So tonight I made the sesame noodles from Pioneer Woman's website. They sounded so good - in fact I wanted to make them last night but Meijer was out of green onions so I waited for tonight.
Yuk. So not good. So not what I was anticipating. Just.not.good. Plus I bought the chili oil, the rice vinegar and the sesame oil just for this recipe. So that is $10 bucks down the drain and lets be honest, all those ingredients will just sit in my pantry for years and I will probably never use them again.
Anyway, the kids were kind and ate the noodles and said they were good, but I think they were just being polite.
I blame this all on the fact that there is no good Thai restaurants anywhere near my house or my office and it is making me think about and crave noodles all the time. So now I have eaten and should be full but I want to graze for something enjoyable.
Two dinners, not on my diet!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Bacon Cupcakes
Last night I successfully gained control of the TV clicker and got to watch a few precious minutes of the Food Network (which if I did not work I'm sure I would watch all day long but that is another story!). So I was watching Unwrapped and Dave was reading a book (Learned Optimism - great book if you are looking to improve your outlook on life). So guess what the guy from Double Dare was talking about on Unwrapped last night? Bacon. And Dave loves him some bacon. Did you know there is a Bacon of the Month club? Oh yes, there is.
And guess who now wants to join it?
And guess who now wants to join it?
Friday, September 25, 2009
My Life in Fast Forward
First of all, something smells in my house and I can't figure out what it is and it is pissing me off. It smells like old toilet water or something. In the past I have traced such a smell to Dave's boots after he has been testing standpipes and the stinky stagnant water has splashed on them.
But the boots have passed muster this time.
So, this is how I have spent my Friday night. Washed the kitchen floor (even though I just got the house cleaned last week), wiped the entire kitchen down with Pine Sol, vacuumed the living room carpet, lit 26 candles, moved my Bath and Body Works plug-in to a plug closer to the kitchen (maybe the plug it was in isn't working), and cried.
I have been cursed with an over developed sense of smell (if you have spent 5 minutes with me you already know this). Smells bug me and I am paranoid of my house being stinky. AHHHHH!
Anyway, I finally had to give up. The only other thing I could do is take all the kitchen chairs out of the kitchen and wash the area rug that is under the kitchen table. I am not doing that tonight.
Okay, so now on to what I really wanted to post about.
The 14 year old living in my house. Dave and I have been married for just over 3 years, so that is how long the kids have been living with me and I feel like I have done this motherhood thing in fast forward with no time to get used to anything. It's a whirlwind.
We got married in the month of June and I have to tell you that I was pretty much stunned the first year. They were 11 and 6. And I was not prepared for the whole school thing. Planning lunches, making sure clothes were clean, homework done, dinner planned, who needs art supplies for a project they forgot to tell me about until the night before, etc.... It was so overwhelming I didn't even have time to process how overwhelming it was. And I wasn't very good at it. I missed orientations, conferences, forgot to sign papers and send them back. The kids were lucky I sent in the order forms for their school pictures or washed their underwear before they had to turn them inside out and wear them twice. I was working full time at work and at home and that first year, quite honestly, is a blur. I don't know how I did it.
So fast forward 3 years and while I am much better at juggling and planning with the school stuff, I have made peace (mostly) with the fact that I am not going to be supermom who goes to the PTO meetings and bakes cupcakes for them to take for their class on birthdays, I at least feel like I am somewhat keeping up.
But Sam, now a teenager and freshman, has started going to football games on Friday night and he wants to go into town with his friends to hang out and now just this past Wednesday has informed us that he is going to the homecoming dance tomorrow night with a date. And I find myself with very mixed feelings about this. But not the ones you would think. I'm right back to not knowing how to balance these new developments and feeling a little resentful that I have to.
I feel like I got thrown into this mother thing (which I suppose I did) and it has snowballed. I feel like I'm too young to have a teenager, even though biologically I am not. I feel resentful that these things are somehow my responsibility and that their mother lives an hour away and gets to deal with what she feels like dealing with and nothing more. I feel like I missed out on a big chunk of what should have been a fun part of raising kids, the sweet baby stage etc and I chastise myself for feeling this way because I knew what I was getting into (well I thought I understood what I was getting into, but how can one understand what one does not have any freaking clue about?)
I'm tired tonight. We had another crazy busy week and the kids mother hasn't taken them for the last two weekends so I have had no break and I wonder if human beings were meant to operate at this pace and I wonder if, for all my complaining about how busy I am, that I would complain I was bored if suddenly I wasn't flying at mach speed all the time.
Does any of this rambling even make any sense? I don't feel like I am articulating what I am reallly feeling.
But the boots have passed muster this time.
So, this is how I have spent my Friday night. Washed the kitchen floor (even though I just got the house cleaned last week), wiped the entire kitchen down with Pine Sol, vacuumed the living room carpet, lit 26 candles, moved my Bath and Body Works plug-in to a plug closer to the kitchen (maybe the plug it was in isn't working), and cried.
I have been cursed with an over developed sense of smell (if you have spent 5 minutes with me you already know this). Smells bug me and I am paranoid of my house being stinky. AHHHHH!
Anyway, I finally had to give up. The only other thing I could do is take all the kitchen chairs out of the kitchen and wash the area rug that is under the kitchen table. I am not doing that tonight.
Okay, so now on to what I really wanted to post about.
The 14 year old living in my house. Dave and I have been married for just over 3 years, so that is how long the kids have been living with me and I feel like I have done this motherhood thing in fast forward with no time to get used to anything. It's a whirlwind.
We got married in the month of June and I have to tell you that I was pretty much stunned the first year. They were 11 and 6. And I was not prepared for the whole school thing. Planning lunches, making sure clothes were clean, homework done, dinner planned, who needs art supplies for a project they forgot to tell me about until the night before, etc.... It was so overwhelming I didn't even have time to process how overwhelming it was. And I wasn't very good at it. I missed orientations, conferences, forgot to sign papers and send them back. The kids were lucky I sent in the order forms for their school pictures or washed their underwear before they had to turn them inside out and wear them twice. I was working full time at work and at home and that first year, quite honestly, is a blur. I don't know how I did it.
So fast forward 3 years and while I am much better at juggling and planning with the school stuff, I have made peace (mostly) with the fact that I am not going to be supermom who goes to the PTO meetings and bakes cupcakes for them to take for their class on birthdays, I at least feel like I am somewhat keeping up.
But Sam, now a teenager and freshman, has started going to football games on Friday night and he wants to go into town with his friends to hang out and now just this past Wednesday has informed us that he is going to the homecoming dance tomorrow night with a date. And I find myself with very mixed feelings about this. But not the ones you would think. I'm right back to not knowing how to balance these new developments and feeling a little resentful that I have to.
I feel like I got thrown into this mother thing (which I suppose I did) and it has snowballed. I feel like I'm too young to have a teenager, even though biologically I am not. I feel resentful that these things are somehow my responsibility and that their mother lives an hour away and gets to deal with what she feels like dealing with and nothing more. I feel like I missed out on a big chunk of what should have been a fun part of raising kids, the sweet baby stage etc and I chastise myself for feeling this way because I knew what I was getting into (well I thought I understood what I was getting into, but how can one understand what one does not have any freaking clue about?)
I'm tired tonight. We had another crazy busy week and the kids mother hasn't taken them for the last two weekends so I have had no break and I wonder if human beings were meant to operate at this pace and I wonder if, for all my complaining about how busy I am, that I would complain I was bored if suddenly I wasn't flying at mach speed all the time.
Does any of this rambling even make any sense? I don't feel like I am articulating what I am reallly feeling.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Complainy McComplainerson
Have you ever heard the saying "10% of the people do 90% of the work"? I feel like that is me lately. It seems like, at my company, the reward for being a hard worker and gettin it done is more work. Yay! My husband once said to me that it is important to manage your employees and make sure you are holding everyone accountable because it is very bad for morale to pile on your performers and allow others to be slackers. This concept is really being driven home with me right now because that is what is happening to me. I almost cried in front of my boss this morning (a huge no no) and had to bite on my tongue until it bled to make myself stop. It was the closest I have ever come to crying in front of him.
In other news, my husband has contracted my cold and in an attempt to ward it off has been eating whole raw garlic cloves. Do I really need to say anymore about that?
In other news, my husband has contracted my cold and in an attempt to ward it off has been eating whole raw garlic cloves. Do I really need to say anymore about that?
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
I Still Love My Life
Today was busy. I left the house at 6:30 am to get to work to prep for a meeting that I had at 8:30. The meeting was high intensity for me and when I get nervous I tend to tick. Today my tick was that I was obsessively sucking water out of my 24 ounce sport bottle. You can guess how that meeting ended, right? Me doing a mental pee pee dance and not being able to concentrate on a thing that was being said.
I left work "early" at 3:30 to drive home and grab Dave and the kids (at 4:30) so we could hit the Goodwill sale at Elder Beerman because Dave has lost so much weight that his pants are falling off of him and he had to get some pants. Then we went directly to the open house at Sam's school (this is his first year of high school). The open house consisted of 7 minute "mini classes" at each class. I think this is meant to simulate your child's high school experience but instead reminded me of why I hated high school so very very much. Suddenly I felt like a 14 year old girl again. I'm pretty sure a couple pimples popped out on my face while we were there. Anyway, since the school is so bad at communicating and did not send any details on said "open house", I mistakenly assumed that the open house that was scheduled from 6-8 would be an "open house" and we could wander from class to class and meet Sam's teachers at our leisure and be out of there in an hour or less. But instead we had to follow his schedule. 7 minute classes with 10 minutes in between which meant we would not have actually been out of there until almost 8:00 on the dot. Well, we also had the 9 year old with us who hadn't quite finished her math homework and none of us had eaten dinner. So we skipped his last two classes and decided to try this new restaurant in town that has billed itself as Thai/Chinese. Since there isn't a decent Thai place anywhere near us that I have found, I was excited.
It's not Thai people. It's a Chinese place that threw a couple sort of like Thai dishes on it's menu. I was very disappointed but seeing as how it was already 8:00, we had to make due. I begrudgingly picked something else. Then the food came in waves, each persons dish came separately and mine was about 10-12 minutes behind the first dish. All the while I am looking at my watch cursing the lost evening.
So we came home, I hurried up and put on my pajamas and snuggled into the couch to check my e-mails and update my blog and about 5 minutes after my butt hit the pillow, I caught a whiff of something that made me want to barf. A yet unidentified animal (which one the dog or the cat? There is now way to be sure it could have been either one) had desecrated my couch cushion with either puke or poop, I could not be sure which it was and it was on the back of the cushion THAT I WAS SITTING AGAINST, between the cushion and the back of the couch.
So, it's jump up, scream, curse, cry a little, strip the cover off of the cushion and throw it in the washer, dig the green machine out of the basement and start cleaning the part of the couch that cannot go in the washing machine, cry some more and thank God that tomorrow is not the day I get the house cleaned.
What more can I say?
I left work "early" at 3:30 to drive home and grab Dave and the kids (at 4:30) so we could hit the Goodwill sale at Elder Beerman because Dave has lost so much weight that his pants are falling off of him and he had to get some pants. Then we went directly to the open house at Sam's school (this is his first year of high school). The open house consisted of 7 minute "mini classes" at each class. I think this is meant to simulate your child's high school experience but instead reminded me of why I hated high school so very very much. Suddenly I felt like a 14 year old girl again. I'm pretty sure a couple pimples popped out on my face while we were there. Anyway, since the school is so bad at communicating and did not send any details on said "open house", I mistakenly assumed that the open house that was scheduled from 6-8 would be an "open house" and we could wander from class to class and meet Sam's teachers at our leisure and be out of there in an hour or less. But instead we had to follow his schedule. 7 minute classes with 10 minutes in between which meant we would not have actually been out of there until almost 8:00 on the dot. Well, we also had the 9 year old with us who hadn't quite finished her math homework and none of us had eaten dinner. So we skipped his last two classes and decided to try this new restaurant in town that has billed itself as Thai/Chinese. Since there isn't a decent Thai place anywhere near us that I have found, I was excited.
It's not Thai people. It's a Chinese place that threw a couple sort of like Thai dishes on it's menu. I was very disappointed but seeing as how it was already 8:00, we had to make due. I begrudgingly picked something else. Then the food came in waves, each persons dish came separately and mine was about 10-12 minutes behind the first dish. All the while I am looking at my watch cursing the lost evening.
So we came home, I hurried up and put on my pajamas and snuggled into the couch to check my e-mails and update my blog and about 5 minutes after my butt hit the pillow, I caught a whiff of something that made me want to barf. A yet unidentified animal (which one the dog or the cat? There is now way to be sure it could have been either one) had desecrated my couch cushion with either puke or poop, I could not be sure which it was and it was on the back of the cushion THAT I WAS SITTING AGAINST, between the cushion and the back of the couch.
So, it's jump up, scream, curse, cry a little, strip the cover off of the cushion and throw it in the washer, dig the green machine out of the basement and start cleaning the part of the couch that cannot go in the washing machine, cry some more and thank God that tomorrow is not the day I get the house cleaned.
What more can I say?
Sunday, September 13, 2009
I Have a Confession to Make
I make up songs about my dog and sing them to him. It's true and I feel better now that I have confessed to it and you all know that I am insane.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Living with a Teenager
The summer Dave and I got married, we splurged on a new computer because he didn't have one and the one I had was a pos. It was a really nice computer, we researched, okay he researched it and we shopped around ultimately finding and buying the computer of our dreams at none other than Wal-Mart. It was a nice little deal we scored. Anyway, this past June we were married three years, and we still have that computer. In fact, I am typing away on it right now. [Sidebar: so afraid am I of getting canned or something that I will not type posts on my work laptop anymore, which was part of the lack of posting this summer.]
But something has happened to it. Something being a certain teenager who I shall refer to as Napoleon. Napoleon is a typical American Teenager who values nothing but that which pleases him at the moment. And usually what pleases him at the moment has something to do with a video game of some sort or YouTube. So at whatever moment the feeling strikes Napoleon, he will just go ahead and download "it". Once in the past, this led to what I like to refer to as "The Great Porn Incident of 2008" which is where our computer crashed and Dave had to go through the process of cleaning off the hard drive during which he came across all sorts of stunning porn in our browsers history which then led to what I like to refer to as "The Great Sex Talk of 2008". I don't think I blogged about this at the time out of respect for Napoleons privacy and because I was mortified. But it's been a couple years and I was ready to come out about it. Plus he is in the kitchen eating me out of house and home right now and I'm feeling snarky about it.
So anyway, why am I talking about this? Well, after Dave got the computer cleaned off from "The Great Porn Incident" and it has been running okay but it gets slower every week. Apparently World of Warcraft is a rather large program. So today I was going through the hard drive with the intent of looking at some old pictures and I wanted to share with you some of what I found.
This photo was saved under the file name "Do the Dew"
And then of course, the video games that don't go on the computer must have photos of the cover of them so they are still "in" the computer and don't feel left out. See here:
But something has happened to it. Something being a certain teenager who I shall refer to as Napoleon. Napoleon is a typical American Teenager who values nothing but that which pleases him at the moment. And usually what pleases him at the moment has something to do with a video game of some sort or YouTube. So at whatever moment the feeling strikes Napoleon, he will just go ahead and download "it". Once in the past, this led to what I like to refer to as "The Great Porn Incident of 2008" which is where our computer crashed and Dave had to go through the process of cleaning off the hard drive during which he came across all sorts of stunning porn in our browsers history which then led to what I like to refer to as "The Great Sex Talk of 2008". I don't think I blogged about this at the time out of respect for Napoleons privacy and because I was mortified. But it's been a couple years and I was ready to come out about it. Plus he is in the kitchen eating me out of house and home right now and I'm feeling snarky about it.
So anyway, why am I talking about this? Well, after Dave got the computer cleaned off from "The Great Porn Incident" and it has been running okay but it gets slower every week. Apparently World of Warcraft is a rather large program. So today I was going through the hard drive with the intent of looking at some old pictures and I wanted to share with you some of what I found.
This photo was saved under the file name "Do the Dew"
And this one was called "DOWG" (Did I mention that Napoleon went to the Dog the Bounty Hunter book signing and met Dog?
Then there was this gem
And then of course, the video games that don't go on the computer must have photos of the cover of them so they are still "in" the computer and don't feel left out. See here:
Ya'll I could go on with these for quite a string. I also found 6 pictures from LOL Cats, 12 photos of kids I don't know, 10 pictures of kids I do know, 4 Metallica Album covers, 18 pictures of the dog in various poses (some with kids I don't know), 3 self portraits, 4 pictures of the cat, and this:
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Anyone Still There?
Okay, okay, so I disappeared for a couple months. Sucked into a cesspool of writer's block, apathy, self-loathing and just plain old fashioned laziness.
But alas, school started today. Poop. (Jen that's for you. I'm going to work fart in somehow too, my mom made us call them fluffies when I was growing up, I swear)
So here is my summer in a nutshell and I swear I am getting back on track with this thing. I'm still planning on moving it as soon as I can think of a good new name.
Okay, so we went to Traverse City. I got really drunk one day (on accident) and had to go back to our hotel room and pass out. There are photos (not of me drunk, sorry) but I haven't gotten them off the camera. Perhaps someday I'll share them, but really, probably not.
The kids are fine. Their mother actually took them for a total of 3 solid weeks (not consecutively) this summer. Those breaks were nice and made me question if getting pregnant is really a good idea for me. We'll talk more about that later.
So they (the kids) had a good summer even though I failed to deliver on my promise of a trip to Chicago and the American Girl store. I'm trying to get that lined up for October time frame. We'll see, it is really expensive.
My work still sucks and if possible has begun to suck even more. We have had more layoffs and a total new management overhaul which has left the office in a total tizzy (how the frick do you spell tizzie?). I'm sick of people losing their jobs and worrying about my own job. The atmosphere is crappy and life sucking and makes me question my goals and values in life on a daily basis.
New in our life is my quest to cut refined white sugar out of my diet (why did I buy the econo size of chocolate covered raisins? They are really good and a huge temptation). I'm getting fat, my pants are getting tight and I can't afford new pants. So losing weight is the only option. I'll let you know how that works out. Most people lose weight in the summer, but for some reason I seem to gain in the summer and lose in the fall and winter.
Okay, last thing for tonight. Books from my summer reading list.
#1 best book I read this summer is a must for all my old college buddies and anyone else who was raised in a Bible thumping religious right household. The Unlike Disciple - A Sinners Semester at America's Holiest University. Seriously, read it. It was an easy and quick read. If you do not fall into either of the categories I mentioned above, you may not "get" it though. And, hey, old college buddies, AU, not so bad.
I read some other books this summer, but I can't remember any of the right now. Probably because I am rushing or because I haven't had any refined white sugar today. But I'm back, but Jro, you can still post 80's music lyrics in my comments. I also like Prince, the J Giles Band and Tears for Fears.
But alas, school started today. Poop. (Jen that's for you. I'm going to work fart in somehow too, my mom made us call them fluffies when I was growing up, I swear)
So here is my summer in a nutshell and I swear I am getting back on track with this thing. I'm still planning on moving it as soon as I can think of a good new name.
Okay, so we went to Traverse City. I got really drunk one day (on accident) and had to go back to our hotel room and pass out. There are photos (not of me drunk, sorry) but I haven't gotten them off the camera. Perhaps someday I'll share them, but really, probably not.
The kids are fine. Their mother actually took them for a total of 3 solid weeks (not consecutively) this summer. Those breaks were nice and made me question if getting pregnant is really a good idea for me. We'll talk more about that later.
So they (the kids) had a good summer even though I failed to deliver on my promise of a trip to Chicago and the American Girl store. I'm trying to get that lined up for October time frame. We'll see, it is really expensive.
My work still sucks and if possible has begun to suck even more. We have had more layoffs and a total new management overhaul which has left the office in a total tizzy (how the frick do you spell tizzie?). I'm sick of people losing their jobs and worrying about my own job. The atmosphere is crappy and life sucking and makes me question my goals and values in life on a daily basis.
New in our life is my quest to cut refined white sugar out of my diet (why did I buy the econo size of chocolate covered raisins? They are really good and a huge temptation). I'm getting fat, my pants are getting tight and I can't afford new pants. So losing weight is the only option. I'll let you know how that works out. Most people lose weight in the summer, but for some reason I seem to gain in the summer and lose in the fall and winter.
Okay, last thing for tonight. Books from my summer reading list.
#1 best book I read this summer is a must for all my old college buddies and anyone else who was raised in a Bible thumping religious right household. The Unlike Disciple - A Sinners Semester at America's Holiest University. Seriously, read it. It was an easy and quick read. If you do not fall into either of the categories I mentioned above, you may not "get" it though. And, hey, old college buddies, AU, not so bad.
I read some other books this summer, but I can't remember any of the right now. Probably because I am rushing or because I haven't had any refined white sugar today. But I'm back, but Jro, you can still post 80's music lyrics in my comments. I also like Prince, the J Giles Band and Tears for Fears.
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