NaBloPo No Mo

This is my final post for nablopomo and I am happy to say I am finally working on my own computer again! Best Buy came through for me and finished fixing it before the end of November. (hahaha) I'm so happy to have it back.. but I'm also happy to say that despite the inconvenience (mostly to Bob since I commandeered his computer) I managed to post every day. Yay me!

Ok.. enough self-congratulatory drivel. I want to take a moment to recognize my friends, old and new, who made this month fun and kept me motivated to keep posting.

Some of you only dropped by a few times but your visits were wonderful. Professor J, Your comment about my old dog warmed my heart. Don Mills Diva, I'm glad you stopped by and I'm enjoy reading your blog. MS Teacher, you are in my thoughts often. If you want to talk you know where I am.

Some of you checked in regularly and, after a month of wondering what you might like to read, I feel like you are friends.
Heidi, I am looking forward to seeing more of Norway.. and the rest of your journey. I'm a bit jealous but happy I can live vicariously through your blog. Karen Try not to stress too much about December. I have a feeling you are going to do just fine. I hope you will keep blogging when you get a chance.. at least keep posting your wardrobe! Mrs. G, what can I say? You are a nut and I love your blog. You need a few more secret boyfriends though...

Then there are two of you who have been there for me forever. You were reading my long-winded foolishness long before blogs were invented and the fact that you have stuck around for TEN years is amazing, and a bit humbling. Nic, I'm so glad you decided to start your own blog! I'm awed that you have time to write with everything else you are doing. And your post today... I'm still processing what that could possibly mean!
Leeann, You never gave up on me... even though I didn't post for months at a time. Thank you so much for your compassion and encouragement. You are such a true friend to everyone and you leave your sparkle on every person you touch.

Finally, there are a few people who I know read this blog but don't respond here. My lovely sister in law, Anne, my great friend and kindred spirit, Ellen, and my sister at heart, Bev. I love you all and I'm so excited that I might be seeing all of you at the end of December!

Writing is a solitary business, mostly done within the confines of the empty space between my ears, but there would be very little reason to waste my time if no one ever read what I wrote. Thank you so much for giving me the gift of your time... I hope that this is just the beginning.

gina

Worth Reading

I have truly enjoyed this marathon month of posting and reading and fully immersing myself in this bloggy world we have created on the internet. It's amazing to me that there are so many fantastic writers out there and so much to read every single day. Years ago I gave up on newspapers because I just couldn't stomach the poor quality anymore, most modern fiction gives me similar indigestion.

There are so many blogs worthy of note and quite a few of them are listed on my sidebar. Fascinating people who travel, and knit, and teach, and raise children, who share their real lives with a bunch of strangers and make the world better for it! Thank you so much.. each and every one of you.

From what I can see most of the people reading my blog also read many of the blogs I love but there is one that I don't see on your lists. Sweet Juniper is a thought provoking, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always amazingly intelligent blog written by a husband and wife team. I think you will enjoy reading it.

Santa's Holiday

Today I put out the first Christmas decoration.



See, I'm not a total holiday curmudgeon.

Carol of the Hells... I mean Bells

Just a quick little rant about Christmas Commercial season. I've never been a big fan of television commercials, possibly because I'm not a big fan of commercial television, but this season something has gone terribly wrong. Last night I suddenly became aware that every other television advertisement was using the exact same Christmas carol as background music.

"Carol of the Bells" or "Ukrainian Bell Carol" has been one of my favorite carols since I sang it in Jr. High choir a million years ago but I think this might be the Christmas that my love of it ends. Apparently this classic carol, which first premiered in 1916, makes discount stores, cell phones, jewelry, cars, and alcohol more appealing. I counted six commercials using the same music and airing with alarming frequency. The worst of these ads is a car commercial that shows a choir singing the song with the lyrics changed to simply "Duh" over and over and over. It's obnoxious... and sad.

A quick search of YouTube reveals that "Carol of the Bells" is a favorite for all manner of weird video. So it is with chagrin that I post this... the death knell of the bells.

Menu Plan Monday

We've got lots of leftovers to make use of this week. The problem is making them palatable to my family.

• Monday - Beef and Chicken Fajitas (nope.. not a leftover)
• Tuesday - Turkey Potpie
• Wednesday - Potato and Ham Soup
• Thursday - Thai Peanut Noodles with Brocolli and Peppers
• Friday - Dinner and a Movie
• Saturday - Bob cooks
• Sunday - To be decided later

It's not very creative this week. Next week I'll get back to more detailed menu planning.

My dear friend Leeann wrote a fun post celebrating the arrival of her Christmas cards today. Now I enjoy Christmas as much as the next Scrooge but Christmas cards are an ongoing nightmare for me. Year after year I plan on sending out cards something always goes wrong. So, today I will share with you all the ghosts of Christmas Cards past. These were the photos that should have been.. and in a few cases actually were.. made into family Christmas cards but somehow never made it to the post office.

2000

2001

2003

2004

This year I don't intend to try making a card. It would just be too weird to create a family card with only three of the kids and yet it feels dishonest to try and get a photo of all four looking like a happy Christmas family. Perhaps I can find a nice Grinch card.

Momma needs a new pair of shoes...

I'm trying to come up with a realistic justification for spending way too much money on these. I was looking for a pair of boots... which I'm going to need pretty soon... but boots are so confining. These are lined with sheepskin so they'll keep my feet warm... right?

Yawn!

What a lazy day we have had! I didn't get to sleep late this morning because the poor dog was desperate to get outside at 6am (she definitely had too many treats yesterday) but, despite the early wake up call, I managed to do very little today. After my inlaws left for the airport I even took a nap (I don't think I've done that since the last time I was pregnant!) Now I'm curled up on the couch with a nice fire going and the dog at my feet while Bob and the girls play blackjack in the dining room. It's heaven.

Karen MEG at A day in the life has tagged me for a Meme so here's Seven Weird/Random things about me...

1) I love shoes but I hate wearing them. I would love to have a closet full of stylish footwear but I'm a practical person.. so I have a small and eclectic collection of clogs that are easy to get my claustrophobic feet out of quickly.

2) I was thirty before I saw a live ice hockey game and it was love at first face-off.

3) By the time I started high school I had lived in eleven different houses and attended nine different schools.

4) I love laying tile and if I was younger would consider making a career of it.

5) I have had the same email address and screen name for thirteen years. I actually had aol for DOS back in the dark ages before Windows. My original screen name was simply Gina but I lost that during one of our moves and instead of accepting Gina and a random number as a substitute I decided to be gina-again.. and a legend was born! (hahahahahaa)

6) Science fiction is my favorite genre.. of literature and movies.. and it makes me very sad that the quality is so incredibly poor most of the time.

7) My son says I'm really a 14yr old Japanese girl masquerading as an old lady. I think he's just jealous of my MMORPG skills.

Thanksgiving

The day is over, everyone is asleep, and I'm sitting here reflecting on the day. Tonight I am truly thankful for the family and friends who shared our celebration today. I'm especially thankful that everyone had a great day and raved about the food despite the fact that I seemed to be having one disaster after another. People rarely complain about my cooking but holidays really give me the opportunity to prove just how mediocre I am.

Every cook hopes to have a signature dish, a recipe that no one else in the family would ever dream of competing with. I guess we all want to be a little famous even if it's just in our own kitchen. I'm famous for my pumpkin pie. Famous because my pies are truly spectacular. Unfortunately spectacular isn't always a positive adjective. I don't mean to brag but I make very good pie crust and it's important to me that pies be made from scratch because I just don't like premade crust. I should probably stop caring because my skill at pie making ends at the crust. My pumpkin pies are the stuff of legend because I always do something wrong. In past years I have forgotten to add sugar, put in way too much cinnamon, and dropped pies. This year I put two beautiful pies in the oven and 65 minutes later I pulled out two pie crusts filled with fragrant, bubbling, pumpkin soup. That's when I relized that there were still four eggs sitting on the counter. In my rush to get the pies baked I had completely forgotten to add eggs. So, at 1am I got in the car and went looking for pumpkin pies.

It only took me another hour and a half to bake the frozen pies I found so I was just a little tired at 8am when I dragged myself out of bed to stuff the twenty-eight pound turkey. Do you have any idea how big a twenty-eight pound turkey is? It was big.. too big in fact. Too big for the flimsy aluminum pan I planned on using. After sending Bob out on a fruitless search for a bigger pan I was forced to modify the pan and hope that it would work. Thankfully it did just fine although I had to siphon off the turkey juices frequently. When I pulled it from the oven everyone was amazed by it's golden browny perfection... until I moved it to the cutting board and pulled the legs off trying to get it out of the pan.

After the turkey was out of the oven I made gravy and put the yams in the oven to brown. My family always makes marshmellow covered yams. The marshmellows are supposed to be brown and crispy. If you cook them at a temperature that is too low the marshmellows will just melt and if the temperature is too high or the cook gets distracted they can end up over-toasted..or black. This year I hit a brand new low. I didn't just burn the yams.. they caught fire! I certainly impressed my guests as I rushed my flaming cassarole through the dining room on my way to the backyard.

In the end it was a nice day. Good friends.. edible food.. and plenty of wine. Next year I may just avoid cooking with orange vegetables.

Once upon a time and Happily ever after...

Once upon a time I married the boy I loved and we lived happily ever after. Have you ever thought about that phrase? Happily ever after what?

Happily ever after... our wedding we left on a dream honeymoon. A train trip through the Canadian Rockies with stays at fine hotels in Vancouver, Banff and Calgary. What our travel agent failed to tell us was that every hotel we stayed at was under construction in anticipation of the upcoming Olympics. We have fantastic pictures of the construction cranes outside the windows of each hotel room. Unfortunately we don't have a picture of the crane operator who peered in our window early one morning.. and thankfully he didn't have a camera to take a picture of what he probably saw! We were young, inexperienced, and had never been on vacation before. We started running out of money on the third day. By the time we reached Banff, the most expensive stop on our trip, we couldn't afford much more than deli sandwiches and Labatts. The doorman looked embarrassed when we walked through the elegant lobby with groceries but we enjoyed our improvised room service. Our honeymoon was a far cry from the romantic travelogues in Modern Bride but we were blissfully happy anyway.

Happily ever after... Happiness isn't a measured by how closely our expectations are met but by how we deal with what life brings us. When we promise to live together until death do us part we have no idea what the future will be. Marriage isn't a fairytale. Along with joy there are challenges, tragedy, comedy and countless, messy, unplanned events. For the last twenty years I have been able to face ever after happily because I am walking into the future with my best friend. He's a man who can make me laugh even when there is nothing to laugh about, who challenges me to think, and has kept me fascinated for more than half of my life. I cannot imagine a better way to spend ever after.

How to Clean A Toilet...

What is it about men that requires them to make everything more difficult than it needs to be? I clean the toilets all the time.. it's simple, gross, but simple. So, when Bob said he was going to clean the bathroom (actually he swapped chores with Taylor.. he was vacuuming the stairs) I didn't think it would take him long. Silly me!

Step One: Loosen the bolts and remove seat from toilet.

Step Two: Scrub the disassembled toilet well. Be sure to use at least three rags. One to scrub, one to dry, and one to buff the plastic to glossy perfection.

Step Three: Reassemble. I'm not complaining. The toilet is very clean and I didn't have to clean it. However, while I do find his method worthy of documenting but I don't intend to EVER follow it!

While we are talking about bathrooms, here's a few pictures of my new vanity and sink. I love it! However, it's kind of hard to take a picture in a tiny bathroom so I'll have to show it to you in pieces.

The Cabinet is cherry. It's darker than the hallway floor but they look good together.



The top is granite and the mirror matches the vanity. I love the brushed nickel fixtures.. they match the light fixture too but I didn't take a picture of that.

Our first guests are arriving this evening so I've got to go compulsively clean something now!

Menu Monday

Oh this is such an easy week to plan since the Thanksgiving menu is kind of set in stone.

Monday - Macaroni and Cheese and Chicken Strips
Tuesday - Salmon, Steamed Red Potatoes, Asparagus
Wednesday - 20th Anniversary (OUR'S!) Dinner Out with family.
Thursday - Thanksgiving Feast
Friday - Soup and Leftovers
Saturday - Who knows...
Sunday - Something that's not Turkey

Have a great week everyone!

A change in the weather

I wanted to write a poem about autumn
with words guaranteed to make you feel
the warmth of the sun
wheat and whipped honey, pumpkins and acorn squash
the texture of the sky
meringue and marshmallow fluff
the beauty of the leaves
toast and cheddar, mustard and cranberry
but the frigid air blew in stainless steel clouds
and left me feeling empty
So I came inside and made you lunch

I'm So Bad

I never did come back to finish my favorite things post and I'm not going to do it right now either. I've been so busy today and hopefully tomorrow I'll have some cool pictures to post. We are almost done putting the new vanity in the bathroom. I ended up getting something entirely different from the two that I posted the other day. Actually it's kind of a combination of the two. Tomorrow we need to finish installing that, get the house cleaned up and ready for guests, and I've got about ten hours worth of work sitting on my desk that I need to finish before Monday morning. I'm not sure when I'm going to find time to bake pies!

Derfwad Manor is one of my favorite things... and I'm really looking forward to lounging in the Derfwad Dining Room, enjoying one of Mrs. G's fantastic slow cooked suppers, and talking about the rest of my favorite things this evening. See you all there after work!

..... update......

Work went on forever and I forgot a promise to go to the movies with Bob and the kids (which is one of my favorite things to do) so my list of favorite things is going to have to wait a few more hours. I promise I'll be back if I don't indulge in too much of this favorite thing:




(No, Mrs. G... I don't drink heavily.. often)

The New Dog

The New Dog

Linda Pastan

Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities--

as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.

Extra Adjectives

This is my son Ian two years ago. He was sixteen; finally old enough to get a part time job, old enough to drive, old enough to start making some serious decisions about his life. He was involved in student leadership and peer counseling at our church, as well as teaching 5th and 6th grade Sunday school. At school he was the wrestling team captain and played clarinet in the band. Academically he was an underachiever but some teachers loved him. He was the kind of student who wouldn't do homework and still score 100% on tests. He had a lovely girlfriend who lived 500 miles away. After a rather shaky beginning and a lot of worries we were finally starting to believe he was going to grow up just fine. Three months later he was a drug addict.

Raising children is like gambling. With your heart and soul as collateral. Everything... genetics, discipline, school, snack foods, friends... is a roll of the dice. It's easy to look backward and point to the reasons why this may have happened to Ian, but honestly it would be just as easy to look backward and find reasons for him to have turned out well.

Regardless, we now find ourselves with a son living away from home and fighting some mighty demons. When we don't hear from him in a week we worry, we speculate, my husband tends to get cynical and I get sad, sometimes we fight, most of the time we console each other and try to share the load. We stay strong because we have each other and because we have to.

My sister-in-law, Anne, responded to one of my posts about Ian and what she had to say is lovely, practical, and hopeful:
It's called "tough" love for a reason. If it were easy, it wouldn't need an extra adjective. All kids should have an extra adjective - like "exuberant" or "creative". Come to think of it, even adults need an extra adjective. The dictionary defines tough as "capable of great endurance; sturdy; hardy" You have to believe that you are tough - and so are all of your children.

I love the idea of extra adjectives for all of us. Today I will chose tenacious for my adjective. Tenacious means persistent in maintaining or adhering. It also means not easily pulled apart. I remain tenacious for Ian. I saw him today.. he looks better.. and it would be easy to be relieved, excited, or hopeful but I've been those before and it's too far to fall when he doesn't look so good. Instead I'll cling to the hope that he is getting better, adhere to my belief that he can get well, but I won't be pulled apart if things change.

NaBloPoMoron

It's noisy here. Way too noisy. The TV is blaring like a billion trumpets. The dog is gnawing her way through a dinosaur bone. The fish tank is buzzing like a hornet's nest. There is a high pitched whine coming from somewhere in my computer. Bob is sitting on the couch moving his eyeballs and breathing. The earth is turning. I just can't work with all this chaos around me!

I've been working a "real job" for a month now and it's finally starting to wear on me a bit. It's not the work itself or lack of time.. it's the noise that is starting to make me crazy. Everyone has their own way to recharge, some need exercise, or laughter, or artwork, or professional wrestling. I need silence. It doesn't have to be at a certain time or even for a specific length of time but it is essential to my peace of mind.

All of this complaining is my way of saying that I just can't calm myself down enough to write something tonight. I want so badly to write more than a lame post to satisfy my daily commitment but the words just buzz around in my head and refuse to form coherent sentences on the page. I have become a NaBloPoMoron. Yammering on about nothing at all... a bloggy mirror of my environment.

Menu Plan Monday

I have eight days until my Thanksgiving guests arrive. I am trying to keep meals very simple this week so that I have time to plan, clean, and work some extra hours. Hopefully I'll be able to work from home next week and enjoy having family around.

• Monday - Chicken and Dumplings
• Tuesday - Steak (left over from Sunday) Quesadillas and Salad
• Wednesday -Baked Ziti and Green Beans
• Thursday - Thai Peanut Chicken with Rice Noodles
• Friday - Dinner and a movie
• Saturday - Ham and Cheese Panini with Tomato Soup
• Sunday - Undecided

Thanks to Laura at Orgjunkie.com for hosting Menu Plan Monday!

Opinions?

I have a little half bathroom downstairs that actually gets more use than the two upstairs. Unfortunately the builder decided to skimp in this one spot and only put in a little pedestal sink with no storage at all. So, one of the first projects that I want to do in this house is to put a new vanity in there. I'm trying to decide if I want to go with a craftsman style, like the first picture, that would go very well with the general style of the house. Or something more dramatic and try to turn the little bathroom into a showpiece (hahahahahaa). What do you think? If you were working with a very generic room, taupe walls, a white toilet, stone floor, which one of these vanities would you choose?