You're Doing It Wrong

Kootenai River, Idaho

I can’t tell you how hard it’s been not to write an update after every single episode of the Gilmore Girls. I get those DVDs and I sit in front of my TV with my knees under my chin and my fists pressed against my mouth and I repeat over and over, “I love this show. Why isn’t everyone watching this show?”

And they were. In 2000. I’m watching a show that was a hit almost a decade ago. Bob said: you’re revisiting the decade through your show. This is the chickiest show ever. It was like it was invented for me. There was an episode where they went to see The Bangles.

Thank the world for DVD. I am going to have one excellent xmas break. I am only on Disk 6, Season 1. There are 36 disks left. 30 if I skip season 7 as I’ve been advised.

I promise I won’t keep talking about it.

In other news. Have I recommended My Cardboard Life? It makes me smile almost every time I read it. I think you should check it out. I know, I hate when blogs try to tell you what to do, but this is trying to make you smile.

I’m trying to get into the holiday spirit and yesterday I wrapped a few gifts that I’d bought. At least I started.

We had this giftwrap roll that was still in the plastic. I unwrapped it and it had texture, like a sand painting. I wrapped my gift and the tape wouldn’t stick.

What kind of moron invents gift wrap that tape won’t stick to?

I had to get out some packing tape and put giant strips of that on it. How pretty! And I’m afraid to move it because if the tape doesn’t stick I’m going to have a major hissy fit. Woo! Christmas.

Also, still annoyed by that chestnuts and open fire song. I don’t care what version it is.

BUT, in Spokane I went to Cabelas. It is probably one of the top 10 stores on the planet. It’s huge and filled with outdoor stuff. There was an aquarium. There was a shooting gallery. There was a giant room with guns. There was a diorama type thing in the middle with tons of stuffed bears and deer and elk. AND while I was there, they played Mannheim Steamroller my favorite Xmas music ever.

Our office building management sent us a questionnaire last year. Maybe they do it every year. Last year was our first year here so I don’t know.

They asked for suggestions and I suggested some sort of butt can for smokers. No matter how you feel about smoking, people do it. They have to do it outside and if there’s no place to put the butt they throw it on the ground. Then there are oodles of butts all around when you walk outside the building.

I didn’t think it would be a huge drain on building resources to stick a butt can out there and empty it once a day.

Apparently someone agreed with me because one day as I walked in, I noticed a butt can sorta like this one. Great.

Then the next day the panhandlers had knocked it over and spread the butts all over the ground looking for some tidbits to smoke.

And that was the end of the butt can.

I call this one: Wind Chill. We went for a walk yesterday afternoon at Vancouver Lake.

On Friday I was searching for an easy slow cooker recipe because I was going to be gone in the afternoon. Yikes there are bunches of crap recipes online. I ended up going for a slab of beef and a bunch of vegetables.

Last night we had leftovers and when we went to bed I asked Bob if there was any meat left.

Him: Yes, a piece about as big as a baseball.

Me: Wow, that’s a lot left over still.

Him: My fist, it’s about as big as my fist.

I’m trying to visualize this since it wasn’t that big a piece of meat to begin with. How could we have such a big piece left?

Him: A baby’s fist. It’s about as big as a baby’s fist.

Me: A baseball, your fist, a baby’s fist? None of those things are remotely the same size.

Then we couldn’t stop laughing and I told him he was bad at descriptions.

Dahlias

Now that I’m so old, every time I have a funny ache or a weird rash that doesn’t go away after two days, I get paranoid that this is the beginning of something awful. And that six months from now when I finally go to the doctor carrying my head under my arm, he’ll tell me if I had just come in when I got the funny ache, we couldn’t have avoided all this.

Yesterday in the shower I found this ginormous bruise on my leg. I have no idea where it came from. And last week when I was standing in front of the mirror trying to make my bangs fan across my forehead instead of curling up like a mustache, I spotted a nice purple bruise by my elbow. I don’t know where that came from either.

But I am really clumsy so just because I can’t remember bashing into something doesn’t mean I have bruising skin disease. Maybe I’ll just try to pay better attention.

Here’s a photo of the “to read” pile. It’s actually over 2 months old and some of that stuff has been cleared out with new stuff added. But I’m too lazy to bring all the stuff from the various piles around the bed, nightstand and other reading supply annexes and stack them in one handy place for a new photo. (Is there some funky plural to annex? I’m too tired to look right now.) But aren’t the Han Shot First bookends awesome?

Sorry if the titles are blurry. I think the stack on the upper left is the magazine pile which is greatly reduced since that time. I’m going to read like a fiend over xmas vacation.

On Friday I had to run just a couple of routine errands but about fifteen minutes in I was confident that I never have to hear “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” ever again. Why is that song so annoying?

I’ve had another busy weekend. I’m so tired I can hardly see straight. I still haven’t cleaned off my desk. There’s a stack of “you have to do this” notes which I’m planning to ignore.

Last night was awesome.

I wasn’t sleepy at 8:30pm. I wasn’t sleepy at 9:30 or 10:30 or even 2am. Yeah. I never could fall asleep until about 3:30am and then I woke up an hour later.

I was quiet and boring all weekend and but I feel like I’ve been up dancing all night.

– – –

Last week during dinner Bob gave me a serious look. “I have bad news.”

When people say they have bad news, isn’t that usually a warm-up to “I crashed your car” or “I gambled away your life savings” or news that somebody died?

His bad news: my Gilmore Girls DVD wasn’t available from netflix so they sent one of his movies instead. What’s he going to say when he really has bad news?

They sent me a GG DVD later and I watched it this weekend. I’m new to the show and I love it. A million episodes to look forward to.

Looking north on Interstate 5

I’m having an unfortunate sleep problem. This has been going on every night for two weeks. About 8:30pm I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. I sit in bed with my book on my lap, checking the clock every 5 minutes.

As soon as it’s 9pm, it’s lights out. I fall asleep in two seconds.

I awake between midnight and 2am. I remain awake until about 30 minutes before I want to wake. I spend those waking hours fretting about random things: seemingly minor health issues, pending first fiction publication, zombies, the economy, aging, that scaly bit of skin on my ankle, bad breath, fiction writing, alien abduction and so forth.

I’m getting to the point where I’m so tired I’m either going to sleep through the night or go on a murderous rampage. I know what my first choice would be.

Bob and I had a fun weekend that included a number of long walks with steep hills. I have faith I will be able to button my pants for at least another couple weeks.

My mother-in-law is a zoo volunteer. On Wednesday night she took us to see the ZooLights. This was my first time seeing them and it was fantastic. I didn’t take many photos but I liked these flying pigs.

Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough

On Wednesday I went to the DMV to renew my driver’s license. My thinking was that the day before Thanksgiving was not going to be a mob scene at the DMV. I was right. Thirty minutes and I was driving back home.

But here’s the thing that amazed me: I was the only person in the waiting area who brought stuff to read. Why would you go to the DMV without anything to read?

I took this photo because of the pumpkins. All the cute flying monkeys and giant rhinos but I took photos of the pumpkins. Also, I’m sending the zoo the following suggestion: aliens and a spaceship. Who wouldn’t want to see that in lights?

Dinner preparations yesterday went okay. Not as smoothly as I would have liked.

One problem was this *&^% pie. I thought about doing the pie on Wednesday but I was feeling lazy and thought: how long can it take to throw some pumpkin in a shell and bake it?

Ha ha.

While I was going through my recipes I found the handout from my pastry class. It has almost a full page single-spaced narrative which gave me hope that I could make a decent pie crust if I just read the words. I have a lot of faith in words.

Bob and I went for a nice walk and he wanted to do some kitchen things so I did yoga and then when he was done I thought I’d get the pie out of the way and then tackle the recipes.

This pie crust recipe was the most high maintenance recipe ever. Do X and then let it rest in the refrigerator. Do Y and then let it rest in the refrigerator. All it has to do is hold baked pumpkin. How much rest does it need?

Meanwhile the filling was high maintenance, too. “Put the pumpkin in your food processor. Then heat it in pan. Then put it back in the food processor.”

Nope. I’m already washing everything in this kitchen twice today. We’re not hauling out the food processor for a freaking pie.

I FINALLY got the pie done and I still had all my other things to coordinate. Oh, also, when I quizzed Bob on the details on his acorn squash fries, he said he needed a 425 degree oven for 45 minutes.

“Yeah,” I said. “Until one of us makes enough money to buy a house with two ovens, we’re not having acorn squash fries on Thanksgiving.”

So I substituted with a Mark Bittman that I can’t find right now but involved roasting (cover your eyes AngelaWD) beets and tossing with olive oil, red wine vinegar, chopped toasted hazelnuts and gorgonzola.

The salmon cakes were a HUGE hit. I thought they were a tad too limey and I thought so when I was doing the recipe so I did the 2 tsps. of juice but I think I had barely 1 tsp. of zest. If I make again I’d cut back on juice and just do a sprinkle of zest.

The other big hit, which surprised me, was the quinoa, wildrice, sausage “casserole”. Bob made an epic leftover plate today using that as a foundation.

The pie was delicious even though it was a pain in the ass to make and nobody went home hungry. So success overall.