#23 Finished

Here is my account of last night, as it happened in my head; that tiny box that sits on my shoulders that is filled with backwards logic and fantastical rationality; I get that I’m a little bizarre in some of my ideals but you’d totally understand if you lived here too.
So last night on my way home from work I stopped to pick up some Christmas gifts and while driving down Bay Area I get a text from Mizz Andrea. I try not to text while I drive so I glance at the phone and it said “hey we are making dinner”, so I reply, or course, that I’ll be there soon, it wasn’t until I was already on my way with Laine packed up and set for the night and Erik home sick, enjoying the house all to himself for once, that I finish reading the text sitting at a red light; “hey we are making dinner and painting on the murals if you’d like to come paint with Samantha and me and your mom can watch Laine.” DANGIT! I know it was my fault that I didn’t read the whole text but I still felt suckered, hoodwinked, FOXed! Why can’t I see?! Oh yeah, the wool’s in my eyes! So, head down, beaten and resigned I continue on my way. I get to the house and its fun and food and good company to get me comfortable in my surroundings; they are feeding my trust and calming my concentrated terror of what is to come. These smiling assassins, these cannibals, just fattening me up with kindness and then they turn, BAM! Time to paint. Go be artsy, go be fartsy. I DON’T WANT TO PUT GOLD IN IT!!!! I am dragged by my hair outside into the bunker of human anguish where the young mistress of torture awaits me. She hands me a cup of water and some paint and tells me that I will be in charge of the red houses. IS THERE NO MERCY?! My hands shake; I’m going to fail, and I’m going to ruin what work they’ve done, I can’t stucco!
So I sit on the ground with Sam and I take my paintbrush and I stare at my two red and a brown and I poke at it, and I push it around and finally I start making the canvas wet. I’m not setting the thing on fire with my death ray eye which is incredibly relieving to me. With that thought one chain falls off my back and I try shading the side of the building, and the reds don’t turn to gold and the paint is going where I want it to go and I have no idiotic goblin lady staring over my shoulder saying “No, no, nononono, it’s all wrong, start over!” There goes another chain. I move on to windows and doors and then on to the second red house and I find that I’m having fun with Sam and there goes another chain. I’m not thinking about how I need to keep that brick wall around my pride and I don’t need to be defensive of the slant to my brushstrokes or the choice of black instead of brown, and there goes another chain.
By the time the cherry pie is ready in the kitchen I’m feeling better, I’m feeling like I deserve to be there helping my friends that I’m not ruining anything but in fact I’m contributing. I realize that I was making the whole situation a lot worse than it needed to be. It’s hard for me to go from planted in the dirt to orbiting the moon in few seconds. It’s been nine and a half years since I’ve picked up a paint brush. Nine and a half years! I almost made it to ten years, I was so close. But these people will not let me fail and they will not allow me to give up. They knew I had surrendered my fight and still they hand me back my sword. I’m not saying I’m back in the fight but I will say that I have withdrawn my white flag. And just because I am feeling a bit smug today, I will reiterate what I have said a multitude of times in the past; up yours Mrs. Fox, up yours.

#16, 18 & 45 Finished

One of my challenges is to not eat fast food for three months. I just finished that one and I got to say, it was way easier than I though it would be. Not eating fast food is like switching from whole milk to 2%, after about a week you can’t tell the difference anymore. In the course of this challenge others are corresponding nicely and so challenges 16, 18 and 45 can all be checked off today. Challenge number 18, to make a new recipe once a week for a month and challenge number 45, to buy a new bottle of wine once a week for a month, fell into place as I tried to find meals for Erik and me to eat every night. At the very beginning of my fast food challenge I continued with our normal fall back meals at home, like hamburger helper and frozen bag meals. But by the end of the first month we were so over that and without Pizza Hut or McDonalds to fall back on I needed to come up with some fast easy recipes that didn’t taste fast and easy. Most of the time I would prowl the internet food sites and mash up a recipe or four to make something all my own, these were typically dishes that needed to be made a couple of times before I ended up with something that Erik liked. Erik, by the way, is an incredibly hard man to satisfy, hardly anything is as good as he thinks it could be; most of my recipes are still in their conception stage because of him.
The new recipe thing I’ve been doing way more than once a week but the wine I’ve been slacking on. I don’t take that to be a bad thing though. The first bottle I bought is a red wine from South Africa. I’m not typically a fan of red wines, especially dry ones because I hate the tingles I get in my nose from them. And this one is no exception, it’s an okay wine I guess, nothing to write about really. The label was pretty. Now the second one I tried, Red Truck, was good, I took out a whole bottle in under an hour. I like Red Truck.
I've been having bad luck in my choices of wines lately, there haven't been any worth talking about for the last two weeks but I'll keep trying, this week I'm going to try a wine called Daddy's girl, it makes me wonder whether they have a cute name because their wine is so good they don't need to be serious about it, or if it's so bad that they need a funny label for it. I'll find out soon enough I guess.
I’ve been having fun cooking my own food and coming up with my own ideas from other people’s recipes. I started a new recipe book, not completely because I wanted a new one but mostly because I lost my old one. I’m putting photos of all the finished products once we’ve gotten to a point that I won’t change the recipe again. I’m also writing pages of notes that I’m updating every time I re-make the dish. I’m writing my notes like I’m writing a letter to someone or writing a blog, one day Laine or someone else will get the recipe book when I die and it’ll be like I’m talking them through recipes from the grave. Oooh…
So now for the proof of it all; here are some photos of the food I’ve made in the last couple of months.
First here is a stuffed pizza I made with Italian sausage and mushrooms. Yes that is homemade pizza dough though I don’t think it tastes any better or worse than the “just add water” packets from Betty Crocker. However, cheap trumps puffed chests, so even if there is a pride factor involved I won’t be making my own dough too often.
The second meal that I remembered to take pictures of is my spaghetti sauce. It didn’t start out to be a spaghetti sauce but that’s how it ended up, next time we are going to drain a little of the juice from the tomatoes and add a tomato paste or some tomato sauce to make it, you know, more saucy. Colleen and Sydney were over when I was making this one and this was my second go at it. The first time I made sauce out of a beef stock and cooking sherry which I thought was amazing but Erik didn’t like it so I tried again and this is what we’ve got; my first true blue very own recipe that came from my own pretty little head. It looks good, huh?
I made Beef Stew on Friday, the 16th, when Stimpy came to visit. It had started off as a soup but things took their own roads and ended up in stew. The next night I made mini shepherds pies out of the leftovers that were way yummy.
I made Zuppa Toscana two days after my birthday dinner with my parents, my dad got this soup it encouraged me to try my own. It tasted a lot like the stuff they sell at Olive Garden and Erik liked it so there are major points for that dish.
I’ve decided to expand my fast food boycott for a little longer, I don’t’ know how much longer but I’m doing well with it so I don’t see why I’d stop. I might allow myself a little something every now and then but I’d like to see if I can make it to thanksgiving at least. That’ll be right at four months. Then we can try for Christmas.

Weekend Update

Friday night was a lot of fun; it started out frenzied for me and a little more than just hectic. Laine was super needy, wanting to be held and talked to so before I was able to start on anything I needed to get her belly full and get her cleaned up so that I could set her down in her walker; when she’s full and clean she’s happy to just watch what’s going on around her, sometimes I feel guilty for setting her down when I know she wants to be held but we gotta eat man! So I got a little late start on dinner but that’s okay because Erik was a little late getting home so in the end it all worked out. My person and her family came over for dinner and it was so nice to have them over. Josie was a knock out in her dress and cardigan, and her pigtails flounce so perfectly it’s adorable. What a heartbreaker she already is!
I made Chicken Enchiladas for dinner and black beans too, neither of which I’d ever made before, I didn’t use a recipe for either so I was holding my breath as everyone took their first bites. No one died, so it’s a win! It was great to just sit with friends talking over each other and laughing together, we need to do it more often.
Right at 8:00 Laine gave up and passed out and it was getting to be Josie’s bed time too so the McFee’s left us for their own house while Erik and I stayed up a little later watching TV together before calling it a good night.
We ended up sleeping in until almost 9:00. That’s way late for us, for those of you who don’t know. Laine woke me up with her talking. I peeked in her room and she was just jabbering away at Eeyore, I tried to sneak down the stairs to grab the camera but she heard me and started crying to get picked up so I got a picture of that.
Since we had no where to go and no one to see this weekend we took our time waking up. Erik slept a little later than we did until Laine thought he should get up, she crawled over to his side of the bed and smacked him good, then we all just lounged around and had a tickle fight until Laine got hungry so I got her dressed and headed downstairs to feed her, while I was down there blueberry muffins started to sound really good so they went in the oven while I headed back upstairs and talked dad into a family shower. It’s really some of the most fun we have as a family.
When showers were done we all headed downstairs to eat the perfectly done muffins and watch Disaster House for about an hour. Sitting around together Erik and I decided that Laine needed new leggings and socks so we got Laine’s bag packed up and we headed out to Carter's to use the coupon that my person gave me during our last Thursday meeting of the OMG-Pacey-is-So-Hot-is-That-Really-Izzies-Hair-Club (yeah, the name still needs work). 20% off if you spend $50 is what the coupon was for and it ended up being even more amazing because Carter’s was having a 50-70% off sale. So Laine got a Lain outfit like the anime that Erik likes, three dresses and one sweater/pants set all for $47 but we didn’t get any socks or leggings so we headed over to Target and got leggings for $3.77 each which seemed like a lot but it was worth it. She looked dang cute in them.
While at Target I also bought myself new underwear, so that’s number 37 off my list. It’s not anything fancy but it is something just for me and that’s always nice every now and then. We also got a little something for Josie’s Christmas present, I really can’t wait to see her with it, it’s going to be so cute.
As we left Target Torben called to let Erik know about the Denmark/Sweden World Cup qualifiers game that was on TV at 4:00 so we headed to the house and grabbed all our leftover’s from last week, the stuffed cabbage rolls, stuffed bell peppers and the chicken enchiladas from Friday night and brought it all over to Erik’s parents house to share as we watched the game. Everything got eaten so that made me very happy, I have a clean slate to start from for cooking this week.
While we were there Tricia got down a bunch of toys from her attic and let Laine play with them. She enjoyed the music maker in her crib the best, but I feel that the crib needs to be adjusted a bit; Laine is pulling herself up too well for the mattress to be so high now.
Friday night we had made some iffy plans with the McFee’s to do a movie but that fell through so Erik and I decided to first go on our own then decided against it, the movie we want to see will be better viewed as a group. So we then decided to rent a movie or two from his mother, which we did, however when we got home Erik passed out almost immediately on the couch. It was so weird, he wasn’t even tired and he never takes napes but sure enough, 8:30 and he was out. So I guess a movie was a bad idea anyway. I took Erik upstairs and put him to bed while I stayed up for a bit then I gave in too, it had been a pretty full day that wore me out too.
Laine woke up at 3:00 because she got a little cold. When we had stopped at the house to get leftovers we had opened all the windows in the house to let it air out while we were gone and it felt so nice that we just left them open during the night, but Laine’s fan was also on and her blanket had come off so she was in need of a snuggle to warm up but then she was wide awake, so I had to walk her around for about an hour before she would even take a bottle and go back to sleep. And then she woke up again at 7:00 needing to be changed but went back down nicely that time. We all slept in until 9:15; church starts at 10:00 so we had to rush, and I had to be sneaky about getting Erik up out of bed. Normally he is difficult to wake up but seeing as how he really did wear himself out the day before (yeah, drinking and watching soccer, hard work) he was still really sleepy. So I stripped down and stood in the middle of the room naked and asked him if he wanted to get me dirty before I got in the shower… that got him up. We were a few minutes late to church, but I think God will forgive us.
Church was good this Sunday. I didn’t forget Laine’s bottle so I was able to stay the whole sermon. Darren is getting over the flu so he sounded a little worn down but I thought the sermon was wonderful; simple Jesus, simple faith, that’s my kind of talkin’. After the sermon we all stood around like a bunch of hens in a coop trying to round everyone up to see where lunch would be. Amy and I both felt like eating breakfast so Cracker Barrel sounded wonderful to us, but there was an hour wait for a table so we went to Marina’s instead, good food either way in my book. Levi and Sydney showed up for lunch too so that was nice. I haven’t seen them in years it seems. Mom asked if she could keep Laine for a little while so after she went rollerblading with Mrs. White she came and picked Laine up. Erik and I were able to clean up the house a bit, I went to Barnes and Noble to buy myself a journal for my recipes to replace the journal I lost and I got my person’s husband’s birthday present while I was out. When I got home the living room had been vacuumed and Erik had lit candles, it was probably the sexiest moment of his life. And I told him so. He didn’t get it.
With Laine gone and all of out leftover's gone I was able to concentrate on dinner more than I usually am, I had made a wonderful snack for myself Saturday night and I wanted to try to turn it into something Erik would like too so I grilled some zucchini, squash and mushrooms with a lot of black pepper and butter and we made tacos. They were more than super amazing tacos to tell the truth, almost unbelievably amazing tacos. Erik doesn’t usually like vegetarian meals, but he went back for a second plate after he said he wasn’t that hungry, so I’m counting that as a win.
Erik and I ate dinner in a quiet house with no baby and no TV; it was nice, so comfortable and relaxing. After diner we snuggled on the couch for a while before going to pick up Laine at Momma and Daddy's. She had fallen asleep right before we got there and man, she was out, like a rag doll getting her in and out of the car seat and up to bed. She woke up about a half hour later though and stayed up until almost 11:00. She seemed fussy so I’m hoping that nothing is wrong with her, she doesn’t typically get fussy for no reason. She woke up during the night once; Erik got up with her for me so I don’t know when she woke up or how long she stayed up. I’m a little lost not knowing that information, weird.
This morning Laine woke me up with her talking around 6:00 but I just turned up the baby monitor so if she got loud enough Erik would get up and I took a shower and got ready, ends up she just went back to sleep so I left her there for Erik to take to daycare. Tonight will be my night for getting up with her and I’ll probably take her to daycare too so that Erik can sleep in a little if he wants. This morning I was able to get to work a little early and since I’ve been here it’s stopped raining and blue skies have come out, I’ve programmed two jobs already and updated all my spreadsheets, if today keeps going the way it is, it’ll be a good day.
This weekend Erik brought up our finances a time or two and today he sent me an email with a link to a potential new daycare for Laine. Tuition has gotten ridiculous, and this new place will save us almost $100 a month, but really the more I read about the school the more I want to send her there because of the school itself, not because of the price, and that makes the decision easier to make. Hopefully this new place will be as good to us as La Petit has been; it looks to be a school that likes to include parents a lot, so Erik and I should be going for a visit soon. I’ll blog about that later I’m sure.
Well that was our weekend. Family, food and fun; it’s really all you need in life.

#11 Finished

101 Things That Make Me Happy
I started this list on August 28th, it's taken me one month and one day to finish.

1) The way Erik and Laine smell like each other at the end of a Saturday.
2) A spastic dancing moment to Eye of the Tiger.
3) The way Colleen laughs at all my jokes that are meant to be laughed at.
4) Knowing the answer to the question “you know that guy that was in that movie…”
5) Making a dinner that no one finds fault with.
6) Having a person.
7) Going to a soccer game with Erik on a cool night.
8) Getting a few minutes to my self to shut my eyes and pretend life is easy again.
9) Getting a haircut.
10) Getting a pedicure with someone else.
11) Hearing a song that reminds me of a specific happy time in my life.
12) Family dinners.
13) Having an old friend call me out of the blue just to chat.
14) The way my dad has become comfortable enough with me to make fun of me.
15) Watching Top Gun or Robin Hood for the millionth time.
16) Popcorn. No butter. No salt.
17) The way that Erik never does anything (that matters) half assed.
18) Blaring Billy Idol in the middle of rush hour traffic and singing as loud as I can with my windows rolled down and seeing that one person that’s singing along with me.
19) Buying myself a new coffee mug to go with a new flavor of coffee.
20) Looking through old pictures and remembering when.
21) A good cup of coffee with a good book.
22) The Christmas Season.
23) Bruce Willis.
24) Saving money with coupons at the grocery store.
25) Watching Laine do something for the first time.
26) Homemade biscuits with butter and jelly.
27) When Erik calls me for no reason.
28) Seeing my daughter and my grandmother laughing together.
29) The way Levi sings to Laine.
30) Being able to tell my person anything and everything.
31) Swimming on a hot day in a pool with lots of shade.
32) Timothy Olyphant.
33) Quad Venti Raspberry White Mocha, no whip, no foam, extra hot, with a slice of Zucchini Walnut bread, and my person.
34) Being able to buy a new pair of shoes and not feel guilty about it.
35) The fact that I can start a challenge an finish it without using my Go-Amanda-Go Team.
36) The fact that I have a Go-Amanda-Go Team.
37) Finding new music.
38) When a series I’m reading has the next book printed in paperback.
39) Seasonal flavors of Coffee Mate coffee creamers.
40) Thursday nights.
41) Peanut butter.
42) A chilled glass of Riesling.
43) Getting a good rant out of my system to someone who will listen to the whole thing without interrupting and then agree with me whole heartedly when I’m done.
44) Watching my parents fall in love over and over again.
45) Having my brother live close to me.
46) When the bag boy at HEB flirts with me.
47) When Erik tells me he likes what I’m wearing.
48) Laine’s good morning smile.
49) Seeing old friends in random places.
50) Watching Jacob, Josh and Laine just be siblings with each other.
51) Getting to church at the same time as Levi and Sydney so we aren’t the only ones walking in late.
52) The way Erik lets me win, even though he knows I’ll gloat for days.
53) Movie night with Colleen.
54) Cookies and Cream ice cream.
55) Watching Laine figure out how to turn on the sink.
56) Finally killing that bug that’s been flying around my office from two days.
57) Reading comments on my blog.
58) Finishing another challenge.
59) Buying new makeup.
60) Seeing Laine’s reaction to when she sneeze/farts.
61) Having all my laundry done.
62) Shopping at Target.
63) Seeing snow outside on my windowsill.
64) Jack Johnson.
65) New red pens.
66) A hot cup of chamomile and lavender tea.
67) Hearing Erik talk about remodeling the house.
68) Homemade milkshakes.
69) Family fun time.
70) Hearing Josie say wah-wah!
71) Time management computer games.
72) Listening to news radio in the morning.
73) Google-ing random words and reading the blogs that I find.
74) Getting so far ahead at work that I have a whole day to organize my photos.
75) Early evening walks with Erik and Laine.
76) Pacey/Peter.
77) The way Laine says Mama.
78) Super hot coffee.
79) All paperwork having a file, all files in order.
80) Making home made birthday presents.
81) Seeing Laine with my grandpa and how proud he is to show her off to everyone that passes.
82) Sonic Ice!
83) Soft shoes.
84) Morning where I am able to take Laine to daycare.
85) Being able to blog out my issues, it’s better than talking them out sometimes.
86) Not just beating Erik at something, but royally stomping his ass.
87) Being able to afford to buy lunch for my parents.
88) Road trips with Erik and Laine
89) Clean sheets and continental breakfasts, hotels rock my socks.
90) Mr. Clay’s creamed corn… I drool.
91) Watching Laine crawl after Erik.
92) Starting and finishing a craft project.
93) Putting up Christmas decorations.
94) Ella Fitzgerald.
95) Taking photos of Laine in the bath.
96) Finishing a job before Charlie asks for it.
97) The smell of hot chocolate and marshmallows roasting.
98) New bath oils.
99) Getting audio texts from Erik
100) Driving through the country with the windows down and the radio up.
101) Knowing that there are more than 101 things that make me happy.