Subscribe in a Reader
-
Speaking of excuses…
So, you may have noticed that I totally failed at nablopomo.
Would you like to know why?
How about I give you one excuse for each of the ten days I missed.
1. My computer spontaneously combusted.
Actually, that’s not entirely correct. My own personal hell dell is functioning just as well as ever, but my blog was down for a few days. No posting possible.
2. I was busy feeding the less fortunate.
If my in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner counts.
After soaking in a apple cider brine overnight (the turkey, not me), I smoked it for three hours then finished it up on the grill.
All that work, and I don’t even like turkey. My guests, however, raved over it.
3. My dog ate my blog.
Not true, but she did eat all the bits that fell to the ground as Mr. Frantic gave the BBQ a pre-turkey cleaning. I was cleaning up burnt black dog vomit chunks for a couple of days. Mmmmm….
4. I ran away from home and stowed away on a steamboat.
But when GW’s field trip was over, they made me get off the boat.
5. I was kidnapped by vampires…
…or so it felt when I went to see Twilight and then decided to reread the series. All four books plus the partial draft (all 264 pages) of Midnight Sun (Twilight from Edward’s perspective) on Stephenie Meyer’s website. That’s a total of 2708 read pages – in six days.
6. Mr. Frantic and I went on a second honeymoon…
to the movies. Hand holding ensued.
7. I decided to become a lumberjack.
But just for the day. And I didn’t actually cut the tree down, but I did pick it out. Mr. Frantic armed himself with a hacksaw (but didn’t protest when a tree farmer with a chainsaw offered to lend a hand.)
By the way, the going rate for a gorgeous u-cut 7 foot noble in Oregon is $35. Just in case you were curious.
8. I got my haircut (and colored).
This actually has nothing to do with my lack of blogging, but I love my new bangs and wanted to show them off.
See:
Whatdya think?
9. I was dog sitting.
GW’s cat fancy has run its course. She is now pretending to be a dog. But at least she is not eating the grill’s burned bits.
10. I was simply too busy doing other things.
And that’s the truth.
A Poor Excuse for a Haiku
Today was insane.
Not enough time for blogging.
I’ll show you a cat.
PS: This was taken a couple of weeks ago. Girl Wonder was giving an oral report to me and her dad on guess what?
In other news, I think the cat costume may have run its course. She hasn’t worn it in a few days.
We’ll see…
Who needs siblings?
Will work for (my) food
I woke Tuesday morning feeling as though I had a hundred pound weight strapped to each aching limb. My eyes were dry and gritty and I had the beginnings of a headache that would stay with me much of the day.
People, I was tired.
Monday mornings are reserved for housekeeping at my house. Girl Wonder and I cranked up the ol’ ipod (Cyndi Lauper this week) and got busy. With the upcoming holiday, we decided to put a little extra ooph into the job. We scrubbed. We buffed. We polished. When the house sparked, we declared it Good Enough.
(I just love the Goonies, don’t you?)
At lunch Mr. Frantic informed me that he was renting a U-Haul that afternoon. We had just bought an almost-new fridge on craigslist and he would be picking it up that evening. Since we were going to have the truck anyway we decided to pick up a load of firewood before getting the fridge.
A couple of hours later we could be found transferring an enormous pile of wood from the mud where it lay to the back of the truck. It was heavy, dirty work. Yet, the bang of each log being thrown into the truck sounded like money in the bank.
Or new shoes.
Cute strappy ones…
Did I mention that our house is heated by either expensive wall heaters or a wood stove? And that the firewood was free?
So we loaded up the truck and then drove 45 minutes for the fridge. The one that came with the house might be dying. It’s definitely ill. One door is slightly warped, leaving a gap at the bottom that doesn’t quite seal.
I was afraid for my milk.
And my meat.
And my eggs.
Were they safe in the old warped fridge?
But the idea of spending lots o’ cash in this economy (did I mention that Mr. Frantic is a mortgage broker?) didn’t thrill me.
(Unless it was spending money on something slim and strappy.)
But my poor eggs…
So I checked craigslist and what I found was a two year old fridge just like the one I loved and left behind in Maryland. And it was $1000 less than brand new because the water and ice do not work (and apparently can’t be fixed). For $1000 I can buy some *ice trays and a really nice water pitcher to keep in my spacious new fridge (and shoes, pretty new shoes). So we bought the fridge, loaded it up with our free wood, and brought it home.
The mess you saw in yesterday’s post was the regurgitated contents of my old fridge spread all over the counter waiting for Mr. Frantic to hook up the new one.
I took me…awhile to get it all safely ensconced in its lovely new home. But once it was, I felt great.
Virtuous, even.
A day spent in hard work serving my family, though tiring, was a day well spent.
Almost as good as a day spent shopping…
*Do you find it as funny as I do that Girl Wonder is thrilled and awed with the idea of making “homemade ice”?
Heidi Can’t Play Today
She has to finish cleaning her room kitchen.
Today at Church
acquaintance: Congratulations on your daughter’s baptism. You must be so proud.
me: Thanks. We really are.
acquaintance: I can’t believe how quickly she’s grown.
me: Me either. It’s happened so fast. She’ll be as tall as I am soon.
acquaintance: Must be time to get another one.
me: ?!
acquaintance: I hear there are lots of children out there waiting to be adopted.
me: I hadn’t heard that. We’re pretty happy the way we are.
acquaintance: I can’t remember where I heard that, but there are children out there.
me: I sort of like having all my eggs in one basket. It’s such a pretty basket.
acquaintance: Of course, you could always foster…
me: Uh, well, nice talking to you…
It’s been a very long time since I’ve had to endure a conversation like this.
I hope it’s even longer until the next one.
Mama’s Kitchen
My mom is not a good cook.
Growing up, a typical family meal (or should I say the typical family meal, since it was served at least twice a week?) consisted of a shriveled baked potato, burned-to-a-crisp hamburger patty, canned green beans and white bread with margarine.
Oh yes, and milk gravy for the potato.
Never heard of it? Lucky you. Here’s the recipe. Basically, you add milk and flour to your hamburger grease and boil until thick.
To drink, we had Kool-Aid, usually cherry, in plastic tupperware glasses that always felt a little slick from years of washing in the same sink as the milk-gravy pan.
Good times.
Also included in my mom’s recipe repertoire were such favorites as:
Hamburger Casserole – all the basic ingredients of the typical dinner but with added cream of mushroom soup and cheddar cheese
Hamburger Tomato Soup – home canned tomato soup with hamburger and elbow macaroni
Mock Fried Rice – white Minute Rice with crumbled hamburger, onion and tomato.
Raise your hand if you are sensing a theme.
She also made what she called Tuna Fish Rarebit – creamed tuna on toast. Gag.
(On the other hand, her cinnamon rolls were excellent and I’ve never been able to duplicate her yummy pie crust.)
She did not have The Joy of Cooking. I’m talking about both the cookbook and the emotion. My mom had just had too many years of what-am-I-going-to-make-for-dinner-tonight-with-hardly-any-money-too-many-kids-and-a-meat-and-potatoes-man-to-feed. Cleaning the bathroom was less drudgery to her. But, thanks to her efforts we never went hungry.
Unless we chose to.
Twelve years ago, on my first Thanksgiving as a bonafide grown-up married lady I offered to cook the entire meal. Because I wanted to enjoy eating it.
I hadn’t really learned how to cook at home, but I wasn’t worried. I knew I could follow a recipe and had some natural aptitude.
And everyone’s standards were really low.
The meal turned out pretty well and a new tradition was born. For the next three years, I prepared the feast in our tiny apartment kitchen and transported to either my parent’s or my in-law’s, whichever set of parents we were spending the holiday with. When we bought our first house, we began inviting both sets of parents to eat with us.
My mom was always the most unintentional entertaining guest. One year she wore a blonde wig she had found at a garage sale. She declared that it made her feel bea-u-ti-ful! It might have looked fine if it wasn’t on sideways…
And so our holiday went for the first nine years of our married life. I loved bustling around the kitchen, listening to the parade on tv, and bossing Mr. Frantic around. I love preparing a big meal and sharing it with my family.
But then we moved 3000 miles away. And I felt like Thanksgiving was a bit depressing without extra people to cook for. So for the next three years, I didn’t cook.
One year we went to a hotel restaurant and felt like losers. Most of the people there were with large extended families. They sat at large tables in the center of the dining room. Scattered about the edge of the room were medium sized tables with families of five or six people. Then, wedged in by the kitchen doors or way over by the bathrooms were a few small tables for our family of three and one or two old people dining alone. I was tempted to ask those lone diners to join us and pretend to be our family, but then we’d have to move to a bigger table. And they were all full of happy shiny people.
The other two years we went on vacation. And we ate at restaurants, but we were surrounded by other vacationers, several of whom were probably escaping their extended family gatherings, so our little family didn’t seem so pathetic, pitiable, unloved, unusual. It was actually fun.
This year, we are back home in Oregon and I am really looking forward to cooking the big meal. GW is excited to help; she wants to learn to be a really good “cooker”.
I’m trying to pass on what I know, but she’ll need to ask grandma for help with pie crust.
And milk gravy.
I’m too faxy for this job
Several years ago I worked in customer service at an electronics store. There was a salesman there, I forget his name, but he was as close to Dwight Schrute as you are likely to find in real life.
One day he faxed in sick.
The next day he faxed in sick again.
The third time, the manager asked me to call him and request a doctor’s note.
He replied with a letter of resignation. By fax.
He asked that his last check be sent right away.
I faxed it to him.
I remembered that incident when I was reading this genius reply to a debt collector. Hilarious!
Bits and Pieces
So all of this daily posting has resulted in some, um… craptastic less than quality posting.
Well, get ready for another one.
I am finally responding to Mo’s tag.
Six random things about myself:
1. I can not stand the sound styrofoam being rubbed together. The horrible squeakiness actually makes my eardrums cringe. And it brings out a level of anger in me that is unsurpassed even in my worst PMS. One day, a few years ago, I was volunteering at my daughter’s preschool and the teacher brought in a garbage bag full of styrofoam blocks. She thought it would be fun to let the kids take turns hammering nails into each block. I nearly knocked her over on my rush to get out of the building. Funny thing is, she was no where near the door.
2. I drive my husband crazy by putting candy wrappers back into the bag. I know it bothers him, but I can’t stop myself.
3. I hate cats. Hate them. Mainly because they scratch around in their litter boxes and then walk all over your counters. And they are proud of it, you can tell. I think that GW’s cat obsession might be her way of silently rebelling. Heaven help me in the years to come.
4. New socks and new towels are some of my favorite things. But if I received them as a gift, I’d be really disappointed. Why is that?
5. When I Tivo something I always fast forward the commercials. Except Mac commercials – I watch those. And dream.
6. When I was in first grade my teacher, Mrs. Pitts, caught me picking my nose during storytime. She interrupted the story to yell at me in front of the whole class. I can’t say that her tactics curbed my nose picking, though it did drive it underground. Or at least under my coat.
I tag anyone who is participating in Nanblopomo and needs some material.
The Country Cat and the City Dog
While putting on my makeup the other day, I was interrupted by
“Way down yonder on the Chatahoochi,
It gets hotter than a hoochie-coochie…”
playing loudly on the stereo.
I walked out of the bathroom and into a party.
Yee-haw!
Once upon a time there was a Heidi…
-
-
-
-
