A Saucy Post

I'm not much to write about in the kitchen.  Sure, I have made a few cakes that have been a hit, and my English Toffee is THE STUFF OF LEGEND.  But really, cooking has never been a strong suite, and I think it's because for most dishes, the key is THE SAUCE.  

And by sauce, I mean the seasonings, gravies, saucy, flavorey things that you add to the bulky ingredients.  This is where I have a deficit and need help.  Because, plain baked chicken? Boring! Chicken baked in heaven makhani sauce? I'd live on a deserted island with nothing else to eat for the rest of my life.  Fancy cut of steak? Meh.  But whatever it is that they put on it and do to it over at Christophers? Oh.My.  

So I think what I really need is a sauce cooking class.  Where you learn how to make all the seasonings and sauces that make food so worthwhile.  The quarterly community college/continuing education catalogs come in the mail periodically, and they offer classes on everything from fringey alternative "medicine" therapies or how to communicate with the dead, to basic computer skills, but I have never seen a cooking class that focuses on just the seasonings and sauces side of cooking. Someone get on that, will you?! And sign me up. Alternatively, does anyone know of a sauce-blog that teaches this stuff. With pictures?

Okay, not saucy enough? Here's Doc and I on Saturday night dressed up as Harry and Hermione GONE DARK. Only Doc looks like HARRY AFTER JOINING KISS, and I just look like a vapid witch that has never even heard of Hermione.  That's what The Dark does to people, ya know?!

Doc has Harry's spectacles on, but the black makeup around his eyes did a good job of concealing that fact. And btw, did you notice how young I look with superlonghair? Hmmm...

 Also, it's November 1st, so only 11 days till The Dance. And it's snowing at my house. We all know how much I love the snow. (Kimber? Is your spare bed available?!)

Hand-Me-Downs

As a kid, that phrase had a negative connotation. As the oldest girl, clothes weren't passed down to me from a big sister; no, it was Darcy N's old bras, and April P's used underwear, or Carrie D's pants that I was bequeathed to round out my thrift store wardrobe. I didn't mind because it was "new to me", but did secretly fear that they'd tell people I was wearing their cast-offs. How mortifying that would be!

Nowadays, I am still the recipient of hand-me-downs, and second-hand items, but far from minding, I totally love it. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you that I get all my clothes from "thrift stores and friends"...the latter being why I ever look fashionable at all. (I've often wondered if it's a secret team effort to keep me off of the show What Not To Wear because they always seem to be getting rid of the nicest stuff for some reason!).

I have quite a few friends who have bequeathed me things through the years...including generous gifts and new items. For example, today I became the owner of this KitchenAid stand mixer when a friend upgraded and no longer needed her original one. Can I tell you how SO excited I am about this?! I have wanted one for decades, but just never could justify buying one. I've even entered contests a few times to try and win one, but apparently my contest-karma wasn't functioning at the time.

I have never had a stand mixer before, and it was only last month that I used one for the first time to make Doc's birthday cake (which didn't dampen my interest in acquiring one any). And now suddenly I own one! It's like magic.

Throughout my life I've received hand-me-down pretty much everything: car(s), clothes, toys, appliances, furniture, tools, books, shoes. Growing up it wasn't chic to wear used, but what was once something of an embarrassment has now become a "green movement" and acquired a bit of clout (and let's not even mention the whole vintage/antique realms). Against all odds, and by the grace of good friends, somehow I'm becoming hip in spite of myself :-) Life is Grand!

Grateful for:
1) How easy it was to make those oatmeal raisin cookies today.
2) How easy it will be to start baking my own homemade bread!
3) Those who "upgrade" and pass along. Someday when I can afford it, I'l leave the great deals to others who can't, but for now I'm so glad there are people who buy nice stuff and then donate it.
♥

I owe my blog-esteem to Star Wars

We've all been there, we bloggers. Wrestling with the temptation to blog for dollars comments, or in some cases, visitors. I've been through the whole spectrum of motives...from wishing I were brilliant or witty like some of the bloggers out there with tremendous followings, to debating whether or not to turn comments off entirely so as to not be writing for feedback or validation. I mean, what does it take to get my closest friends to read my blog?! As far as I know none of them do. And most of my relatives only read it sporadically, if ever.

Somewhere along the line I stopped caring about getting comments from my readers, and made peace with just blogging for my own personal gratification. This, may I add, is a huge relief. In addition, I only leave comments on other blogs when I genuinely want to. No "tit-for-tat" commenting any more.

But I DO have a site meeter tracking visits to my blog. And I confess it IS gratifying to know that I have some people who stop by and see what I'm up to. In fact I have quite a regular following here. There's my faithful reader in Modesto, CA (hi Modesto!), and the one in Marietta, GA (howdy Marietta!), and then there's the person in Houston who comes in via my friend Shelah's blog (hi Shelah's blog friend in Houston!). Oh, can't forget UC Davis...Yo! Whasssup?!

Anyway, suffice to say I ♥ my readers. Even if they've you've never commented and I have no idea why they you bother stopping by regularly, it does give me a little warm fuzzy to know I'm not alone here. It's like that classic Jim Cary line from The Mask (starting at 1:35).

That said, there's something rewarding about checking my site meter and seeing hundreds of visitors, from all over planet earth, coming here to my humble blog. The only thing is, 99% of them are here for one thing and one thing only: my Star Wars Birthday Party post.

Yes, I owe my modestly impressive stats and the self-esteem gained by them to the fact that I pulled off a great Star Wars party a few years back, and blogged about it last August. Though they don't comment, I get hundreds of visitors to my blog every week, seeking ideas about hosting a Star Wars birthday party.

Guess there really is something to that whole force business after all!
♥

Grateful for:
1) the ability to make awesome birthday cakes for my family
2) my lurkers
3) the laptop I write on

The Countdown Begins

Hello Gems!

In 365 Days, I'll be married to an MD.

In 300 Days we will find out where Doc matched for Residency.

In 28 Days Doc will finish 3rd year of medical school.

In 10 Days Bunch will graduate from elementary school.

In 10 Days Gator will finish third grade.

In 7 Days I'll be the fan club as my sister graduates with her MFA.

Pretty soon they'll all have more degrees than me ;-)

BLESSINGS:
1) Education
2) Crepe Parties with friends
3) .99 cent Slurpees all Memorial Day weekend long at our local 7-11

♥, Jeuls

Making ♥ Out Of Nothing At All

Okay it's time to share my secret.

Lots of people like the hearts that I strew all over the internet with regular abandon. And on many many occasion, people have emailed or posted comments asking how I do that.

So today I'm going to share with you how to make ♥s

First off, I should mention that they don't translate to most email programs. So if you send one on email, it will arrive as a jumble. Sorry about that. I have my people working on the matter, but it might be a while.

Still, it does work on most blogs. With TypePad though, if you do this and post a comment, it will simply disappear when your comment is displayed. I have my people working on that too. But don't hold your breath.

So there are two ways to make ♥s. The first is that you can just highlight, copy, and paste them. Voila!

The second way is to type the following without any spaces (I'm putting a space in so that it doesn't convert it automatically. I've made that mistake before):

& hearts;

Once you post your comment on the blog, (or in FaceBook or wherever), you will have your very own heart.

And so there you have it. The simple way to spread a little ♥ around.

♥,
Blue

hi. remember me?

tap, tap, tap.

Is this thing on???

I know it's been a long hiatus since I last wrote. I just wanted to let you know that one of my resolutions for the new year was to start writing again, which may seem like no big deal, but it is. I had a big setback a few months ago, and am working through it still, but this blog was one of the best things in my life, and my readers were also one of the highlights in my life. I've really missed it. It's just been a hard few months.

So I wanted you to know that I will be starting to write again, and if anyone is still reading this, thanks for hanging in there with me.

Wishing you the very finest of days...
~Blue

Water Water Water

The spigot on the back of our house (that you hook the hose to) has been leaking badly for some time, and needed to be replaced.

This morning my Kid Brother called. The Kid Brother who is DESERTING ME and moving 10 miles away (he currently lives 2 blocks away). This Kid Brother could really use some help to move. So I took the seats out of my minivan, and spent the morning loading his stuff up and hauling it to the new place. Which is a lot nicer. And his kitty can be with him inside. And it's only 4 miles from his work. And he has nice roomies. So it's great for everyone except us. Which is why I ultimately decided to assist him in this move. Cause I try to be nice like that.

Anyway, Kid Brother is a pretty handy fellow, and as a kindness for me he offered to fix the leaky faucet. I had purchased the new brass faucet and fittings etc., and everything was going just fine.

Till the water happened.

It was spraying all over my laundry room from a crack in the pipe that was so old it was inevitable with the slightest disruption.

I'll spare the long story. We (and by We I actually mean they, as in Kid Brother and Childhood friend of Kid Brother's. But I did try to be useful and do helpful things like shine a flashlight on the pipes to help illuminate the situation. We were the Total A-Team. Rock Stars. We were!) tried to repair it to the proper set up. But kept having leaky problems. So finally we did a work-around that allows us to use the water in the house at least. And there isn't water spraying out all over my laundry/storage room is any more.

I'm SO grateful for this. Cause it's a stinky bummer to have to drive to a restaurant or gas station to use the bathroom. To say nothing of the beauty of good, clean hands. Or showers. And someday, when more time is to be had, we'll have to change the spigot situation so that we've got water out there. But not now, cause I'm capooted...clean tuckered out from the day's labors. And it's going to be a short night.

The Great PB Disaster of '08

Janel the Great is right. She said I needed to rename this event, so I'm editing the title after the fact, and stating that from here on out, the following event shall be known as the The Great PB Disaster of '08

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So tonight, in an effort to lighten Doc's burden (which is pretty heavy these days), I told him I was going to make his lunch for him. He has told me that I don't need to do this, but I insisted that it wasn't a problem...I wanted to.

So into the kitchen I went. Pulled open the cupboard and noticed that we were out of peanut butter. No worries. I've got loads of jars in the storage. It's the natural kind, so the oil separates and it has to be stirred before the first use (after that it never has time to separate because Doc eats PB&honey every single day for lunch.)

So I'm stirring and stirring with a knife, when suddenly I strike upon a brilliant idea. To mix the oil and peanut butter faster, I could use my electric hand mixer...with just one of the blades. It'd make fast work of the job I thought to myself.

So I get the mixer out, put in one blade, stick it down into the jar of peanut butter and turn the speed to low.

It happened so fast I'm not sure why it didn't work. All I know was the jar was snatched out of my hand and suddenly peanut butter and peanut oil was flying everywhere. This picture simply doesn't do the scene justice. I couldn't turn the mixer off fast enough. One second before, my kitchen was clean (and so were my pants), the next...well it was everywhere. Ceiling, walls, shades, chairs, rug, outlets, window, molding, cupboards, me. It just left no surface untouched with it's oily persona.
It took me over 2 hours to clean it up, and I'm still washing the rug, my pants and the towels. I had to use tooth picks to get it out from the edges of the light switch, plug and mixer vents. I had to wash the blinds in the window. There was about 1 oz left in the jar when this was finally over.

I had the kids come look at the big mess mommy made just as an object lesson, and vowed never to get mad at them if they make a mess by accident. Upon hearing this, Bunch declared that she was happy it happened in that case. (not that she's ever made a big mess)

(But sometimes her mom does!)

I liked this so much that...

...I'm actually going to post it right here. In all honesty, I don't think I've ever enjoyed any ad campaign for any product as much as I liked this one. I think the writing, tone, casting, and execution are perfect. And I've thought so since I first saw these ads years ago. John Hodgman is especially well-played (...even though I've never served him
jungle crackers, cranberry juice and club soda). Enjoy! ♥

I guess I should watch the news more often...

:-)

My Aura...

I don't know how accurate these kinds of things are, but one thing is definitely true...I am Blue!

Your Aura is Blue

Spiritual and calm, you tend to live a quiet but enriching life. You are very giving of yourself. And it's hard for you to let go of relationships. The purpose of your life: showing love to other people Famous blues include: Angelina Jolie, the Dali Lama, Oprah Careers for you to try: Psychic, Peace Corps Volunteer, Counselor

What Color Is Your Aura?

(Ha! Like "Psychic" is a career! Where's the "Nursing", "School teacher", "Hospice Care" that I usually get for these types of things?)

This sounds like fun

I've never done anything like this before, but there is a "Favorite Things Swap" going on right now. I haven't signed up yet...because I think I need to decide what I'd swap before committing myself.

It seems to me that it could either result in being absolutely delighted, or leave me feeling a bit bummed. Part of me is reminded of those ponzi scheme letters (send one dollar or one page of stickers or one dish towel etc. to the person at the top of this list and mail it to 10 of your friends...blah blah blah) where I think it could really be great, and I do it, but never get anything back (sucker!).

But another part of me thinks it would actually be fun. It's a one-to-one thing. The organizers give you a name. And you have to have a blog or website...which adds some security. So I'm thinking, what's to lose? At worst, I send off 3 favorites to some random stranger and make her (presuming female here) day. (assuming my package is cool). At best I make someone's day and also receive a fun little package.

I think I've talked myself into it. Unless my posse comes up with considerations I haven't thought of.

Now...what to give? Hmmm....

Everywhere

I know. I haven't posted in two weeks. I've been everywhere else but here. At first it was because I was busy with birthdays. Then I had scouts and PTA stuff and whatnot to work on. But then it was Michelle's fault, because she loaned me a really long book (really long!), which I didn't put down till I'd finished the whole dadgum thing.

Then as soon as I came up for air after the book was completed, it was Puerto Rico's fault. Yes Puerto Rico. I'm trying to plan our time out when we're there next month, and book hotels for every night. I'm still not done, because I'm such a frugal nincompoop that it's hard to swallow the cost of a room. I keep thinking I'll find better deals if I search harder.

Anyway, after that, I became consumed with a very cool crafty project that my SIL helped me with. She's the crafty one, not me. But I loved hers so much I actually committed myself to doing a craft, and I'm really excited to share the final product at some point, but not yet. Just in case (the very remote chance) the people I made it for happen to read my blog...I don't want to spoil the surprise. Awww, now I just gave all my faithful readers a hint that it's not for them. Sorry Faithful Readers! I ♥ Your Guts!

But enough with the excuses already! The following posts will contain a bunch of random, unconnected pictures and descriptions about the recent past events in my life.

Turn around

So just when it seemed like things were off to a bummer start this week (see previous post), lots of good things happened.

The neighbor whose boat was the home of choice for Nea when she kitnapped her babies came over. This was cool because when we met him he told us he's a "recluse", which fascinated me because he doesn't look like a recluse. I have this idea of a recluse being old, curmudgeonly, yelling a lot at kids and generally grumpy. But our neighbor was nothing like that. He's super nice and we ended up chatting for a couple hours. I got sunburned on my face...cause it just didn't cross my mind that, duh, the sun is out, and it's mid day. Burns happen.

So anyway, my brother MM, (Nea's "Dad") came home and met the neighbor too (I've referred to my brother MM before as Mountain Man because he loves the mountains). MM and I had decided last night that as soon as the weather permits, we're going too re-roof the garage. When I mentioned this to the neighbor, he completely surprised me by saying he'd help us. He's done some of that in the past. I'm really looking forward to getting to doing this project a lot more now that there are two responsible adults helping me with it. I'm a pretty handy person, but roofing isn't something I've ever thought about before. It needs doing though...and badly!

Then the next good thing was that I got on the phone and after making a bunch of calls, ended up getting hold of an organization that is going to help with these kitties. Since it was a feral cat in the first place, and since they need some help, tomorrow we're going to take them to a vet and the group I spoke with is faxing a voucher over to cover the part we can't pay for. So the kitties will get their meds and then when they're old enough they'll get their shots and be spay/neutered. This is a huge HUGE load off my mind! I'l probably end up doing a major favor for this group in exchange (they need to have someone bring a cat from San Francisco back to SLC, and since I'm a flight attendant I could provide this service for them.), but I'm just glad that we're getting closer to ensuring the health of these little animals.

Bonus: We had waffles for dinner. With strawberries and cream on top. And it was sunny and warm. And Doc shared an inspiring story with the family tonight. And MM is sleeping over to care for his babies eyes till we get them on meds tomorrow (hopefully)!

See, things always just work out! It's still dusty, I've got a sore throat and itchy eyes, and my face hurts from the burn. But life is good.

♥

It's Monday

I woke up feeling gucky and icky with these eyes again. My house is so dusty but dusting is so futile and it just makes me miserable.

My downstairs smells like kitty litter and cat feces. I found the kittens on Saturday in the neighbor's boat. It wasn't a good environment for them squished up in a pitch black hole on some bottles with no space to move around. Their eyes were glued completely shut with gunk. Clearly, they couldn't stay there. But every time I brought them home, within a minute of turning my back Nea would start hauling them back to the boat like a mother obsessed. As a mother myself, I can relate to that, so she finally got her wish...her kitties are her ticket to come inside where they will be safe.

The only place I could contain them is the downstairs bathroom. We have to wipe their eyes off with saline and gauze several times a day because they keep gluing shut. They probably need some ointment or something. Their owner doesn't have any $$. Neither do I. Vets aren't cheap. Every time I handle them, I'm an allergic mess afterwards. They're irresistibly cute though...and they need help!

For the 2nd week in a row the garbage didn't get out to the curb before the truck came. It smells like cat poop too...so it's an especial bummer.

It was to be Bunch's 1st private viola lesson today. I got lost finding the house, then when I got there the teacher had left a note on the door apologizing for not calling me but she couldn't find my phone number and she'd forgotten that she had a random rehearsal this morning and couldn't be there. She left 3 dum dum lollies for the kids though, which was very happily received by them.

We didn't read our scriptures this morning. My throat is scratchy and my nose is runny and I'm procrastinating going on a run. It's a glorious day though...high temp of 77 degrees.
I hope the rest of the day goes better than this morning has.

Quote I read today

From this address

It takes courage to write even a bad book, courage and determination and invention. Even writers who aren’t very skilled do something astonishingly revelatory. We can even see the face of God in bad novels.

Thrift Town

So, as I've previously mentioned, one of my favorite places to shop are the local thrift stores. One chain, Thrift Town, has a mailing list and sends me email from time to time. The message below arrived during my blogging hiatus:That last part there, about Thrift Town Logo Apparel caught my eye. I had to see just what the logo apparel was, so I went to their website and checked it out. Now I'm setting an appointment up with a therapist to cope with my disappointment at these items being excluded from the sale. Life is just not fair sometimes!

Time to subMitt

Well, that's that!
Mitt just announced his withdrawal.

While in my heart of hearts I never honestly expected that he'd win the nomination, or especially the presidency, and while I don't agree with him on a few issues, I really had hoped that maybe somehow it would actually happen. It's like the 2 times in my life someone has given me a lotto ticket, and for that brief time, I had the hope that maybe it would be a winner, even against all odds. Blame it on Roald Dahl and his classic tale Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for instilling in my heart from a very young age, an optimism that prevails even when there's hardly any chance of success.

I think it was a good thing for the country to have Mitt in the race. I think it made for interesting discussions, and it's been a more exciting campain time than any other election in my memory. I just hope that the next big decision, (who wins the Dem nomination) has better luck. Because I still desperately hope it's anyone but Hilary. And that's coming from me as a feminist!

For Sir Kelly Lee

Sometimes I create situations for myself. Like this story. We have a cousin who got a new email address and sent it to me. I realized I didn't have a postal address for their family, but rather than just ask for that too, I wrote him the following reply:

okay, now i have a real email address, so if you'd tack on your postal address, you'll become of the lucky jeuls christmas card recipients. people all over the world will envy you. you'll display it proudly on your fridge, or perhaps inside your bathroom medicine cabinet. when nosy people peak inside to see what drugs you're snarfing, they'll see my christmas card, and promptly forget about your drugs, so distracted and amazed, nay, green with envy that you got one. you'll hire security detail to stand outside the bathroom to check them when they come out. they'll know this, so they'll regretfully leave said card there, and go away plotting how they, too, could get their hands on this much coveted card. they'll start scheming on how to get into the family, believing this to be the best course of action. boys far too old will start trying to arrange to marry your girls. as for you, it'll become next to impossible for you to walk unescorted in public because people will try to get close to you in an effort to get on my christmas card list. it'll make our trek to Olive Garden look like a sprint in comparisson. all because you sent me your address.

Why I do these things is beyond me...but there it was. Now I had to come up with some magnificent Christmas card or lose face. So One night, I started this project. I took lots of old christmas cards, and cut them into 2x2" squares.











Then I hole punched 8 holes into each square.













Once completed, I laid them out in a grid on the floor, and then with a needle & yarn, I stitched these paper squares into what ended up being a pretty massive quilt-esque-thingy. This process took me all night. I do mean all night. I finished just as the sun cracked the inky black sky of night. I have no idea what demon possessed me. perhaps an attractive nocturnal vampire snuck in and bit me with crazy-insomniac-craft-venom fangs or something.

My original idea was to create an outrageous looking card to send to our cousins...you know, to make good on my ridiculous claim and all. But I spent SO MANY HOURS working on this, without any clear direction about where I was going with it, that it didn't really look anything like a card when it was done.

I hadn't decided exactly what I was going to do with it till my kids woke up in the morning and saw it. For some bizarre reason that is probably attributable to their unfortunate maternal genetic inheritance, they wanted to hang it on the wall...like a big, 2'x2' paper quilt.

So I ended up not sending it to our cousins after all. Sorry sorry sorry Sir Kelly & Stacy! I know that you're gnashing your teeth because you want it bad now, and it makes you even more insane to know it was intended for you, yet all you got was the same, vanilla card that everyone else got this year. And in a twist of irony, this year was probably the least interesting card I've sent in history. My deepest apologies for not coming through. I had all the best of intentions. And I'm up to my ears now with book deadlines. But someday I'll make good on my promise. And that's a promise!

Oddities

Get ready, get set! Slap your hands together and rub them back and forth in anticipation, because right now I shall confide the never-before-disclosed fact that if I've known you long enough, chances are there is a song that reminds me specifically of you. Exciting, no!!? Don't you feel all warm-cozy-special now?

Let's pause for a moment and ponder what this means: at any given moment in time, completely out of the blue I could suddenly hear "your song", and immediately I'm thinking fondly of you. I could be walking through the mall, or stopped at a light and the car next to mine is blaring it's radio, delivering clean laundry to my daughter's "radio-always-on" bedroom, sitting in church, messing around on my piano, on hold on the telephone. It could happen anywhere.

It's not that the lyrics, message, or even the melody have anything to do with you...I could have simply been with you when I first took note of the song. You could have sung along with the song within earshot of me. It could be the era we crossed paths during. You could actually loathe the song that reminds me of you (gasp!)

Some songs apply to a group of people. A very few people have multiple songs associated with them in my brain. If you're reading this and want to know what your song is (if any), feel free to ask in the comments section and I'll reply. If you want to change the answer you get, you'll have to work hard to put another song into my head for you ;-) So pick a winner!

As most of my readers know, I'm a flight attendant. Another oddity is that my brain associates my customers with whatever drink they ordered. So as they're leaving the aircraft, as my mouth is saying the words "good bye" and "thank you" etc., my silly little brain is actually thinking to itself, "goodbye coffee with 2 creams and 3 sugars", "see ya diet coke", "thanks for flying with us orange juice and cranberry mixed", " buh-bye FOUR Sky Vodkas before noon (I hope you have someone picking you up!!!)".

Do you do this or am I really the freak of nature I suspect I am?! ♥