Blog Archives

Good Food Friday: Episode 10

1/30/2015

Yesterday I kept my daughter home one more day just to make sure her immune system was back into fighting form. She probably could have gone to school, but with all the weird stuff going around lately (measles; flu shot not as effective), I just wanted her to be as strong as she could be.

When she started in on another costume, I realized I probably could have sent her. But she was home, which wasn't a big deal. The bigger deal was my husband came home from work Wednesday with a cough and temperature. He called into work that night for two days off.

Bleh. I have to admit as sick husbands go, mine's not too bad. But there's the stress of having yet another person in the house on a weekday and trying to keep to a routine all the while listening to him sigh and grunt, follow me around the house to see what I'm doing, coughing.

I usually don't get the bugs my family gets, but still, I made my husband turn away from me in bed so he wouldn't cough at the back of my head.

I asked him if he needed me to buy a roasted chicken and make up some chicken noodle soup. I'm not sure if it was just his passive/aggressive nature or if he couldn't decide whether he wanted chicken noodle soup, but it took him forever to just tell me he could eat whatever (there's 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back).

I made an executive decision though: two people home sick called for comfort food - not for them, for me. I remembered a recipe from The Blind Lady Cafe that randomly propagated on my Facebook page the other day, and with a bag of elbow macaroni from my housebound friend, I decided "Crockpot Mac and Cheese" was just what this crazy housewife needed.

I'm always looking for a good, homemade mac and cheese recipe that is as gooey and good as Costco. I haven't been able to achieve that kind of success - until now. This is a good one for my first double digit episode. Look at that! I've actually had new recipes for Good Food Friday for several weeks now.

Feeds approximately 6-8

All ingredients into the Crock Pot, EXCEPT the 1 pound bag of Macaroni noodles!! They get added later.
Setting on LOW to make the sauce. After 1 hour, stir the sauce. Add COOKED Macaroni (cook and drain noodles while sauce is cooking)
Stir the noodles and sauce together. Add in any seasonings you desire .. like salt n pepper or spices/seasonings you like!! [I added paprika and pepper - Gleigh]
At this time you may also add in any extras like cooked cubed ham, cooked chopped bacon, cooked chopped sausages, par cooked veggies, frozen mix veg. [I added cubed ham - Gleigh]
Cook on LOW another 45 minutes.
BLC TIP *** - you do NOT have to add the full measurement of cream cheese or evaporated milk. Half the amount of those works just as well don't add them at all if you're not fond of really cheesy mac n cheese!! [I did it by the book and it turned out great! - Gleigh]
Then put setting on "Keep Warm" until ready to serve.

Then just to celebrate that new recipe (because I always feel so successful and productive when I cook something new and it's good) and add to my comfort food theme, I decided to make some banana bread. I had an over-abundance of old bananas (which just makes it sound all the more enticing, don't ya think?) both in the fruit basket and in the freezer. After years of using the same recipe, my family has kind of conducted a "sit out" on banana bread. They are sick of it.

So I tried out my housebound friend's Banana Split Bread recipe on the old bananas in the fruit basket. It smelled so freakin' good and after that yummy mac and cheese it was the perfect end to my comfort food evening.

Banana Split Bread
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened [I used salted - Gleigh]
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1/4 cup Maraschino cherries, chopped
1/4 cup nuts, chopped (optional)
1 cup sugar
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup miniature chocolate chips [miniature is really important - they are oh so mini and don't sink to the bottom of the muffin tins; except for a few in each cup which I deemed muffin poop, so cute- Gleigh]
1/4 cup crushed pineapple, optional [it sticks with the Banana split theme, but I didn't use it cuz my youngest doesn't like pineapple and it didn't sound good to me - Gleigh]

Beat together butter, sugar, eggs and bananas. Add dry ingredients. Stir in remaining ingredients.

350 degree oven.

I doubled the batch and got 24 muffins and one small loaf. Here are all the baking times for all the variety of shapes you could make it:

5 - 3 1/2 x 6 1/2" loaves = 40 to 50 minutes
Large muffin cups = 35 minutes
Regular muffin cups = 20 minutes
Regular loaf = 1 hour

This morning my daughter is off to school, my husband is bored so he's fixing my daughter's headlight, and I'm off to coffee with a friend. Comfort food really does work.

It was lost but now is found

1/29/2015

Yesterday's blog elicited a lot of comments among all the social media places I currently am a part of: here, on Facebook and over the telephone. Everyone was concerned about my manual being lost and many shared with me where they keep their manuals. My sister suggested I could find the manual online, my mother gave me a play by play of all the places she puts manuals. It really wasn't about the manual, it was about the phone number I personally wrote on the manual.

The most helpful comment was on Facebook when a friend said, "Did you look under the machine?" It's a rather small machine, but I have to say, I got up and looked. You know how something you see all the time gets kind of lost in your memory, "I know I saw it recently, I just can't remember where?"

Although it wasn't under the machine, her comment on Facebook did remind me my husband called me from work when he was reading my blog on his lunch hour yesterday. He said, "Is it on the VCR in the computer room? I know I've seen it recently."

Well, I took the VCR down from the computer room a couple months ago, so that tells you how observant my husband is. But if he remembers seeing it recently, I figured it must be somewhere really obvious.

I sat in my office chair, the only place he ever sits in that room, and went for a swivel. Then I spied the "magazine" rack I had my husband install for me to put papers that needed to be filed. I grabbed up the papers and sorted through them and there it was.

Why would that be so genius, you ask? Well, I moved the file cabinet further from my office chair, closer to my scrapbooking chair to make room for my daughter's sewing habit. When I'm going through mail and come across papers that need to be filed, I don't want to get up and file every little thing I touch. It used to be I'd just swivel around and file it. Additionally, there is a "bird playset" hanging from the ceiling to almost the floor; I don't like scooting my office chair over and tangling with it.

And although the concept breaks my cardinal rule of "only touch it once," I decided I needed a handy dandy place in between the two chairs so I can grab it up and file it when I'm sitting in my scrapbooking chair. The rack has three slots, I came upon the plan of storing that manual in one of the slots all the time, not filing it.

Unfortunately, I did it happenstance, put it in the middle slot, which is where I put everything, apparently, and immediately forgot about it.

You can be sure I won't forget again. So you can all relax now; it was lost, but now is found.

Smarter than you were

1/28/2015

When your seventeen-year old is coughing, it's as painful for a mother as when her infant is coughing. My daughter isn't deathly sick or anything, she's got a cold with post nasal drip which is making her cough. Then she has a really low grade fever. We're talking low; 99.6. But it makes her face look dewy and it tells me her body is fighting something and she's probably contagious.

I really hate it when people send their kids to school with even a cold. That's how these things spread. When anyone tells me, "I never missed a day of work" or "My kid never missed a day of school," I know they are probably responsible for the bug that propagated throughout the school/workplace that year. So she's still home.

Anyway, what I really want to talk about is losing things. We all lose things (I'd like my daughter to lose her cough) that we thought we put away properly. It's even worse when you're a person like me who is organized enough that losing a piece of paper is really irritating because there's only a couple places you think it could be.

Then while searching for it you see how unorganized your files have become with the passing years and it's time to clean them out and start a bonfire in the backyard. But you can't stop and do that because you're looking for something; FOCUS.

I've lost an 8x10 manual for my sleep apnea machine. It's not a thick thing; just a few pages and I don't need it for its directions, I need it because it has a phone number on it. The phone number is a direct line to my HMO to order another mask, tubing, nose piece, etc.

Sure, I could call a number and they would attempt to redirect me to the appropriate authorities, but this number is my number to heaven. Calling any other number will send me in sleep apnea parts hell. People won't be sure, won't know what I'm talking about, won't know anything and I'll be passed around like a hacky sack.

The thing is, I remember where I used to store that thin little pamphlet, but when I went looking for it, it wasn't there. Then I vaguely remember thinking, "I'll store it here instead since I use it frequently." I don't know where "here" is, but I do remember practically breaking my arm patting myself on the back for the ingenious new place of storage.

I looked in all the locations I thought it would have been in or thought would have been genius of me, but it wasn't in any of those places. Then as I was walking yesterday, I remembered one more place, the drawers on the computer desk. Of course! I continued my walk thinking I had struck gold and it was a particularly ingenious place to store a document such as that; fantasizing in my head how when I open that drawer a beam of light would shoot out from the manual (rainbow even, maybe?).

Nope. Not there.

I have to go up and see my oldest daughter today and take care of housing payments and such, so I can't continue my search. I will probably have to break down tomorrow and just call the number of the office where they distribute the sleep apnea machines, which is not my HMO, and hope they have THE number.

I'll probably find it after I do that and conk myself in the head with the remembrance of the moment, "Remember that time you placed the sleep apnea machine manual in that spot? How smart you were. Ah. Good times."

The thing about finding a good place to stash something is you have to be smarter than you were the day you stored it.

Here's your sign

1/27/2015

Here it is almost 11:00 and I'm just now sitting down to write. I slept in a bit this morning because my youngest is home sick, which I knew last night so called her in absent last night. I don't like calling her in sick in the morning because I feel like I'm being judged by the attendance lady; so I don't like talking to her.

Then I didn't have to try and shoot out of bed at six this morning to call before the attendance lady gets to work. Plus, I have nowhere to be today. I held laundry off until today because I had to be out of the house before noon yesterday.

Although I probably had enough time to do most of the laundry yesterday, I didn't have the desire to be supermom as I'm known to attempt on days when I have a lot to do. I did get dinner in the crockpot before I left, which I just decided was super enough.

I went to a very interesting meeting with a writing coach. He's not teaching me how to write; I feel like I have that down fairly well, but he's helping me navigate the maze of publishing.

I have to admit there was a big part of me that was hoping he would say, "Let me just take this book and hand it to my agent. You just sit back and relax."

It reminded me of when my mother moved in six months after my father passed away back in 2001. There was a huge part of me that was so glad my mommy was going to move in and run my household because it felt too hard. My kids were small, I felt like I was doing it all wrong.

After a year or so, when my mother had taken over my household, I panicked and took it back. I also think she was feeling like she'd already done that time in her life and was trying to hand it back to me.

I came to realize that it really was my house and I was adult enough to manage it. There were things we did differently that I prided myself on doing differently. I think when it comes to being a parent, we try and improve on what we grew up with; we all do the best we can with what we know. I certainly knew more in that time of my life than my mother knew when my sister and I were small.

So even though I feel the pain of managing getting my book published, I did walk in to the meeting knowing he wouldn't take over, but would merely coach me.

What was most interesting about the conversation was how much he emphasized changing my attitude about my writing: I'm not just filler for the newspaper - the editor is fortunate enough to have a person like me writing a humor column for his paper; someone who writes well enough that he doesn't have to edit it, someone who is always on time.

Flipping my attitude about the value of my writing makes the presentation of the book different; I'm the one doing the shopping instead of the other way around. It is a book that the right agent/editor/publisher will be ecstatic to print.

The other brief conversation we had was whether or not to publish traditionally or self-publish on one of the many self-publishing websites. It seems quick to self-publish, but one needs a lot of knowledge and motivation to self-promote. He asked me if I wanted to spend my time doing that or writing.

Well, the answer is obvious. I don't mind self-promoting once something is ready to go, but I really don't want to spend time learning the obstacle course. Plus, when you self-publish, you have to constantly be "on" hawking books.

As we were walking out of the coffee shop we met at, I told him two stories. One was that I tried to contact a man I knew who has self-published several books. He broke contact with me a couple years ago for some unknown reason, but I reached out last week to ask if self-publishing is still working for him. No answer.

Then I told him about my housebound friend to whom I gave a copy of my book. The first thing she said to me was, "Do not spend a lot of money and publish this book yourself!" She was quite adamant.

My writing coach said, "There's your sign not to self-publish. You got two."

I don't know if I've talked about it much, but I'm big on divine signs. The problem is I rarely recognize them. And although I didn't recognize them this time around, I had someone to see it for me.

It was totally worth the money it cost me to hire this man of much perspective to tell me, "Here's your sign."

It just wasn't my weekend

1/26/2015

It just didn't seem to be my weekend. I was determined to sit in the craft room and at least get a good handle on my oldest daughter's baby book. But, alas, it was not to be.

First off, my daughter had a friend over to work on costumes. I don't mind this, but there wasn't room for me in the craft room. If I had insisted they would've made room. I have a hidden philosophy about them taking over my space: someday they won't be living there at all and it will be all mine and I really do enjoy seeing them so productive and creative.

But it wouldn't have mattered had they scooted over and given me space, I had a few major tasks to take care of on Saturday. My oldest daughter Skyped me and said, "Release the dad mechanic, my low coolant light came on." When I told my husband he said, "Tell her to get the orange stuff, only the orange stuff." I told him that just telling her to get the orange stuff was not going to help her if she didn't even know what she was looking for in the first place.

However, I told my daughter that she needed to be up and ready to come outside and learn how to fill her coolant so if it happened again, she could do it herself. She's just lucky she's so close.

We got up there a little after nine and she was still in her pajamas. I told her she needed to get dressed. She said, "Can't I just come out there in my pajamas?" I informed her she needed to go to store with us so she would know what she was looking for. Although she reluctantly got dressed and came with us, I have to hand it to her that once involved in the solution, she was very hands on and intent to learn. We also got coffee and sushi at Fred Meyer, I supposed that sweetened the deal.

When we got back to our house, we had to go deal with my mom's slippery steps. She bought rubber stair treads, but after putting them on last week, I knew they wouldn't just stay there. So I had my husband bling them out with screws to hold them down. We basically bedazzled her steps. It actually looks kind of fancy. She loves it.

After that, it was early afternoon. We got something to eat and I decided I'd go to church Saturday night so I could have all day Sunday to work on my project. Sunday morning dawned and my daughter's friend went home. I felt kind of nervous, so I went for a walk. Around about noon, I finally settled into some work.

I went from despair to the brink of almost getting a hold on the baby book, when my youngest came into the room and I told her we needed to put the room back together after her and her friend's hurricane costume making session.

They slept on the futon in the room, so she took the sheets off and we went to fold it back up and one end of the frame fell totally apart. Sigh.

My husband analyzed the situation and together we determined that since it's been a problem for years, we should probably get a new frame. I really didn't want to spend a lot, so I looked online. I couldn't figure anything out online, so we decided we just needed to go look.

We looked at a futon place and a furniture place, but we ultimately ended up at Ikea. We found an inexpensive, really simple-to-fold frame. We bought it, drove through Dairy Queen, came home, put the old one out on the patio for firewood or maybe some other creative use, then put together the new one.

Now it's almost 8:00pm. I was done. There was no way I was going to try and delve back into that baby book. So I just kicked back the rest of the evening and worried about my fate.

My fate. I didn't tell you one of the reasons it took me so long to get going yesterday morning; I opened my email to find an alert from Identity Guard that my credit had been checked. They are closed on the weekend, but I was able to log in and see who had checked my credit.

I have to say that Identity Guard is a really good company for this. They catch everything. I had another company for years and they didn't even alert me when I bought my car. Identity Guard is really good if you're looking for a good fraud alert company.

The credit card company that the fraudulent account was opened in is one I do business with, so I called them. Someone had indeed opened a new credit card in my name, but hadn't yet bought anything. We shut it down. This morning I called Identity Guard and got directions for the next step, to call all the credit bureaus and have them put a fraud alert on me.

Sigh. Yeah, because I don't have anything better to do. It just wasn't my weekend.

Good Food Friday: Episode 9

1/23/2015

Once again my Good Food Friday episode is dedicated to my housebound friend whom I have the pleasure of visiting a couple times a month.

I had a delightful surprise last night when I got there and she was up and moving about and ready to make some food herself. Her energy has been good the last few days with little pain. What a blessing for her and a treat for me to share the kitchen with her this week.

This episode is not so much about the recipes we made, although I will share them, but it's more about the methods she used that have me thinking. The first one she put together was ham salad. This is like chicken salad or egg salad but with ham pulsed up in the food processor until it was shredded fine.

Okay, I'm just just expounding the benefits of ham chopped up small, because I never thought of that, but now I'm rethinking not having a full sized food processor and when I did, how I wasted its abilities. I had one years ago, but pretty much just used it for grinding walnuts for the almond roca every year. I think I also used to shred vegetation in it too (zucchini for zucchini bread, maybe apples and carrots for an apple carrot salad). Eventually it burned up and I just got a little two-cup food processor for the nuts. It's rather inconvenient to shred other stuff in, although I have tried a few times with a lot of juggling.

Now I have food processor on the brain and I think it's going to have to be a Cuisinart like my friend's, because it really was a lot more solid than the one I used to have. I have to have a place to store it, though I think I've figured that out as I've been sitting here writing about it. Just five months until my birthday (nudge, nudge, wink, wink; who am I kidding? I'll never wait that long).

So back to the ham salad. I've made chicken salad and egg salad, but never thought about making leftover ham into salad. It's simple and vague, because it's whatever you like. Here's what we did last night.

However much ham you want
A couple eggs
However many sweet pickles you want or sweet pickle relish you want
Mayonnaise to taste
Dijion mustard to taste
However much shredded cheddar cheese you want.

Pulse up ham to fine consistency. Put it in a bowl.
Pulse up pickles to fine consistency. Add to bowl (or put the relish in the bowl).
Pulse up eggs to fine consistency. Add to bowl.
Add mayo, mustard, cheese, to bowl, mix well.
If it's not wet enough for you, add more mayo.

Good on crackers, between two pieces of bread, on a box, with a fox.

By this time, my friend was getting tired (I just want the record to show that if she's broken today, it's of her own doing and I was only an accessory to the crime; but we sure had a lot of fun), so I took over the stirring of said ham salad, then we started in on some Blue Deviled eggs.

6 eggs, hard boiled, peeled
2 tbls blue cheese
dash white pepper (she actually has measuring spoons that are labeled "dash," "smidgen..")
2 tsp dijon mustard
2 heaping tbls mayo [addition: oops, forgot this on Friday]
2 strips bacon, cooked and chopped into bits (or just buy them at Costco already like that)

Okay, now speaking of methods, here's the really cool part:

Cut the eggs in half, lengthwise. Remove the egg yolks and put them in a Ziploc bag. Close the bag and mush them up IN THE BAG (but wait, there's more).
Add the cheese, close the bag and mush it up.
Add the pepper and mustard. Close the bag, mush.
Add the bacon bits, close and mush.
Now here's the most amazing part: squish all the mushed filling to the bottom of the bag, corner it on one side, clip that corner of the bag, FILL THE EGGS FROM THE BAG like it's a pastry bag.
Once all the filling is out of the bag, throw it away. No mess! No muss! No fuss!

My friend said I was unconsciously smiling while I was mushing up the ingredients. I was having way more fun than anyone should considering the activity. Oh, go on! What's not fun about squishing a bunch of stuff together in a Ziploc bag?

There's your Good Food Friday episode; all mushed up in a bag!

One fateful submission

1/22/2015

When I sit in my big red chair every morning, praying the rosary while I'm waiting for my daughter to head out the door, one of the things that gives me a lot of comfort is when the neighbor's light goes on in their window across the street.

I can't see anything in the window, just light and a jumble of stuff. I rarely actually see a person and I don't really know them at all. I guess it just gives me comfort to see someone else up and moving through their morning as I am.

I used to derive the same pleasure when I was driving to work when I was single (at this point in my life I think of it as the time when I was married with no children) and I could see lights on in apartment buildings, people drinking their morning coffee, just living the morning.

It's a gentle reminder we are not alone; as opposed to the more aggressive reminder when we are driving among throngs of cars. To each his own when we are hurling down the highway at 60 mph.

This morning, though, the light was on, but it was muted by their blinds. I never noticed there were blinds on that window. Then of course I went to the paranoid place: "Hey, that creepy neighbor lady is up and staring at us again. We should get some blinds so she can't see in."

For the record: I don't stare, I can't see in, I can only see the light. It still felt like an affront to my better senses to have blinds in the window. Then, I looked away for a second, looked up and there was the light and a person walking away from pulling up the shades.

Silly me, no one notices me anymore than I notice them.

Except for p-u-b-l-i-s=h-e-r-s clear-ing house (written this way to protect my stats from searches for said company). I went through the mail the other day and pulled out an ad to enter to win money for life. I figured, "What the heck. Someone will win; why not me?" So I went online and entered.

Probably a mistake and I'm not sure if I really ever entered. There were so many "check this box if you want (fill in the blank); knowing you can unsubscribe at any time." I thought I unchecked most of them, but I got half a dozen emails from them the first day.

Today I got a threatening email that if I didn't surf their site for products I would not win money for life. I unsubscribed. They wanted to know what the problem was, so I chose "too many emails from above mentioned company."

Then they asked me, "if I had a choice about which emails I received would I resubscribe?" I thought I did that already and look where it got me.

We'll see if it works. I'll probably get a bunch of emails from them telling me they miss me (for the whole 24 hours I was subscribed). I have no idea if I'm entered to win or not, but you never know; maybe I'll be on a beach in Hawaii by the end of February enjoying my money.

Probably not; I'll most likely still be regretting the choices I made with that one fateful submission.

One thing leads to another

1/21/2015

I actually wrote my column yesterday. It's a fine, fine week when I get my column finished on a Tuesday. Office hours seem to suit me.

I'm currently doing research on how and where to publish my book. I was ruminating over an idea for my column when I got tired of researching, so I wrote it.

This morning I woke up with the thought that I ended it wrong and was dismayed that I had already written it when I realized I don't send it to the paper until Sunday. I can do anything I want with it until then. Just one of the perks of writing it early in the week.

I wrote about cleaning house. My mom and I were talking about taking time to clean house. Her friend's mother always said, "You either take time to clean the house or you take time to do a project." I get that. I'm of the philosophy that our children will remember the fun we provided over how clean our house was. But there comes a limit to any person's psyche.

My bathroom was frightening. So I cleaned it and no one noticed. I wouldn't expect my youngest to notice because she doesn't use that bathroom, but my oldest was home over the weekend and my husband lives here.

When I complained about him not noticing last night he pleaded all the overtime he was working. He may not have gotten home until 6:00 Monday night, but he used the toilet a few times and he showered the next morning. 4:00am is early, but even then, it was quite the transformation for him not to have noticed.

He was just getting into bed last night when I informed him about the bathroom. I was in the kitchen when he got himself back out of bed to observe the clean bathroom from all-knowing eyes. "It looks beautiful, baby!"

Too little too late, bub!

My oldest not noticing is just a sign of what her college apartment's bathroom must look like. So that doesn't surprise me a bit.

I realized in that moment, I just need to clean for myself; I notice. I'm horrified. But the cleaning fairies just aren't going to do it now, are they? So it is up to me and the longer I put it off the worse it gets.

So I decided to clean one thing a day. Yesterday I swept the kitchen, which led into taking out the garbage, compost and recycle, which led to cleaning the floor underneath the garbage (I don't usually take out the garbage and I didn't realize; what was that?), which led to scrubbing the compost bucket and it's removable bin, which led to...

Tasks are like that. I mean when I decided to clean the shower (yes, I did it naked because I was about to take a shower), I told myself, "just the shower; I'll deal with the rest tomorrow." But after I got out of the shower, I couldn't stop myself from finishing it, it was just too randy not to deal with once I had a clean shower.

Same with sitting at the computer for office hours. I was researching websites about publishing, one site led to another. It was a rather overwhelming flood of information. But I realize I don't have to figure it out in one day.

Maybe I got a good overview yesterday and today I'll narrow it down today. One thing always leads to another, after all.

Won't know until it happens

1/20/2015

When I was cooking up a storm with my friend last week, she made a comment about how much I get done and wondered how I did it all.

Me? Is she talking about me?

I've never thought of myself as having a lot of energy. In fact, one of the reasons I don't mind sitting with her in the evenings is because I don't really do anything after 4:00pm. I've walked, blogged and prayed; dinner is over, hopefully I've paced my kitchen cleaning throughout the day and the dishes are done; if luck and persistence are on my side, I've actually written something besides my blog; if it's laundry day, the laundry is probably finished except for the clothes that are hanging; and by a fluke of nature, maybe the mail has been dealt with.

I feel like I waste many, many hours every evening. About all I'm good for is playing computer games and watching TV. I haven't been particularly successful at getting anything else accomplished, not even extra reading.

However, when called upon, like cooking with my friend, I can go much longer into the night. I guess I just don't have the self-motivation to make myself do anything else when left to my own devices.

I need to change that, though. I have a lot of scrapbooking projects that even if I don't actually sit down and scrapbook them, I would like to get them organized enough to be able to work on when I go to the monthly scrapbooking club.

The new scrapbooking group is only a couple highways and 20 minutes away, but it's far enough that if I go and forget something, it's too far to drive back and fetch things. Now that I'm caught up with the family album, it's time to delve back into the albums that have a lot of pieces to them.

I was determined to get my oldest daughter's baby book done over the long weekend. After church and the fal de rah with the weird weather (in the three miles from my house to my mother's, it sunshined, hailed and rained torrentially), my mother and children, I really tried to work on it. I haven't touched it in awhile, so it was more of a "let's see what I was doing" catch-up type of exercise. Then the football game distracted me; or was it more of a procrastination techniqe?

There's not much worse for me than trying to do a project and just spinning my wheels on it. I've even got my youngest daughter's baby album finished and I'm using it as a guide, but I just can't seem to pull my oldest daughter's together. Not only that, but I documented a lot more for her than I did for my youngest; it still seems really difficult.

I think the only way I'm going to be able to push past this is to use my evenings more wisely. Especially on days like today, with my husband's crazy work schedule and my daughter's work and school activities, I seem to be alone into the evening.

Maybe with it staying lighter later, I'll feel more motivated and less like hibernating. Or not. One can never really know until it happens.

It's all about the shoes

1/19/2015

When I get up late on a weekday, like I have this morning, I always feel rushed to get through my morning routine. I don't know why. I guess partly because my daughters are sleeping late and if I get out on a walk before the dog gets out of bed (she sleeps with my youngest), I don't have to take her for a walk.

I don't particularly enjoy walking with the dog. It's not the dog, really, it's the poop. I get tired of picking up the poop, so the mornings I can go walk without her are a little extra pleasurable.

Sometimes I'll leave when she's out back after her breakfast, then I'll come home and let her in and try to act like I haven't been for a walk. But she looks at what shoes I'm wearing, then just cannot contain herself with excitement, thinking we're about to go for a walk.

So when I had to walk without her last Friday because I was in a hurry to get to an appointment, I didn't let her in the house until after I'd showered and dressed in regular clothes and shoes. If she sees I have "the" shoes on and she doesn't get a walk, she pouts the rest of the day.

I used to not take her when it was raining, vowing I would not be one of those women who buys their little dog a raincoat. But my mother took care of that and bought her one anyway. We haven't used it yet because the rain and walking have not met up since acquiring said raincoat. It actually doesn't rain as often as you would think in those weird hours of the morning.

This morning, I was thinking I needed to get out there before the kids get out of bed and the dog gets up. How hard can that be when they sleep until noon? But then I realized I could be doing the laundry while I'm blogging. When I went in for the clothes in my daughter's room, the dog got up.

Oh well, I guess I'll take her. I haven't had a walk in a couple days and I'm feeling rather anxious, maybe the dog feels that way too. Yesterday's excitement probably added to my anxiety. It's probably why I'm not a sports fan; way too much anticipation.

I'm not a football fan. I hadn't watched a game all season. But yesterday I was curious about how the Seahawks were doing, my home town and all. I heard one of the players had a pair of gold flake shoes on. Seems like a waste of gold, but I decided to turn the game on while I was scrapbooking.

I came in about half time. Nothing much to see all through the third quarter; they did make a touchdown but just didn't seem to have their groove on. The fourth quarter was disappointing. But then, in that last five minutes of the game, they came alive.

Of course, like many, I thought it was too little too late. Now, like many of you know, it was one of those moments when I can say I saw some history being made (from the comfort of my own scrapbooking table) and I am glad I can say I saw it.

I was mesmerized.

However, this just proves my theory: the last five minutes of the game are the most important.

Now, like the dog knows, there is another theory: it's all about the shoes.

<<Previous