You must be lost

So, yesterday sucked even worse than Saturday and I've tried and tried to come up with something that made me happy that wasn't just completely trivial, but I can't. So, here it is: Chris made gnocchi and scallops for dinner with a yummy sun-dried alfredo sauce. Mmmm, butter and cream.

Oh wait, also, the neighbor kids brought over a little bag of Christmas cookies. That was really sweet and the shining star on an otherwise shit day.

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Today was definitely an improvement over the past three days.

I'm happy that I'm mobile again, though somewhat stiff and still sore. I have to take it easy and not do too much at once (that goes for anything, sitting, standing, typical house stuff, laying down) I have to stick to a regular cycle of work and rest. Rest has to be alternated between sitting and laying down. I can't sit for too long at all. But, I'm not in crippling pain, so YAY! Haven't even taken an ibuprofen today. I feel like I can work the rest of the kinks out with some diligent yoga (which I've been really needing to do anyway).

I'm happy that I got some of Chris' gifts wrapped so he'll stop snooping in the closets trying to find them.

I'm happy that I finally finished putting together amaz0n_princess's CD! It was so hard not to cheat and send two CDs or to bend the rules and burn it as a data disc so I could fit more mp3s on there. But I was good and stuck to the rules and managed to squeeze 21 songs on there. See my halo? ;) Hope you like it! It was really hard to get the songs to flow from one to another since I wanted to cover such diverse musical territory. The cover song was easy to choose and I think she'll get why. The foreign song narrowed itself down fairly easily as well, though I wish I could have included the other two runners up (some other year, perhaps). But I got it down to 24 songs, 15 minutes over the max runtime, and then froze because I didn't want to cut any more. I really deliberated over this thing! Hope there's lots of stuff you don't already have. It'll be on its way to you tomorrow. :)

I also started working on the one commission I have this year for my brother-in-law's girlfriend. I'm finally doing the pieces of butterfly wings under glass cabochon pendants. I had found a second completely intact Monarch butterfly on my run on the beach in Florida last month (the first one was somewhat less intact). I held it in a loosely cupped hand for probably a mile or more. It's been fun to work on jewelry again and I started pulling out all sorts of other materials I could possibly put in these bezels. I've got silver, copper and bronze to work with. Lots of possibilities! I'm thinking brocade swatches. It's like everything I look at I think, "hmm, wonder what a piece of that would look like under glass".

I got my Christmas dinner menu planned. Not a single dish I've made before! Also, we are free from the shackles of obligatory turkey this year! FREEEEEEEEDOOOOOOMMM!! Chris always got a free one at Vandy for Christmas and since all our extra freezer space is full of beer and kept at refrigerator temps, we had to cook it soon after receiving it. I suppose we could have donated it to someone if we really wanted to, but honestly that thought hadn't occurred to me until just now. Anyhoo, we're doing Alton Brown's grilled leg of lamb with pomegranate molasses as well as his green bean casserole, a root gratin, zucchini mushroom crumble, roasted butternut squash with Moroccan spices, and roasted asparagus with balsamic browned butter. Oh, and I lied, I am making something I've made before: cranberry pumpkin yeast rolls.

Tomorrow is the last day for this meme, but life has been beating me down and I know it's only going to get worse after the holidays. So, I might keep it up. We'll see. Even if I could make it a weekly thing, I think I really need to focus on the positive in order to deal with the stuff that makes me want to simultaneously scream and cry.

Momming is:
2 parts Martha Stewart
1 part Judge Judy
4 parts Bozo the Clown
6 parts zen master

I came up with that yesterday afternoon as I was attempting to wash dishes and clean the kitchen with two 3-year-olds running laps around the first floor of the house at top speed giggling and screaming as loud as their little lungs were able. Such it was for the last 15 minutes or so of a playdate/babysitting with the neighbor's daughter, who is about 3 months younger than Jonah. Since they've been out of school on break this week, Maitane (her mom) had the glorious idea to trade off a couple of mornings so the kids could play together and the two of us could have some time to get some things done.

Maya was awesome, as usual. But Jonah really had his spoiled brat hat on, which honestly, I've never seen him wear. I've never, ever seen him get possessive about toys and just be completely uncooperative about sharing and playing with other kids, especially Maya. But on more than one occasion, I had to take him downstairs and have a talk with him and he continued to be bratty for pretty much the rest of the day until he just wore himself out with it and lost some privileges. I had to stay absolutely hard-nosed when he finally decided to straighten up and kept asking to have said privileges reinstated. I stuck with it and made sure he knew I appreciated his conscious and positive change in behavior, but reminded him that I had told him earlier that he could not earn it back. I can not be a softy and go back on my word. That teaches him nothing, except manipulation. He threw a couple of fits because maybe he thought he could butter me up with good behavior and get back what he lost. But I was absolutely done bargaining for the day.

I have a few theories as to why he was acting up. For one, he's usually in school three days each week and I think being stuck with me all day, he's gotten sick of me. Also, he doesn't typically play with other kids one on one this much without having lots of kids or other activities to distract him and keep that impulsive nature moving. Also, also, he has been going through a kind of needy phase where he wants me to entertain him all day. This is not normal for him as he's usually very independent. Part of that phase may include more infant/young toddler type behaviors, like being possessive of his toys and such which he might not have shown before. From what I understand, right around this age, they're sort of confused on whether they're big kids or babies and might flip back and forth between acting like one or the other. He might be compensating for big kid responsibilities that we've recently added (like potty training, dressing himself, taking a shower by himself and being expected to pick his toys to earn an allowance) by dusting off some old infant/young toddler behaviors that we either thought were long gone or he hadn't displayed before. And finally, this might be the first of many manifestations of only child syndrome.

I don't know. I always want to try to figure out why he acts the way he does. Like if I can understand where the behavior is coming from, I might be able to find the antidote to it.

Anyway... all this on a Thursday. Thursdays are supposed to be my bitch. But once I finally sat down to dinner (at 8:15 *sigh*), I felt like the day had completely defeated me. Now today I'm in recovery, but really needing to get a whole list of things done, particularly because the time line for my major projects right now just got shortened by a week (I'll explain later... maybe, if there's time).

Despite the late timing on dinner, it was absolutely fantastic! I made what I might call a kitchen sink veggie lasagna. Had sauteed zucchini, mushrooms and eggplant as well as roasted red peppers, sundried tomatoes and marinated artichoke hearts and I added some goat cheese to the ricotta layer. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if I made my own sauce, but I was short on time (and it was still freakin' late). Totally worth the wait, though. I absolutely devoured it along with a salad and a pint of Chris' Scottish ale. On days like yesterday, I'm thankful for the many taps and the stocked humidor in the house.

I've got a long, (though shorthanded) entry in the works to recap my very busy week last week. The week that I thought was going to beat me into submission at around Wednesday, but I owned it. I freakin' OWNED IT!

Anyway, today, as Nikki of Moms who drink and swear or more specifically, Nikki's Blithering Blog* would say, Thursday is my bitch!

*I can not thank cleopatramwi enough for sharing those nuggets of unorthodox joy

Wednesday dragged me down into a pit and attempted to drown me, much like last Wednesday, actually, but more emotional. But Thursday? No, Thursday is MY BITCH!

( Let me show you it. )

Last year, I made a resolution to use at least one vegetable-type ingredient per month that I had never cooked with before. I think I made it to March with red and yellow beets, chayote, and yucca root. There may have been others I inadvertently added throughout the year, but I didn't mentally take stock of them as counting towards my goal of 12 new ingredients.

I'm going to attempt it again this year and hopefully with more success. This month (well, tonight actually): spaghetti squash. I found a Southwestern casserole-type recipe that sounds really tasty and above all, really easy. It seems pretty retarded actually that I've not cooked or even eaten spaghetti squash before. I've liked every other type of squash I've tried, why not this one? In fact, I think this is the last type of readily available winter squash that I've not tried.

Also on the list:
Brussels Sprouts - because I recently found out I like them when they're prepared well
Swiss Chard
Broccoli Rabe
Jicama

Then I'm going to have to do some research.

ETA: Suggestions from arymetore:
kohlrabi
cassava
salsify (if it can be found)
sorrel
prickly pear

ETA2: One I thought of while in the grocery earlier:
Celeriac

And with that, I'm almost to 12, but I will keep looking for more. I think having them in mind ahead of time will be helpful. Maybe I need to go wander around Whole Foods.

So, still trying to get all Jonah's old clothes on hangers and ready for the consignment sale. If I don't make the drop off this evening, there's another one in the morning. I haven't even started tagging yet. Still just getting things on hangers. This is horribly tedious and from now on, I think I'm just going to have to find at least one sale to participate in every 6 months so I don't have to prep a 2 year backlog of clothes. I had lots of stuff already on hangers, but after going through the closet and his drawer, I found a lot more to put in the sale, which weren't on hangers. And it's all very specific: hangers facing left, all wire hangers, pants saftey pinned to hanger, etc. Next I'll have to sort them out into sizes, then seasons (since they only take fall/winter stuff right now), then start pricing, which is also very specific.

Is it worth it? Sure, I could just dump it all in a box and haul it to Goodwill. But since I buy all of his clothes at consignment sales (usually on the 50% off days), I figured I'd start selling at them and see if we can't pay for next season's clothes with last season's. So yeah, it's worth it to me.

Hiller called yesterday and since, you know, we'll be turning our A/C off in another month or so, they're finally going to come out and do the yearly checkup we're entitled to. We signed up for an annual service plan when we had our heat worked on back in the winter. It makes the service calls and any parts we need cheaper, plus we get an annual checkup of our plumbing, heat and air systems. It seemed worth it. They're coming to do the plumbing one as well. So, hooray, I get to get the house cleaned up and make sure they can get to all the areas they need to to check it all out. Then it's back to sale prep and maybe listing some more items on ebay and craigslist.

We made sushi for dinner last night, which is really such a satisfying meal. I feel awesome when I'm full on sushi (as opposed to full on pasta or something). Jonah loves miso soup and wasabi peas, too. He's definitely my son. ;) It seemed like a lot of work to put together, but we haven't done it in a long time. It seems like we have to totally reschool ourselves on how to do it every time. So, I told Chris we should start making sushi once a month, to stay in practice. Since we were out of everything except the rice, it was a little bit of an investment. But for less than $5 of salmon (Publix was out of tuna, which I prefer), plenty for a couple of nights worth of rolls, it's not an expensive meal. Plus it's pretty healthy. It's just unfortunate that it's usually the very last roll that finally looks right and holds together nicely. Like I said, we get out of practice, which just means we need to do it more often. ;) The miso was wonderful though and I plan to eat the leftovers for lunch and make more for tonight's reprisal of the meal.

Oh and oropher_777, I read on a food thesaurus which gives ingredient substitutions that you can use risotto rice in place of sushi rice, so I'm assuming the opposite would be true as well. The difference I guess is mostly in the preparation. With sushi rice, you don't want to touch it too much so that you don't release all those starches inside the grain and make it too mushy. Whereas, with risotto, you stir freely to make a creamy consistency.

I'm liking these quick rundowns of the weekends, so I'm going to stick to them for now. They're easy to spit out fast so I don't feel like I've wasted put a ton of time into just describing what we've been up to. I'm going to start at Thursday, because I can.

Thursday - Picked Jonah up from school where he had made a Father's Day present. His footprints in blue paint (and his feet still somewhat blue) with a cute little poem between them. He talked about "daddy present" all evening, so I put it up where he couldn't find it and spill the beans.

Friday - Jonah and I trekked up to Goodlettesville to Rebel Brewer to pick up a couple of Perlick taps for Chris' keggerator as a Father's Day gift. Again, all the way home, Jonah played with them saying, "daddy present" so I made sure not to say what they were to him and hoping he wouldn't figure it out on his own and spill the beans yet again. Then we went by Jonah's favorite place in the world, Home Depot, for some stuff and then to Toys 'R' Us for some pool stuff for Jonah (water wings and a floatie, since he's outgrown what we had last year). After we put Jonah to bed, Chris and I sat on the patio having beers until kind of late (for us, we were probably done by 11:30 or something).

Saturday - I got some steady deep cleaning done all day (like cleaning all the windows at Jonah level and mopping floors and such). We had a nice dinner on the patio of grilled fish, grilled potato wedges and a salad. After dinner, I started pulling some of the summer grass away from the blueberry plants and remarked about having let it get so high, it was now easier to pull than spray. So, after about an hour at it, I had about a 4-5 square foot section cleared. I called it quits and gave Jonah a bath since he had been "helping". Then Chris headed over to one of the brewclub members' houses to listen for the final results of the National Homebrew Competition. The club entered their barrel aged Belgian strong dark and it made it to the finals. As it turned out, it took 2nd place in its category. I spent some time while Chris was out that night preparing two chickens and a rack of ribs for the smoker for the next day. I also took the time to prep stuff for surprise French Toast for breakfast. I got some more cleaning done, and then at about 12:30, expecting Chris home anytime, I went to make the bed with sheets fresh from the dryer and jump in the shower real quick. As I laid down at 1:15, I text messaged Chris to be sure he was still ok and just staying out later than he said he would (not a problem mind you, but I get a little concerned if he's out so much later than he thought he would be with brew friends). Next thing I know, I get woken up as Chris comes in to go to bed at 4am. Jonah came wandering in the room about an hour after that, but after some tossing and turning in our bed, I put him back in his and he slept until 9am Sunday morning.

Sunday - Chris woke up when I did, ruining my chance to surprise him with French Toast in bed. But he wound up going back to bed at least so I could still deliver it to him. I waited until Jonah woke up to present Chris with his Father's Day gifts. After breakfast, we both kind of vegged a little, then I did some sporadic cleaning again and eventually, we got back out to work on pulling the grass out of the garden again. This would be the new garden I cut in the April, by the way. It was the area of the strongest prevalence of this summer weather grass we've got (we think it might be Bermuda or something). This stuff is resilient, let me tell you. I've sprayed it down with herbicide like 4 times and it dies back a little, but then comes right back up. Over in the gravel bed under the stairs where we had put down landscape fabric, it's come up through the fabric and still responds only moderately to herbicide sprayings. Figures the one place we don't want grass is the place where it grows the thickest. Chris got the smoker fired up and got the meat going and I put Jonah down for a nap, with much resistance. Then, I kept at the grass for a while and managed to get about half the bed done by the time I needed to go get cleaned up in preparation for dinner. We had invited our neighbor over because his family has been out of town for about three weeks now and won't be back for another week and a half. So, he was alone on Father's Day. After dinner, we went over to his house for cigars and to let Jonah jump on their trampoline. This was the first time Chris and I had smoked cigars since we left Huntsville I think. They were the Acid Blondes from Drew Estates. Very sweet. Very much a dessert cigar. Would be good with chocolate and coffee. Once we finished the cigars, it was Jonah's bedtime, so we headed back home and put Jonah to bed and cleaned up from dinner. We were in bed by 9:15 I guess, but despite being tired, I couldn't fall asleep. I think today, I'm realizing why. In all the activities of the day, I forgot to call my dad. He'll get a call today, definitely, but I still feel really bad. I spent all this time and energy thinking about things to do for Chris and then forgot about my own father. Luckily my dad is such a stoic that if it bothered him that I didn't call, he'd never let on. I just have my own guilt to deal with then. And here earlier in the week I even thought to try to send him a card. Which is big because I NEVER send cards. Totally failing at my New Year's resolution to be more awesome at remembering and doing things for special occasions such as these.