those traumatized biking muscles a rest.

Turns out, Zumba class was cancelled, dangit! and who would mosey over but the spin instructor to invite me--personally-- to come to spin instead. WTF??? How could I say no???

My hopes were very low that I'd make it thru the entire class: I was still sore from yesterday's workout, and was tired and hungry-- energy levels low from a long day.

Sigh! So I jumped on the cycle and hoped I wouldn't kill myself. The songs the instructor played were tunes I normally would have sniffed at, not the high energy disco-ey songs I'm used to, but they were perfect, SHE was perfect, a nice change from the 2 other classes I've taken this week.

And you know what??? I DID it!!! I completed the WHOLE class, cranking up the resistance, standing, sitting, sprinting, keeping the RPM's where she wanted them (breaking new speed records for me), hallelujah! I could breathe better, knew mentally what to anticipate, which made it sooo much easier to push through my fear of not being able to keep up, it was amazing, and so much sooner than I thought it would take. Yay, encouragement, so needing this today, right now:-) Slipped a pedal during a sprint, too-- OW! Got a nice purple goose egg forming on my shin; looks great with all the other pedal scrapes and ankle gouges from the Door County trip...

Speaking of encouragement, was able to squeeze into the next size down in jeans today.. not the best, most comfortable look for me (part of the "I can't breathe" collection for fall), but still cool noetheless. Made me feel bad for buying like 7 pairs of jeans that fit (to go with the 7 boobie shirts I bought last week; since the girls are shrinking they would like a wee bit of recognition before they disappear altogether...), but I won't cry if I need to go down to the next size in a few weeks, oh no I won't;-)

Tracey and I also checked out a vegetarian restaurant I've been dying to try: Cafe Manna in Brookfield. What a gorgeous preplanned community! So clean! So new! In spite of Brookfield's almost scary perfection, the Cafe seemed a wee bit less pretentious.. my tofu on a bed of greens with grilled vegetables was tasty and Tracey's portabella sandwich looked good, but always very nice to have another opportunity to see that I can cook circles round those shi shi folks, tee hee (excellent at both vegetarian AND non- sorts of cooking, I guess I just rock that realm, in a "really bad hobby for a dieting girl" sort of way...) Nothing will ever compare to the vegetarian restaurants in Austin, but it was nice to try something a little more local.

Sleepy, sleepy... working a shift and a half tomorrow...

Never Never Never:

2008-09-08T20:31:00.008-05:00

Do a spin class, followed by an hour of intense swim aerobics (totally wiped the floor with those gramma's in the class, lol!), with an hour of crazy scuplting afterwards.
Oy!
Girl has felt sapped, I tell you, all day... not sore, just on empty, despite drinking a ton of water and even eating some steel cut oatmeal (=carbs, thought it would give me energy.. it didn't).
But I spose it didn't keep me from mustering the ambition to clear my drawers and closets of **8** bags of clothes, shoes, and whatnot (even blew the great "culling of the holey bras and underwear" event out of the water, which I think was only *3* bags).
So it was a good day, a painful, exhausting day, a day of letting go:

If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go

Bad:

2008-09-07T09:36:00.009-05:00

Here I sit on the patio, enjoying the cool fall air, on what would be an otherwise ordinary Sunday, coffee in hand...
...waiting for the dog to barf, again.

Since Grace works at the local custard shop, she has brought more ice cream into the house lately than we've had in all our years combined, and had set a few containers of the richest, darkest, double chocolate-ey chunk stuff on the counter last night to make room in the freezer for more.
So what did I find this morning when I stumbled out of bed??

Chocolate: all over the floor, the counter, the cabinets, the rugs, the couch.. it was like a chocolate massacree had happened while I was sleeping, unaware that such a thing could happen so quietly.
And so, without even missing a beat, I walked into the bathroom, drew up a 5cc syringe of h2o2 and squirted it into Maggie's chocolate smeared mouth.... and waited, and waited...

Success! Fortunately, it was a more pressing need than I thought (and not unlike an archaeological find, if you will...) for contained therein was an entire ball (chewed up into large chunks), 1/2 of a stuffed animal, the entire contents of the cat box, and a fully intact tampon.

Welcome to the life of a displaced country girl! (Or am I a city girl who has been displaced in the county for most of my years? I'm confused)...

It was fun being outside for a change to see something I haven't in a while: people cruising down the highway can catch the briefest glance of our tipi as they pass, and sometimes will pull onto the service road to get a better look... ya gotta wonder what they think when they see it sitting there in the prairie grass, and then see me on my computer looking all nerdy and blogging, and then picking a discheveled tampon out of the dog's mouth (she tried to gulp it back down again, and ate most of the ball before I could stop her...).

Heard this song on the radio this morning, reminded me of something... sure wish I could remember what (tee hee; being forgetful can be entertaining, sortof, cause someday it will remind me of a dog barfing, and I won't remember why exactly...):

p.s. Bono with no shirt on? Hubba hubba! Lost 15# btw, can actually see my waist, my belly is 95% flat, arms getting slimmer... did a spin class on Thursday, and got my booty kicked into next Tuesday, but was encouraged by a very nice class participant who assured me that it takes at least a month to be able to do the whole 45 minutes all the way thru. Don't think I've sweated so much in my ENTIRE life, and wasn't even *doing* it correctly... looking forward to kicking it's butt someday in the near future; it will be quite the accomplishment and confidence builder, and should coincide round about with meeting my weight goal (10# left to lose, +/-, the spin should help me get over the plateau).
Great summer, overall, sad to see it go.. more on that later.

p.s.s. (later): one of my *secret* fave bloggers, JenIG visited my blog! Ooooo, and since she is the very nice Christian gal I have long aspired to be, I quickly scanned the blog and tried to clean it up, much as I would if she had stopped by the house... but instead of throwing the dirty laundry down the basement stairs (and closing the door) and hiding the many piles of clutter in the oven, etc, I was deleting evidence of my potty mouth, much more rampant of late (je m'excuse!).
Oh, and another thing. On the bike trail this am I discovered that there are TWO plaid shirt guys!!! Except this one was heavy set, older, and had a bushy beard. Good thing, too, otherwise I'd never keep them straight....

Sushi!

2008-09-03T20:47:00.012-05:00

Funny how things run in streaks, and the strangest things, too. It all started yesterday, with a free moment and an impetuous decision-- well, two impetuous decisions, really.

You see, free moments and myself can be dangerous, landing me and mine in all sorts of folly. In my spare time, I have all sorts of opportunities to plan, scheme, and jump headlong into stuff that sounds like fantastically rational things to do at the moment I decide to do them....

Sooooooooo, after years of planning, researching, talking with people, changing my mind, getting 65 separate informational packets sent, I have enrolled in a Master's program!!! In a couple hour's time, I had spoken with the enrollment coordinator, filed my application, sent for my transcripts, and written a 3 page "Statement of Professional Goals", wheeeeeeeeeee! The program itself is quite unique (and fully accredited, btw), offering one class to complete in an 8 week time period, with completion in two years. I don't know 'bout choo, but doing only one class at a time sounds fan-freakin-tastic, and soo less schizophrenic than the 4-5 classes at a time of programs past. And there's a 10% discount if more than 5 people enroll, and 20% off if 20 + people get on board-- and ya'll know how much I loves me a discount! I should be beginning Oct 20, with books (included in tuition, wtf??) being drop shipped-- did I mention that the entire program is online? Did I mention that I am in love?? Oh yeah! And since the community college I've been adjunct-ing with for years has requested a new contract with me for this semester, one can only speculate a lovely clinical experience teaching there, and an equally sweet lil job a waitin' for me when I graduate (ok, that's projecting something awful, and tempting the fates to boot, so I'll erase those thoughts from my brain).

I also joined the gym today, and quite characteristically forgot to attend classes tonight-- so it's already going swimmingly (no pun intended-- there's no evening swim classes, har de har har).

And since Jacob had a fabulous day at his BRAND, NEW SCHOOL: he not only goes to school with several people he knows in one form or fashion, but made a new friend... oh, and did I mention that unbeknownst to us, his best friend since age 5 unexpectedly decided to enroll!!! Crazy, crazy times, and happy ones for a change. School and my kids are not always on the best terms, god bless their antisocial and antiestablisment lil hearts (lol! really, it kindof bums me out...). Oh, and the dude signed up for violin, too-- and instead of being $80/month, is FREE (me like free).

So, enroll in master's program, good day at school for kiddo... maybe we need to go to HONADA, that new sushi place I've heard a ton about and isn't too far (Kenosha)??? It wasn't hard to get the boy on board, but had to twist a little arm to get the man out the door...I even dressed up for the occasion, which was a little exciting (for me, maybe the man, too;-).
Since I wasn't 100% sure what to get, I figured getting the largest and most obnoxious thing on the menu would be useful, so we were presented with the "Party Boat" (and no, the party boat sushi was NOT wrapped in weed vs the traditional nori, as one sassy person suggested; miso what-was-that-again, btw?)
I've included a photo for your amazement:

The sushi was INCREDIBLE, and we did our best, but couldn't even come close to finishing the monstrosity... so with the leftover fish tonight, I very lightly cooked the stuff up (cause there's no telling what it picked up in our nas-tay fridge overnight, cesspool of spilled stuff and assorted biohazards it is), and made a ton of rolls:And I've even included a RARE photo of moi, all sweaty and unkempt from my toils of sushi making:
After yesterday, I'll let you in on a little secret (so shhhhhhh! don't tell): sooo not really a fan of sushi. I much prefer the rolls, tyvm, vs plain raw fish. Something about an overwhelming ick factor, visions of liver flukes and such (blast! that nursing education and all it's paranoia...), and having to gum a sometimes nasty, gooey bit o raw fish. Cook it the tiniest smidgen of a bit, and I'm on board, 100%.

p.s. even got tomorrow's dinner on the docket: asiago cheese and spinach sausages (a la Sam's club), sliced and served on pita bread with tzatziki sauce, sliced cukes and tomatoes from the garden... happy times to be organized, wonder how long it'll last;-)

p.s.s.: mighty excited about politics these days, looks like our gal is the REAL DEAL, and then some (scroll all the way down to the end of the post).

We Be Campin'!

2008-08-27T15:08:00.013-05:00

Camping and blogging, who'd a thunk? The way the world's spinning, headlong into technology that reaches into the wilderness family vacation (ok, Door County isn't the wilderness... but there's still very few places you can get a cell signal) one can't help but be thrilled:-)
We got off to a late start on Monday, so much so that we weren't going to make it to the campground in time for the 11 *PM* deadline... so we finally had the happy experience of camping at the Door County Walmart-- classy! We had always heard that you could spend the night there in the parking lot, and there you have it: we can cross that one off the list of "tacky things we must do before we die".
So then it's wake up early, pick up some last minute purchases, and head out to the campground, all at the decent hour you should have made it the previous day if you were the punctual type.
The campground was not too crowded, I suspect because those from the Land of Lincoln went back to school this week, and we have since decided to make this the official camping week for evermore.

The weather was gorgeous, the bike trails sublime. The kids were crabby (quelle surprise!), so Jake and I took the motorcycles out on the peninsula for a ride all by our adult lonesome, wheeeee! We met the friendliest couple from Oregon who travelled all this way for the Harley reunion-- amazing! What an incredible thing it must be to have a passion that can take you places, I really need to look into that...
We determined that it would cost a whopping $70+ to take the kids and the cycles on the ferry to Washington Island, and would it be worth it??? That truly is the question of the day, an excellent indication of how little stress we're feeling, ahhhhhhh:-)
We twisted arms big time to get the kids on the bikes for an ice cream run, sigh! Its getting harder and harder to entice the kids to get up and moving... they enjoyed their gigantic custard sundaes while I munched on an apple, and being the less geebed out afterwards, kicked their butts on the ride back home (I felt so good, I rode up the huge hill to get out of the ice cream place TWICE. I remember being *barely* able to get out of there the last time we went a couple years ago, and each and every time before then..)
Of course, the ride was spectacular, stunning, breathtaking (I'm running out of adjectives here, so let's just say it was pretty dang fabulous) and funny, since I remember the trails as being a little more grueling than they actually were, go figure. Either the ride wasn't so bad because I wasn't hauling dead weight in the form of a bike trailer or trail-a-bike (one of the few advantages of parenting adolescents, yippie yahooey! I flew past those poor trailer draggers and tried very hard not to gloat, tee hee), or my daily self abuse back home is increasing my stamina. Either way, I'm loving it.

It got dark waaaay too early the first night, and since I neglected to bring any evening entertainment, the boys went promptly to sleep while Grace and I twiddled our thumbs-- it was only 9 pm, for cripes sake! So we girls mustered up the ambition to make an evening trip to the beach to check out the stars (and fairly uncharacteristic of our lazy, scaredy cat selves). The beach also happens to be the only place in the whole gigantic campground that has a cell signal *and* a place to charge Grace's phone, so off we went.
Being the ever smart girl, Grace had the brilliant idea to bring a lantern, a tiny thing that I scoffed at: as a self proclaimed master navigator, I thought for sure that we didn't need a light. After all, I had my phone (which casts like a tiny flicker of light, woo hoo), and we were just going to the beach, an easy, 5 minute walk from our campsite.
The night sky was breathtaking, you could see every constellation and galaxy with perfect clarity, making for excellent stargazing. That, and Grace could return all 600 of the texts she received when there was no signal, and I could sit and read my favorite blogs by the light of the stars. We felt like quite the clever girls, mixing the very best the world has to offer: the night sky, the wind blowing off the water, the faint call of an owl... and reading the Crunchy Con blog and Natalie Dee comics.
Thought we'd see other techno addicts hiding out by the light of the moon, but we were the only ones, compounding the feeling that we are worse off than most, but no surprise there.
At around 11, the lure of the camp bed beckoned, and so I set off alone with my trusty iPhone, as Grace wasn't quite ready to head back. And off I went into the pitch black night... feeling the confidence that I initially had of my stellar navigational skills flicker and wane with each step I made. Where the hell was I anyway? Which direction was I heading-- and was our camp this way, or over that way? I had no flippin clue. All of a sudden the panic crept in, even tho I was only a 2 minute walk from where I started: I was lost, in the pitch black, and was flooded with visions of wandering around in the night aimlessly until morning (the greatest fear being that I'd miss my morning bike ride). The panic went straight to my gut, a ridiculous thing, since I knew how to get back to where I started and the bathrooms nearby (if only I could get there in time!). It was a strange reaction, one of those sympathetic "fight or flight" things I'd heard about in nursing school but thought was far below my civilized self.
I was walking as fast as I could-- all the while FREAKING OUT--listening to the sound of my flip flops as they hit the trail beneath me that I felt but could not see. Gar!
Made it back, just.in.time... to wail my lost status to my totally UNsympathetic daughter (I even texted her "I'm lost", to which she replied "like I care"-- evil, bad daughter;-).
I convinced her that we needed to leave right then and there with her lantern so we could make it back together, and THE SAME FREAKING THING HAPPENED AGAIN. We got totally turned around, weaved and bobbed on our way to finding the trail, and got stopped by the Rangers, who were no help at all, really. I think they thought they were busting a couple of teens drinking on the beach (hence the weaving), and told us the trail was "over there" (yah, we knew that... but finding it was another deal altogether). So off we went again, like big time dorks, feeling for the road beneath us to guide us *somewhere*: our first attempt led us out of the campground altogether, so we backtracked, looked for landmarks barely remembered, backtracked again, and then went for it and picked a path. It was the wrong path, but thought we remembered that it took us to the camper (Grace thought it was in one direction, I thought it was the other.... and mom overruled).
THANK GOD! After wandering around in the dark for 45 minutes we made it back to camp, humbled and grateful... and shamed, as the "clueless girls who should never venture out" we truly are. No more will I boast about being able to find my way in the dark sans flashlight, for even with a light source was still able to get myself lost, boo (and no, Jake was not worried and thought it was funny, said: "you two should do that sort of stuff more often", sheesh!)

UPDATE:
The rest of the vacation was pretty chilled, the kids sleeping in as long as possible, me taking long bike rides in the early am (averaging 15- 30+ miles per day).
I can't describe how beautiful and fun the trails are to ride: I'd start out by the beach (and check my emails, tee hee), ride along the shore, a knotty trail with great little hills and sharp corners... I've taken a liking to riding my bike as hard as possible, using my upper body to pull the bike up, over, and side to side, showing it who's boss (fully realizing that one day it will throw me over the handlebars and really let me know..). The sensation of flying, of maneuvering my body to work with the rise and fall of the land was incredible. The best way I can illustrate the joy I felt was when I saw a little 7 or 8 year old girl on the trail, pedaling her bike with abandon: she would stand up, sit down, pedal like crazy, and cruise... you could see her turn her head to catch the wind to blow her hair, and she'd smile a full face, radiant grin, showing the pure elation she felt as she flew down the trail. That's how I felt, like a kid again: the pedaling almost effortless, climbing the hills with a sting and a burn, with the absolute thrill of riding downhill as fast as possible, pulling the bike to and fro to avoid tree roots and rocks, feeling strong and alive.
Each trail opened up to a new and gorgeous natural feature of the park, one better than the next: the first being the shoreline, and then the woods and bluff (my favorite! You'll be climbing some to get there, but your ass will thank you later. The views are breathtaking, and the ride down a *ton* of fun). One way takes you up, up, up the bluff even further, the other only part of the way, but both eventually take you to an open meadow, a basin lined with mature cedars and prairie flowers. Soon, you'll find yourself at the Ranger's station, and it'll be time to head back the way you came, so you can revisit all the gorgeous spots all over again, before you end up back at the beach.
I tried to get as many miles behind me as I could before the guilt set in that I was holding up the family, but no one seemed to care.
We rented double kayaks on our second day, which was an incredible upper body workout and *tons* of fun. I've been trying to get Jake to ok the purchase of a couple decent kayaks for us and a Sunfish (sailboat) for the kids, and maybe I've convinced him now... we are the toy family, for sure, and are so blessed for it!
We paddled out to Horseshoe Island and explored the trails (in a bikini and flip flops, what a woman...), where Grace was accosted by a millipede and narrowly escaped with her life.
Paddling back was a pain as Grace decided she'd rather be the passenger vs an active paddler, but I was able to amp up my endurance by singing Fiona Apple and Ditty Bops songs (thank god we were out of hearing range for anyone) and make it back in time for our 2 hour limit. Man! Did my shoulders hurt so good the next day:-)
The kids hung on the beach quite a lot, I rode my bike, Jake did a little of both, and we were able to get the kids out for one motorcycle ride out to the end of the peninsula-- beautiful! On the return trip, we stopped in Ephraim, to find a cute but misplaced hippie couple singing and playing slide guitar, with the girl occasionally doing hula hoop tricks (a la Cirque Du Soleil?). Being in the midwest, most folks initially looked confused as to what to make of such free spirited goings on, but eventually relaxed and it became almost normal to see people expressing themselves openly in the public square.
It was nice, took me back a few... I remember being free that way in other parts of the country, and was it the place that made it possible, 0r was it just who I was at the time?
I think it was mostly the location: Santa Fe, Tuscon, and parts of Texas being far more open to artistic people, but of course was a completely different girl back then (and sometimes I miss her).
Jake and I wrapped up the trip with one last motorcycle ride out to Bailey's Point (while the kids beached it yet again per their choice, hopeless relaxers!). We made it back just in time to strap the bikes back on the trailer and thoroughly irritate Mr Punctual Dude, the guy who was to take residence in our camp once we left and had to wait 15 WHOLE MINUTES to do so... (poor Punctual Guy. We sometimes would like to be him, but he didn't look to happy, having obviously taken great personal pains to show up at EXACTLY the correct time with his stuff and his family, and then had to wait. Makes being the Slow Boats and Wal Mart campers seem that much more appealing..)
So there ya have it: our 5 day vacation in a nutshell (sortof).
We reconnected, felt the joy and pain of what it means to be a family, holed up in a metal box for days on end, realizing that even tho what we have is fractured and dysfunctional, is precious nonetheless.

Har De Har Har Har...

2008-08-23T21:35:00.004-05:00

As a former (reaaallly bad) gymnast, I find this completely funny, yet still amazing...look at how strong the guy is; even in parody, he's still impressive! Sigh!

p.s. interesting little diet factoid: the shorts I could barely squeeze into a few weeks ago are now so loose that I can almost pull them off without unbuttoning them, strange. But other than feeling a little more toned, think I look exactly the same, which is even stranger.. (BDD? ya gotta wonder)

We'll be spending hours and hours on our bikes over the next few days up at Peninsula State Park, wheeeeeeeeeeeee! We used to average 30-50 miles a day some days when the kids were little (and didn't complain as much), not sure if we'll be able to match that, but we'll certainly try. Maybe said shorts will simply fall off of their own accord once we return home, and wouldn't THAT be entertaining?

Hopefully we'll be able to bring the motorcycles as well and check out the peninsula SANS the geebish motorhome, which gives me the worst car sickness *ever*, esp when navigating narrow, winding roads. There's a certain romance to exploring Door County via motorcycle, making a lovely and long overdue trip even more so.

Death Wish 2000

2008-08-23T07:49:00.004-05:00

Something strange yet not entirely unpredictable is happening to my husband and his friends:
My guy is older than me, yet 99% of the time he doesn't act like it... but it's becoming clear that in spite of this, his DNA is well apprised that he's firmly entrenched in his middle age.

So what are all these middle aged guys starting to do?

Buy motorcycles, that's what. And not only are they buying the dang things, but they're planning extensive, cross country trips, buying waterproof chaps and hideous, space age boots they can barely walk in that are supposed to make a long, uncomfortable journey less so (how? Je ne sais pas!)

It's almost as if their genetic makeup is saying, "look guys, most of you weren't supposed to make it thru the 70's, being seriously testosterone soaked meatballs and such... quite a few of you narrowly dodged the AIDS crisis of the 80's, and really, since you have far exceeded my expectations for life span, it's long overdue that you start to think about how to eliminate yourself from the gene pool".

And truly, what's the best and most efficient means of accomplishing that?
Buy a motorcycle.

Well, having worked with a few realllly miserable old people this past week at the hospital, a quick and dramatic ending might be the wise choice, after all... let's just hope that fate is kind to these foolish, aging men and they don't live out the remainder of their days on a spinal cord injury unit.

But good god! Leather chaps on a paunchy, balding dude? If fate is kind to *me*, let the vision be removed from my mind, such that I won't be tormented with it for evermore.

Regular:

2008-08-21T23:27:00.004-05:00

A really interesting phenomena is happening with my daily bike rides on the local trail:
I'm becoming a regular.
Which basically means that some of the more routine riders are becoming familiar, and even though I have never spoken to any of them, have begun to construct identities for them:
There's a skinny older guy who rides pretty much the same route I do, the 10 mile loop. He plugs away at it at a fairly quick pace, but in blue jeans and a button up, plaid shirt.
What's the deal, plaid shirt guy?
Maybe he has yet to discover the wonders of lycra and the beneficial effect being jeans-free will have on his nether parts.
And then there's the driven, sporty guy I see all over the dang place, on he bike trail and most of the roads surrounding our property. He's well appointed in his schnazzy bike duds and helmet, super cool Lance Armstrong glasses (no doubt), and flies like the wind on the trails, kicking my ass (fo shizzle!).
That guy is out there, rain or shine, tearing up the roads and bulking up his already dreamy thighs... sigh! I avoid eye contact for fear that I will get lost in his athletic fabulousness... but I digress (je m'excuse, tee hee).
Why is he there everyday, how can he go so fast? (In defense of fastness, tho, I rode a hard 10 miles in under 45 minutes tonight-- getting faster all the time, wheeeeeeee!)
Then there's the middle aged gal who rollerblades with her teenage daughter; she's made great progress in her technique since I first saw her out there, looking most timid and afraid of how hard the ground is, and how far away.
Today, she was flying down the trail, looking triumphant and a wee bit more slender...
And every so often I'll see an older lady cruising on the trails on a bike with an empty baby seat... she gives a general air of unfriendliness, doesn't like to connect and give the perfunctory "hi" and nod as you whiz past her. She looks a little exotic, like a misplaced gypsy woman who is wary of strangers, even those she sees daily on the bike trail.

You have to wonder: why are we all here, day after day?

Each of us has a story to tell, a motivator that keeps us returning to the sore ass and sweaty, bugs in our teeth trail.
It would be nice if each of us had a sign, indicating our particular driving force (and/or pathology):
"Recent Divorce" (the reason a co worker quit smoking a couple years ago and became a triathelete, losing over 100# in the process), "Sexually Frustrated", "Tired of Being Overweight", "Running Away From My Husband and Kids", "Proving to Myself That I Can Do It"... all these reasons and more (altho I think the dude with the plaid shirts could slip his frustrations down a notch with some fashion tips and a trip to Kohl's).

But I'll continue to keep a lookout for my compatriots of cycling, united perhaps not by what drives us but by the wind in our hair and the benefits it affords us all.
p.s. went shopping today, and I'm down a SOLID pants size, and then some...and with only the slightest bit of sucking, can nearly visualize my belly being as flat as it was before I gained all that weight. I'd jump up and down, but am feeling a little faint (just kidding! Actually, I feel pretty awesome, wahoooo!).

August..

2008-08-19T22:51:00.006-05:00

Allow me to grouse for a moment, as the month of August just isn't my favorite, for a variety of reasons:
#1) Everything smells bad; not sure if it's all the heat and humidity that brings out the stank in everything, but there's a pervasive air of rottenness to this month.
#2) Too many @!&%# bugs. Maybe it's cause we set a veritable cornucopia of items from the garden on the counter to rot (which ties in with #1 above), but it's hard to walk thru the kitchen without kicking up a storm of fruitflies (which will eventually make their way into your wineglass and into your mouth).
#3) Everyones gots the antsies, trying to squeeze moments of profound summer-y fabulousness into every last drop of the remaining break. The spectre of school looms heavily over the children, such that if they aren't entertained every waking moment of the day, it is a day lost, and much parental guilt ensues.
#4) You can feel autumn in the air, and it feels SCARY, like 20 degree below days (I'm projecting BIG time, all the way into winter..), nostrils freezing together, scraping windows before work when you're already leaving 5 minutes too late, fall on your ass on the ice scary. Bah!

I'm sure there's more, but I'll spare you the details...

The diet, such as it is (otherwise affectionately know as "the eating disorder") is going swimmingly; I haven't eaten basic carbs for a month now... no bread, rice, sugar, treats, etc... and I've lost a whole whopping 10 or so pounds:-(
(insert "wha whaa whaa whaaaa" sound here).
I'd love to be skin and bones by now, but I guess since it's taken me a whole lot more than a month to put the dang weight on, it'll take quite a bit longer to get it off.... boo.
I've also been fairly fastidious with my bike riding, averaging at least 10 miles per day (+/-). But what the heck am I going to do when the above-mentioned hell of winter arrives, and I can no longer vent all my frustrations via bicycle?!
I'm on the lookout for a decent exercise bike, but ho hum! I can already predict it will make a lovely drying rack and/or clothes rack... cause riding nowhere in hot pursuit of nothing will only serve to depress me. I love to GO GO GO, with a destination in mind... maybe I will have to imagine myself pedalling to the land of "Skinny Ass", to hang out with my friends "Size Eight" and "Flat Belly", beloved and sorely missed companions of old.
Not only did Jake and I ride our bikes into town for dinner, but Maggie and I tore it up on the service road, riding about 2 miles up and down, up and down... she's getting to be quite the good little trail rider, and other than her stopping abruptly to take a poop break every now and again, does a great job of not breaking my bones while I ride my bike and she trots alongside me. We haven't braved the bike trail just yet, but I'm more than happy to run her up and down the road and avoid the pain and embarrassment of her chasing after another dog and breaking my wrist, lol! Maybe next year after she mellows out.

And finally, here's a little blast from the past for a friend (emphasis on "blast"):

Horrific, yes, but essential to the development of the demented adults we have since become (and no doubt is why my hearing is so bad... I remember listening to this at full blast in the back seat of my parent's car with my "cassette walkman".

Shoot it up(and pass the hearing aids...)!

Disgusting But TRUE Bike Riding Adventures:

2008-08-12T21:24:00.002-05:00

Things that make you question your new love of bike riding:
1) Persistent "crack o the ass" pain-- and, no; you CAN'T put Tiger Balm on it... (you can try, but I highly discourage it).
2) When you get home from a ride, hang out for an hour, and then look in the mirror; to discover that your face is speckled with dead bugs. Isn't there some rule somewhere that if people notice you have dead bugs on your face, they're suppposed to let you know?!
3) Pain in your nether parts (the ones that AREN'T your ass), that can best be described as "chappy lips". This must be why bikers wear goofy looking lycra pantalones vs low rise jean shorts with the thick seam in the crotch.

Anyhoo: I was reminded today of how powerful it is to be seen and noticed-- it's a whole different experience than what I've grown accustomed to, it's quite nice.

Growing Upside Down:

2008-08-11T22:37:00.004-05:00

I swear to you that I won't become one of "those people"-- you know, the kind that lists their entire life's album collection and mixed tape selections, all to begin auto play the unfortunate moment you load their blog.
I swear... even though I've done quite a bit of music posting lately.
Perhaps with my recent backtrack to the land of adolescence, music seems to resonate lately the way it did as a kid when every word carried volumes and volumes of meaning-- better than I could ever explain anything on my own.

These gals share my obsession with bike riding (times like a million) and are among my favorites; this song reminds me of right now, as I think I'll be looking at it in retrospect someday:

Sunday

2008-08-10T17:10:00.009-05:00

I am hanging my head in shame:

I just discovered that it's been *six whole days* since my last blog!
But I have to tell ya, it's all the fault of that dang job of mine.
I discovered at a wee young age that employment interferes with all sorts of fun, blogging among them. I worked a whole heap o days last week, all of them crazy hectic psychotic days, the ones where you get home and either crawl on the couch for the duration of the evening and begin drinking heavily, or jump on the bike and squeeze a ride in before the lethargy hits you.

Mostly, I jumped on the bike.

It's wonderful to be a working stiff when the kids are away, as very little time needs to be spent on feeding people... one night I brought Jake home some drug rep luncheon leftovers (that had been sitting out for 4 hours, shhhhh...), and another I left him to fend for himself while I scarfed down a handful of nuts and called it a day (only a smidgen simpler than my personal favorite-- "peanut butter on a stick"-- single girl dinner of old).

Since I started adding more carbs to my diet, the "I'm never hungry" thing went away, and I'm hungry pretty much all the time again, but ohwell. The same will power that keeps me from running away to join the circus every time the children or my husband drives me crazy will have to suffice to keep me from stuffing my face at every waking moment, and so far, so good... I don't look like a supermodel or even like a refugee from a work camp just yet, but I'll keep plugging away at it until my diet goals are met;-)

On a whole different note, I was freakishly attacked yesterday by our rescue kitty: the little snot faced monster latched his razor sharp claws deep into the flesh of my neck and then proceeded to claw his way down my back. I look like a slasher victim...
Someone seriously needs to take this cat off our hands, as I'm starting to have "squish like bug" fantasies involving cute little kitties. Mr. Charlie cat would like his ass on a platter as well; I thought the boys would be getting along by now, but no deal, and he's made it clear that it's going to have to be him, or the kitty-- Charlie's already made a little place for himself out by the chicken coop in the tall garden flowers that he hides in during the day to get away from his nemesis. Poor guy...and since Charlie has never gone Ginsu on my tender parts, there's no contest as to who will be evicted.

So things are finally starting to get back to normal after the "great life assessment and 20 year reunion" upheaval.
In the aftermath, and much to my pleasure, I've been left with a nifty bike riding obsession (great time to think *and* abuse your body at the same time, both useful for catharsis) and the jump start of an awesome weight loss plan (I had no appetite for weeks as I was pondering all manner of weighty, existential issues, or at least the very best ones I could manufacture...). Now, weeks later, I've emerged on the other side, thinner, more muscular, and sporting a new sense of self. Not a bad experience overall.

In another embarassing move, I did something kindof funny today. Whilst on the bike trail this morning, I took every opportunity to make comments to each and every meatball who had their LARGE, mostly uncooperative dogs off leash. How irritating... the trails are all clearly marked "keep your dogs leashed", but obviously that doesn't apply to the people who own unruly, oversized animals. It's people like that that make it very difficult for people like me to walk my smaller, well behaved dog on the trail, as being confronted by bigger, unleashed dogs makes her very tweaky (especially since being bitten). My most recent combination of vitamins and new found sense of self must be making me BOLD, lol! It felt good to be so sassy, RARRRRRRRRRR!

So much more to say, so little time left in my last remaining day of freedom before the work week starts anew.... maybe I can continue this later when the sun goes down and I don't feel so bad for blogging while it's so nice outside.

Later: even though I am clueless about all things mechanical, I have developed a freakish mind-meld connection with my bike. As I was riding it the other day, it felt strange-- and altho I couldn't see anything wrong with it (see "clueless" statement above), I knew something was wrong... subtle, but wrong.
Sure enough, pedaling even on the easy stretches got harder and harder, and while I wanted to chalk at least some of it up to out of shape slugginess, knew that it wasn't just me.
I got home, and noticed that the rear tire now had visible damage, and was splitting at the rim.
So off to the bike shop I went, and not only did I get my tire replaced on my very own like a Big Girl, but I broke down and got a brand, spankin new saddle that is booty-lectable and hopefully won't make me quite as sore as my old one.
and P.S.:

Can you tell that I've been listening to the dance club channel (#36 on Sirius Satellite Radio) all week now? Loooooooove it!
Tell me, what does this video make you want to do?
I'll let 'cha think about it...

Light Blogging Day:

2008-08-04T20:57:00.007-05:00

Today, while Grace and I were in the car, this *brilliant* song came on the radio. It's quite possibly my favorite forgotten song in the world, which speaks a volume or two about me...
And these are totally my people, my tribe--where o where can they be?

I would love nothing more than to wear a patterened body suit and platform heels and rock out on a spiral platform, if only it wouldn't traumatize my children;-0

The only bad thing is that I'm sure to have a tiny, disembodied head singing backup vocals in my brain all day tomorrow...

Best iPhone video ever, too.

oooHlaLAALALlalalalala!

Viva la Hangover!

2008-08-03T09:03:00.005-05:00

Long overdue chats with old friends + bottle of wine= feeling like death the next day, oy! (ok, it was 1/2 bottle, I've become a major lightweight...)

But it's worth the occasional hangover to be able to connect and reminisce, figure things out, offer apologies for things said and done when we were new and just starting to build the pathologies that were to become the foundation of our adult selves.

How can you adequately apologize for being an alcohol sodden idiot, for mistakes made 20 years ago, for things you did/things that were done to you that weren't intentional (see "alcohol sodden idiot" admission above)?

You can't.

Given the right collection of circumstances, anyone can be a fuck up-- especially when the whole world is before you and you're still clueless as to how it all comes together. Throw in some alcohol, and there's no telling what you can destroy; friendships being the first among the casualties, self worth a close second.

And how easy it is to forgive yourself when you barely remember the details-- drinking is fairly insidious that way-- but one day, even if it's many years later, you'll learn that not everyone forgets...

Is there ever forgiveness? A pseudo-resolution that doesn't involve deeply buried anger disguised as forgiveness? Dunno.
I've forgiven all sorts of stuff over the years, mostly 'cause it required too much energy to remember, to continue being angry, and because I sometimes can distance myself from the offending party (even moving away forever, but I'm discovering lately that this has it's own repercussions...).

Well, my old friend: the world has chewed us both up and spit us out, strangely in close proximity to each other once again... please accept my apology for being young and stupid, for hurting you. I didn't mean it.
And please accept my apology for not remembering, perhaps the shittiest thing of all.

Cry For You:

2008-08-02T22:22:00.009-05:00

Tres 80's, no?

I have a new found obsession with this song, if only for today (fickle girl!)... the lyrics are a wee bit sad, tho:-(
This was our Zumba warmup song, which is probably a subliminal indication that I need to get back to class. I <3 heart Zumba, the most fun you can have with your clothes on, hands down.
I have to tell ya, tho: the song really kept my wheels turning tonight when I was too sore to keep going... I think my thighs and all their connected parts need a break for a couple days before I start riding to work each day.
Bike riding trivia:
I think I really like to ride my bike because--every so often--I catch a whiff of something that reminds me of my childhood. You never get more than one inhalation of whatever it is before it's gone, but being transported to places, albeit briefly, is pretty magical and well worth the sore spots.

Oh good lord, Grace just turned on "Titanic"; not 100% sure if I can watch it, too many angsty sort of issues contained therein: wealth vs character, freedom vs the expectations and limits that privilege brings... the painful dance. Me? I'd rather be the self made gal who has the option to thumb her nose at the status quo and slum it up in steerage, always the better party. The option is the key, though.
And should our gal have married the rich, snooty dude and skipped hanging with the cute, poor guy? Meh. Not sure. Pretty much everyone died afterwards, so she might as well...obviously, the girl got one good roll in the hay she would never forget, always a useful thing when you're old and reminiscing... interesting times, to be sure. I recently read the book: "Devil in the White City", absolutely fascinating recount of the era just prior to the Titanic.

Happy Happpy Joy Joy (but dangit, does my back hurt...)

2008-08-02T13:07:00.009-05:00

Marital satisfaction ratings are quite high today, as husband gave me the nod to do one my very favorite somethings...

wreck stuff!

Yeeeeeeee-ha!

There's only one thing that I dislike in a household more than whiny children and stinky catboxes, and that's

CARPETING.

Ewwwwww, hate it!

Look at that gray stuff in the picture above... it's a thick pile of dirt that's been living under the carpet that I was only too glad to vacuum up FOR-EVAaaAhhhhhhHhhhhhh!

I think carpeting's vile, a permanent receptacle to hold all manner of gross stuff you THINK is getting vacuumed and shampooed up, but never really does: puppy pee/vomit, spilled things, and all that nasty shit you bring in the house on your shoes. Bleck.

Well, no more- now we just have to find and install some flooring, hopefully something fairly renewable (I put my foot down at laminate, WTF is that stuff, anyway? A photocopy of wood and a boatload of chemicals to hold it in place, lame!).

Jake and Jacob are being their own industrious selves, making good progress on the treehouse outside (photos fothcoming). Such a brilliant move to marry the handy guy, who not only can build a variety of things, but is more than happy to let me tear things up in a useful way (and itsn't too hard on the ole eyes, either;-)

wheeeee!

p.s. meeting with Hans was *most excellent* yesterday. I was having such a good time talking with him that I forgot to listen to the jazz! Hooray for old friends, it's been great to reconnect after all these years:-)

Work:

2008-08-01T20:03:00.004-05:00

I decided to do a trial run on my bike to the hospital tonight, and sure enough, it took 28 minutes to get there, for a total of 5.1 miles.
It was a great ride there, practically all downhill (of a sort..), but then the ride home was more challenging: wind in the face, uphill, and tired from the first 5.1 miles rode at full tilt.
Whew!
I got some news yesterday I've decided I'm going to let roll: that I wasn't going to be offered a permanent position after all.
My boss also made it plain that it would be very unlikely that she would *ever* be able to offer me one, due to the mo-fo union and their system that gives anyone in the hospital first choice of positions over me whether they're the most qualified or not... boo.
But maybe it's a blessing as disguise... and I'll treat it as such, until I have any tangible reason to get worried. I still make quite a bit more $$ as a pool staff (at the top of my pay scale) which is a nice perk... and not having to do call hours is sweeeeeeeeeeet!
So sometimes being rejected is a good thing, and when I show up to work hot, sweaty, and tired next week I won't have the slightest bit o guilt about it, neither (bwahahahahaaaaa!)

New Infatuation, So Sweet...

2008-07-31T21:53:00.012-05:00

I've discovered a new love of my life, and it is my delightful iPhone:

I have had many conversations over the past few weeks with fellow iPhone-iacs, from the staff at work who texts me to the super cool pediatrician gal I met last week who secretly texts the cute coach of her kid's t-ball team, while her husband sits nearby (purely platonic, she assures me).
With my phone, I'm able to do things I never could otherwise: chat with people on the sly (I've had more conversations with my daughter lately with the unlimited texting than I've had since the onset of adolescence, esp since she's been holed up at camp for 2 weeks and unable to call), send emails any time of the day (I was sending and reading emails over lunch today while I was chatting with my co-workers, yay!), a well as putting the world at my fingertips, any waking moment of the day. It's been tremendous fun.
Falling in love has been an interesting process, fairly uncontrollable, and hard to determine if it's just lust or the novelty of new features, the titillation of trying new things like texting while listening to iTunes, while receiving a call, while reading my favorite blogs-- all at the same, fabulous time.
So functional! So flexible! And I hear there's DOZENS of optional applications I can peruse to make my phone even more splendid:
http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/
http://www.apple.com/webapps/

It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, thinking about all the things I can do with my beloved phone, and I look forward to all the fun it can offer me;-)

So in homage to my new obsession, I include here a montage of my other favorite Apple (Fiona-- whose CD I found the other day while cleaning out the car. I forgot what a complicated, beautiful voice she has, lovely!):

My body feels different...

2008-07-30T21:31:00.008-05:00

It must be all the bike riding. My legs feel more toned, my arms leaner... my ass perpetually sore.
I'm hoping to be able to ride my bike to work tomorrow and each work day over the next two weeks when Jacob is away at camp. It's only 4.5 miles and should take 20-30 minutes, and hopefully won't make me too nasty sweaty for my patients.

Tonight we took a quick ride up to Uncle Harry's for ice cream in an effort to lure Jacob off the computer, and it ended up getting dark much earlier than we anticipated, so we rode home in the pitch black night-- cool!
The darkness of the wooded bike trail was lit up with the occasional flicker of lightning bugs, and it was eerie silent except for the crickets and the sound of our tires on the pavement. And other than the swarms of bugs that went up our noses and in our eyes, it was a great ride (and no, I didn't have any ice cream, but my unsweetened cranberry water was quite lovely, tyvm).

Dinner tonight (minus the bread, I'm going low carb):

Today:

2008-07-29T23:05:00.007-05:00

Was a strange one; Jake had his colonscopy and was by far the LOOPIEST patient I've ever worked with. He was like his own intoxicated one man show: slurring his words, repeating himself like 100 times, telling strange tales about hallucinating dogs and whatnot... I saw a new side of him and wonder where that guy lives most of the time 'cause he was reeaally funny.
For a while he was quite insistent on having his picture taken with strange facial expressions, and I couldn't get him to stop fixating on it; I'll post those in a bit.
I don't think Jake and I have ever joked around and laughed like that in all the years we've been together, but it didn't stop us from having one of our classic, old school arguments later in the day, but I'm sure he won't even remember:-)

And today I was able to not only put on my "too tight" shorts, but do yoga in them (because I was too lazy to take them off, mostly)! Ah... starvation, exercise, and the resolution of old teenage angst, always good for the waistline... still 100% glad to have the reunion behind me, fo shizzle.

I promise it'll end soon:

2008-07-28T20:58:00.010-05:00

My goal was to get at least 30 miles in today, but as usual, I fell short by the *slightest* margin (28.9 miles, boo), leaving me wanting a little bit more. Story of my life.

Kenosha was quite lovely, as always:

After a very nice segueway, we headed east.

It seems like every trip to Kenosha I take, I have to hit at least two spots: the lake and the cemetery. Odd.
The lure is very pervasive, and I can barely resist...it's almost as if I left pieces of myself behind in my hometown that I keep trying to find. That, and my memory doesn't seem to work the way most people's does: instead of having the ability to sit and recall events, I can only catch snippets of the past, usually through alternative means; smells, sounds, randomly seeing something that triggers a memory, or if someone sits me down and helps me put it together. Thus my past is a disjointed collection of songs, feelings, and mystery odors with the occasional dash of solid reality thrown in (usually by someone else).

The lake is easy enough to figure out, no great mystery there:
Once upon a time, the memories were all happy ones and associated mainly with solitude and friends. I have many fond memories of playing on the rocks, sitting, smoking, contemplating...looking out at the water and feeling the weight of the world, as long as I could stand it.
That, and riding in cars and getting chased, fireworks, moonlit walks on the beach, finding places to make out... and then, later:
The store I opened, that guy I met, the ill advised events that occurred afterwards.
I've come to realize lately that it was these events that led me to leave my hometown, even though I can barely remember them any more. But for years I couldn't go to the lakefront without feeling the weight of bad decisions-- lurking in shadows--revealing to me that your world can change in an instant and take a lifetime to repair.
These days, the ghosts rarely appear and I'm finally able to go back in furtive search of those things I lost.

The cemetery is a quite a bit more complicated... so I'll have to finish this thought a little later.

Tomorrow:

2008-07-27T22:54:00.003-05:00

Well, I got gypped out of 4 miles (only got in 16 instead of 20), so I'm hoping to compensate by heading to the Racine/Kenosha bike trail tomorrow and take it as far as I can.

I'm not 100% sure what I got done today, but it sure didn't include any laundry... and I wonder if today will be the day for the poor neglected clothes.

Try this: wear your ipod to your local WalMart and walk around; it's like the soundtrack to the carnival, very surreal.

Tomorrow:

2008-07-27T00:23:00.005-05:00

Today was one of those days when nothing flowed, so if I don't get at least 20 miles and three loads of laundry under my belt tomorrow I may very well lose my mind.

Is tomorrow a north day, or a south day? ... decisions, decisions.

I'm looking forward to getting back to normal, catharsis firmly behind me.
All I can say is, it felt really good to get back home tonight after the reunion. Damn good.

Class of '88:

2008-07-26T11:15:00.008-05:00

Blog, or ride my bike? Blog, or clean the house?
Hmmmmmm...
I'll try and do them all, but hopefully not at once:

Words can't adequately express how peculiar it was to be in a room filled with familiar strangers; all hopeful, smiling, looking to make a connection with someone else who remembers them as they were in ways they probably can't any longer.

At first I felt somewhat paralyzed with the same fear that's kept me on the periphery all these years, until I found my own personal social butterfly to help me work the crowd....
And you know what?

People remembered me.
Seriously, PEOPLE REMEMBERED ME, and they didn't run screaming in the other direction.

Let me preface that statement for a moment, to explain that I was a most complicated critter back in the day, waaaaay more than I needed to be. And it was a stumbling block, much as it is now.
Being shy takes on many forms: we had our fair share of mousy girls who hid themselves thru conventional means, but I took the alternate approach, shrouding myself under a facade that was in-your-face and faintly whispered "leave me the @#$% alone".
Sad to say, it worked.

So again, the experience of being there last night, opening up to the people, putting myself out there, was exciting and interesting yet made me SAD.

Sad because they were wonderful, because they had so many things to share:
Families; tales of lives off and away, here and there; things they're doing; hopes for the future, who they were in the past.
And sad because I missed so much when I had the opportunity to know them, and didn't.
It was great to see that there was something to like in each and every one of them, as if sufficient years have passed to erase those school day boundaries and we could all just be... people.

Yet I also felt hopeful, since throughout the evening I was struck with a singular thought: we have so much life left and so much more to look forward to, because no matter where we are, it's all still a new beginning.
To a cynical old girl like myself, it's a breath of fresh air and something I'm going to hold fast to over the next few years as I work to take my life in new directions.

I'm really glad I went.

Lyrics

2008-07-26T08:59:00.002-05:00

don't pity me...

2008-07-24T16:30:00.006-05:00

Overheard while working in the recovery room today:

Patient (whispering): "Wow, who on earth would ever want to work here? The same thing over and over again--hohum--and all the farting..."

Patient's husband: "Well, at least there's all the soda, juice, and water you can drink..."

Snort! Too funny... I love this job:-)

Getting paid to mess around with impaired farting people all day: it's like a *dream* come true:

To each his own, I guess;-)

On a completely unrelated note, I have a social function to attend tomorrow for which I have serious fashion reservations. True, I could save myself the stress and dress in my usual repertoire:

But most of my nursing scrubs and band shirts are in the wash and all my sweatpants are filthy from the last time I cleaned out the chicken coop. (and no, I'm only kidding: I don't own any sweatpants or a *single* band shirt... I'm evolving into quite the girly girl; I must own 50 pairs of shoes and 20 handbags, most of which I never wear. Egads! I barely recognize myself these days...getting old is hell).

This evening, Jake and I went shopping, which is one of the "true signs of marital compatibility" between us that I haven't often perused (the other was his readiness to hang in the bars at Walker's Point and not get huffy when the boys wanted to make nice. Not sure how that factored in, marriage wise, I just really liked that one).

I was starving and a wee bit testy, which aren't the best circumstances for shopping, which I hate (gar!), but I still came home with an interesting outfit, kindof cute, and fairly *screams* "Kenosha" (how'd that happen when I went shopping in Muskego? no clue. I think I also heard it screaming "go on a diet" but the hunger pains made the message less clear).

My new/old friend Mr T and I were planning on wearing coordinating girdles, but were unable to connect to really verify (which is why I prefer the PHONE over e-mail. Far more direct, especially in a fashion emergency: Methinks my friend has a phone phobia. Personally, I can talk much faster than I can type,with no need for spellcheck-- and it's easier to get the ideas out before they dissappate into thin air. Besides, I'm still not 100% convinced that after all these years he isn't a figment of my imagination and would prefer an actual confirmation that he does, in fact, exist.)

I'm sure the experience will warrant much reflection and hours and hours of blogging, so I should rest up. Grace wants pictures, we'll see.

Wish me luck, my social skills are quite rusty:-)

Catharsis:

2008-07-23T23:06:00.005-05:00

There is something profound and necessary in a catharsis, however infrequent. Paths taken, paths not taken; it's fascinating to see where the world can lead and where it hasn't, the benefits of certain choices over others.

It's interesting to consider: am I the same person now as I was waaaaay back then, when I was making the decisions that led me to where I am today?

And the surprising answer is:

Yes, absolutely.

How cool is that?

It's great to know that you're not a victim of circumstance, tra la la.

So where the wind and my nature conspires to send me next is anybody's guess, but I am certain that it will be fully in my control and uniquely mine. Wheeeeeeeee....

itchy scratchy

2008-07-22T05:42:00.005-05:00

The dang dog must have opened the door in the night; for here I sit, at 5 am, covered in leetle, tiny skeeter bites.

More, later: after some scrounging around, it has come to light that there has been a serious security breach involving the liquor cabinet...
children and vodka, an excellent mix (altho I do remember a certain school field trip involving vodka, orange juice, and some unfortunate printing presses, none of which mix very well either. Oh, and Chichi's-- vodka and mexican food. *So* not compatible... )

And: Maggie's staples came out this morning, and I noticed that she's developed quite the large seroma, bleck. Either it's going to go away on its own, or she's going to have to be knocked out and a have a penrose drain installed. Double bleck.

Ah! Sweet Tuesday, how I love thee...

Bad.

2008-07-21T18:53:00.007-05:00

I just did a reallllly baaaad thing, and I feel confident that, since my husband never reads this, I can confess and perhaps not only feel better but totally not get busted.
We'll see:
Husband wants to take a cross country trip on his motorcycle sometime soon, despite my many protestations. I guess working in the field of healthcare has made it abundantly clear that travelling by motorcycle can be hazardous to the integrity of your skull... after all, who will help raise the children, maintain the property, etc and etc when he's a vegetable (or worse? but maybe that's the WORSE). ANyhoo.
Hubby has an old friend whose kids are grown, life settled down etc and etc, who called this evening to set up plans for their ride (to the Smokies?! Are you f'in kidding me?).
Hubby's not here, so I tell the guy: "Jake has a young family and probably shouldn't go on a cross country ride. Your kids are grown, but mine need their dad for a few years yet. Call back then."
Ack.
Another black stain on the soul of the Very Bad Wife. I'm sure it will come back to bite me in the butt someday, but I still don't feel too bad about it... tee hee. Just naughty and meddlesome.
UPDATE: I couldn't keep my mouth shut and blabbed my dirty little secret to my guy. He didn't care, and assured me that he has no plans to kill or otherwise maim himself anytime soon:-)

Tiiiiiirrrrred....

2008-07-21T10:22:00.008-05:00

I am in desperate need of a nap, for my past came flooding back to me unexpectedly last night and kept me up to the wee hours... thank goodness for late afternoon lattes, which are always ill advised and are sure to keep me up loooong past my bedtime (happy coincidence?).

It's good to be reminded at least once every 16 years or so that even tho I have no tangible evidence of my lives prior to now, someone SOMEWHERE remembers; that life years ago was more than just a few photographs in a box somewhere deep in the nasty basement, covered with spiders (a major deterrent to reminiscing...).

It's easy to pack up and move on, reinventing yourself every so often and putting time and space between the people you knew, who you were. But you can never fully distance yourself from who you are as a result of knowing them, and the absence will always register as a loss, a hole, unfinished business. It must violate too many laws of the universe to never see the people who helped form you, especially when they're still roaming the earth. How lucky it is that we're all still alive (most of us, anyway) and in a position to connect; but why can't it be easier?
Was there something about our generation, a restlessness perhaps, that kept us moving forward and rarely looking back?

Well, we're all long overdue.
I am so grateful that someone was finally able to make the connection, and a little sad for all the years lost, for all of us.

mon cher vieil ami, c'est pour vous :

and just to mix things up a bit, from the original era:

even tho this version is better (cause all things get better with age, n'est pas?):

Best.Mom.Ever.

2008-07-20T20:31:00.004-05:00

Take a looky-see at what I bought my girl today:

A REALLY CHEAP car!

(actually, it's a 1999 Saturn S-Series, woo hoo!)

She's a little rough around the edges, looks like she's been in a few scrapes, but under a fine layer of grime is seriously a *really nice* car.
There's nothing wrong with it that a few visits to ebay won't fix (it needs a new passenger side mirror and some lenses on each side), and the interior is just about perfect (once you washed the yuck out of the cup holders and took a nail file to the scum in the grooves--yecccccccch--it was gorgeous).
Really and truly, it's nicer than the last couple cars I've owned, tee hee, and about $2500 cheaper than most cars in it's class. And I genuinely like that it comes with a few practice scrapes, so the ones our brand new driver applies her ownself won't be as dramatic and/or noticable. Yeah.

OOoooooOOooh! I loves me a bargain, which makes me love this car almost as much as Gracy pants does:-) And of course gives me what every parent dreams of: serious leverage.
Word.

Online Confessional

Disney Photos!

Eggnog Cupcakes

The Solitary Life, Lamb Orichette, continued:

Things I would do differently were I not married (hypothetically speaking:-):

White Chocolate Ganache Buttercream:

Flux:

In Case You Needed a Reminder:

Routine/Pommes Anna, Date Nut Squares:

Elevation/Bands I Hate:

Comfort Food:

Grace's Birthday Cheesecake:

Jacob's Animation:

Pretty Tasty Crock Pot Pepper Steak

Job Whore:

A Matter of Allegiance

Working on something...

Pictures of You:

Smoove B's Recipes for Seduction:

Beat box:

Happy, Happy Day!/Middle Eastern Lentil Soup

No no I can't change...

Bad, Bad, Blogger!

Pizza (and Madonna)!

More Food Blogging/French Food

Another Ode to Winter:

The Final Pig Out:

Winter Song:

Dinner Par-Tay!

33 Miles:

Gar!

More of My Favorite (Forgotten) Recipes/Teriyaki Chicken Pita, Chicken Kick

Gone in the Morning:

Christmas Sweets/Date Nut Balls, Roulade Cake:

Holiday Food that Rocks/Praline Sweet potatoes, Maple Phyllo Dessert Cups, Wild Turkey Soup, Baked Brie:

Floor, part deux:

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Let It Rock:

The Things We Said Today:

Train Wreck:

Suspicious:

New Leaf:

Spin Crack:

Quitter/Apple Pie in a Bag:

Waaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Let The Games Begin:

A Boy and His Dog:

I wish I knew you...

Obama vs McCain Dance Off...

Say Hey!

So Far Away...

Yay!

Be Ok:

Oy!

Sick:

Endorphin Block...

Kabir:

I See You Baby...

Ya Know...

Therapy...

Bleah!/Pumpkin Pie Custard

Constant Craving...

Guess Who..

Ow!

Politics (as much as you'll ever see from me)...

Friends:

25 Miles:

Gar!

Awkward:

18#:

Woo Hoo!!!

Never Never Never:

Bad:

Sushi!

We Be Campin'!

Har De Har Har Har...

Death Wish 2000

Regular:

August..

Disgusting But *TRUE* Bike Riding Adventures:

Disgusting But TRUE Bike Riding Adventures: