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Thursday, July 07, 2005

a pleasant little surprise

Remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned in a post that our school had had these "substance free" signs, and taken them all down before I got a picture of one? Well, I was walking through the elementary school tonight, and lo and behold, there one was.

Not only does it cast a bit of doubt on the depth and scope of elementary education, it's also another great example of why not to use double-negatives.

Also, just across the street from the school, there's this:

What I think is especially funny is the sign over the door that says "Grandpapa's Place". Um, how sweet!

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

things about today

• T was off work yesterday because his back was (is) out. This means that I keep forgetting that it's Tuesday -- which is not only the day I pay bills, but also, in this particular instance, my mother's birthday; good thing that I remembered long enough to at least have C call her at work.
• I really feel like going for a walk, except
• it is so hot out that the cooler is barely keeping up at 9:00 in the morning. Way to go with the abrupt change of seasons, there, God. I'm sure you have a fantastic reason for it. We'll adjust. Thanks.
• My feet still hurt from wearing high heels (yes, the cute black-and-white ones) at a chorus concert last night. This is the closest I ever get to feeling the effects of hard partying in the morning. Whew, yeah, that was a wild one.
• C, who says she is "Anakin's little sister", is taking apart the works from her light-up-vibrating-head-song-playing duck. Or actually, it's my duck. She has itty bitty screws all over the couch and she is really intent on fixing the head-vibration function. I'm kind of hoping she messes the whole thing up, since I got tired of the "squeeze here for a computer-chip rendering of a familiar song" stuffed-animal gimmick about three seconds after it was invented. Chances are, however, that she'll actually fix it. Drat.
• We are thinking about renting out the apartment we use for school and guests (but not the garage underneath it). Eek! This is because we are also thinking about buying this house, and that would enable us to do it. Double Eek! No, wait, triple Eek!
• I am a bad, bad girl, because I'm on the computer without having done my Bible reading first. Someone smack me.
• OK, while you're at it, smack me for all the other days I've done that too. Which is, these days, pretty much every day. Sigh.
• I am shuddering in disgust already at the google hits I'm going to get from having "smack me" and "high-heeled" in the same paragraph. GO AWAY SCARY GOOGLERS. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

this ought to say "Hallmark" on the back

Last night at Bible study, one of the women approached me and said that as a gift for me after The Event I Swore I Would Not Mention Again, she was going to come over and clean my house for me (she cleans houses for a living). What I wanted to say was "oh, like h*** am I ever going to let a casual friend anywhere NEAR the dirty parts of my house." However, when someone offers you a gift, you're supposed to smile politely and say 'thank you', and then only write the above sentence in your online journal (I think that's what Emily Post says about it), so that's what I did. Am doing. She's coming over at 2:30 today. And my mom is coming over from 1:00 to 2:00 to help me clean in advance of the arrival of the cleaning lady. Now there's one particular cliché I never thought I'd be living out.

Seriously, there are some household things I'm not supposed to be doing yet -- floors, and scrubbing the bathtub -- which really do need to be done pretty badly. But there is a megaton of STUFF that needs to get put away first, and that's what Mom's going to help me with. What a mom. She gives birth to me, lavishes me with love and affection and creative ideas for fun for my entire childhood, puts up with my regrettable attitude during my teenaged years, offers herself on the altar of free babysitting as soon as I provide her with a grandchild, and then, to top it off, comes over on her lunch break to help me clean my house even though I'm thirty years old and really, if I haven't got the discipline to clean my own house, that ought to be my own problem. Wow. This is the stuff of shiny embossed pastel fancy-script $4.50 Mother's Day cards if ever I saw it.

Now you'll have to excuse me; I'd love to write a nice thoughtful post about the parallels between "cleaning for the cleaning lady" and our Christian walk, but I'd better get to work; my mom will be here in three hours and this place is A MESS.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

grab for Grover, honey

I have a stuffed Grover. People think it's the kids' Grover, but it's mine (as are, ahem, ALL of the stuffed ducks in our house, but that's another story). T bought Grover for me when I had Natalie; I had always been a Grover fan and had been coveting this particular cheerful blue Grover at our drugstore for quite some time, so when I needed something cuddly to apply counterpressure to my incision (somehow this helps. and pillows = too bulky and quite impersonal, really, don't you think?), and my baby was miles away in a different hospital from me, he thought Grover would be a nice touch. And he was. Grover came along with C was born, as well, and he has been invaluable during these last few weird days of lounging around in soft-waisted pants all day while people get stuff and do things for me. Especially this morning.

See, in case you've never had abdominal surgery, here's a little tidbit of information: Laughing, really letting loose and belly laughing -- it hurts (as do coughing, sneezing, standing up, sitting down, um, breathing deep -- but I digress). So this morning, when T came in and told me to grab Grover before he brought C in, I knew something was up (after all, she HAD been awfully quiet for about a quarter of an hour...). He had advised me wisely, let's just put it that way.

This is what happens when C is left alone with a piece of blue sidewalk chalk in front of the bathroom mirror. Isn't she lovely?
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

the best-laid plans...

Well, here's a list of things I meant to do before I went into the hospital:

1. Get fully caught up on laundry.
   
2. Make the house spotless.
   
3. Find a picture of the kids together to take with me. (one of the few evils of digital photos is that they're seriously less portable, unless you print them, which we can't since our printer hates us.)
   
4. Make a new journal template.

5. Write at least one journal post that wasn't full of whining, so that newcomers to my blog wouldn't run screaming the other way at the first sentence written by a person who gives Cousin Gladys in The Blue Castle a run for her money in the whining department. (Read This Now. This Means You.)
   
6. Go to the library and get some light-but-not-hilarious (because I know from experience that laughing after abdominal surgery is a huge no-no) books to take with me in addition to the stack I've already got going.
   
7. Wash my bathrobe. (this takes a load almost by itself. It's huge and blue and terrycloth.)
   

Now ask me how many of these things I got done. Go ahead, ask.

Maybe the BIG FAT ZERO you just heard has to do with the fact that I spent Monday in Yosemite, Tuesday in the valley doing pre-op stuff, and today working my hiney off (ha! I wish) helping to fell about 20 trees, and pulling brush, and stacking logs. T's dad (the realtor) had a client who wanted some property brushed and cleared a bit before he would agree to buy it, so T's dad hired us to do it. Today was the only day that my dad, T, and I could all work on it. LT and C helped also. I AM SO SORE OH MY GOSH SO SORE AND I CAN'T TAKE ADVIL. At least I'll have morphine tomorrow. That should knock out some muscle soreness pretty effectively, wouldn't you think?

Anyway. Ahem. This was supposed to be a NON-whiny post, wasn't it. Whoops.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

a couple of really well-timed recipes

Here it is the END of winter and I'm posting soup recipes. It's all Kristen's fault. She wanted me to email them to her but I felt low on actual content today, so I thought I'd just post them here. Plus the world in general is not fat enough yet, so this clam chowder one needs to get spread around a little more. YUM.

Monterey Clam Chowder
(my brother found this recipe after we'd been on a trip to Monterey, getting clam chowder samples at every restaurant on the Wharf. THANK YOU BROTHER, it is wonderful. And I probably really needed those EXTRA FIVE POUNDS PER BOWL.)

• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 potato, diced
• 1 stalk of celery, diced
• 1/2 lb minced bacon
• 1/4 lb butter
• 3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
• 1 pt clam juice
• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1 pt milk
• 1 pt heavy whipping cream (when I make it I use just a quart of half-and-half and a pint of nonfat milk -- not because of calories but because it's cheaper and nonfat milk is what we keep on hand. It comes out fine this way, actually maybe a little easier to eat cause it's not SO overpoweringly thick and rich. YMMV.)
• 1 pt half-and-half
• 1/2 t black pepper
• 1/2 lb chopped clams (fresh, frozen or canned) (2 or 3 of the 6-oz cans)
• 1/2 t clam base (optional -- you can get this at Smart and Final but I've never used it. It makes a mellow clam chowder without it. Might be stronger with it, but Monterey clam chowder generally has a milder clam flavor than New England clam chowder anyway.)

Sauté vegetables and garlic in bacon and butter in a 5 quart sauce pot over medium heat until vegetables are tender but not brown. Add flour to make a roux. Cook for two minutes, allowing flour to cook while stirring occasionally. Add clam juice, milk, half-and-half, and cream. Stir with a whisk. Add pepper, clams and clam base. Cook over low-medium heat, stirring occasionally to prevent chowder from scorching, for two hours or until chowder is brought to desired thickness. (took WAY less than 2 hours for me. More like 30-40 minutes.)

Once you have the vegetables sautéed, you can put the whole thing in a crock-pot for several hours if you'd like.

And here's one for minestrone. I read that word phonetically till I was heading toward junior high. I had heard of minestrone soup; it just never occurred to me that it and the mine-strone I saw in Campbell's cans in the store were the same thing. I did the same with Yosemite, although I was cured of that one much younger. My five-year-old self would see hitchhikers carrying signs that said "Yosemite" and wonder -- what's this Yose-mite place? Hello, Rachel, YOU LIVE RIGHT OUTSIDE IT. Do I need to tell you about "Chevrolet"? Probably not.

SHUT UP AND GET TO THE RECIPE ALREADY RACHEL.

Thank you, I needed that.

OK, here it is. Warning, it takes like eight hours to make if you don't soak the beans overnight, five or six hours if you do. It's not something you can just whip up for dinner. I got this recipe in Cultural Foods class in high school, which was kind of an odd combination of the history of the discovery of and immigration to the US, and home ec. You'd have to try it to understand, but I don't think they offer it anymore. SHUT UP AGAIN RACHEL.

Minestrone

Soak 1 pound of small white beans (navy beans) in a couple of quarts of water, either overnight, or by simmering them for 2 minutes and then letting them sit in the pan for 2 hours.

Then melt 3T butter and 1/4 c oil in a heavy 5-quart saucepan. (I use less at a time but I do probably end up using this whole amount. I'm sure you could make the soup without the sautéing, too, but I never have yet.) Sauté the following one at a time, 2 minutes each:

• 1 c chopped onion
• 1 c diced carrot
• 1 c chopped celery
• 2 c diced zucchini
• 1 c diced green beans
• 3 c shredded cabbage
• 1/2 bunch chopped spinach (I've always left this out. Not because we don't like spinach, just because, um, I never have it on hand and generally forget to buy it.)

Add vegetables back to the pan, and add:

• 1 lb cubed beef steak or stew meat
• the drained beans (reserve the liquid)
• 6 c weak beef broth (I used 2 cans broth and 1 can water)
• 1 can tomatoes
• 4T tomato paste (I just add the whole 6oz can, have no idea how many T that is)
• 1/2 c chopped parsley (I use maybe 3 T of dried parsley)

• 3 cloves minced garlic (why don't they have you sauté this? I'll have to try it sometime)
• 1 T basil
• 1 T salt
• 1/4 t pepper
• 1 c red wine (I always feel like Such A Grownup buying wine at the store. I only ever buy it for cooking; can't stand the taste of it. Because I'm a baby. I don't like black coffee either. Or dark chocolate.)

Cook all this for 4-5 hours, adding bean liquid (or you can have pitched out the bean liquid after step one, and just add water, like me) as necessary, stirring occasionally. In the last half-hour add about a cup of pasta -- recipe says broken spaghetti but I just use whatever suits my fancy that time -- rotini, farfalle, conchigliette, you could probably use salad macaroni -- live dangerously. ;)
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005

a life-changing moment

I think I'm finally ready to take a really big step.

I've been thinking about it for a long time. I wanted to wait until I was fully prepared -- until I knew I could do the best possible job caring for another living being. The timing had to be perfect. I needed to have built enough of a life for myself so that I felt complete and able to share myself with another, and yet, I didn't want to get so set in my ways that I would see my new phase in life as a burden, or as an inconvenience. It's a hard decision for a woman to make, but I think this is it. Now is the time. I am finally ready...

to own a houseplant.

Two, in fact.

See, we have these stereo speakers, with these flat horizontal tops. And they tend to get just STUFF piled on top of them, because, you know, that horizontal surface thing. And it has occurred to me that what they need is a nice pretty houseplant apiece.

Keep me in your thoughts as I move into this new part of my life. And most importantly -- and if you know me at all you'll know why I say this -- keep the poor houseplants in your thoughts. Please.

Thursday, March 31, 2005

not very credible

I am, as I mentioned previously, doing a transcribing job right now. This involves using a nifty little shareware program which slows down audio (and enables me to use a lot of handy keyboard shortcuts to pause and back up, but that doesn't enter into this story) so that I can type what the people are saying without having to pause every ten words to catch up. The audio files I'm transcribing consist of interviews about printer technology and market share and all kinds of scintillating stuff like that. I just wanted to note that when you're listening to someone (who already says "you know" twice or three times per sentence, but maybe that doesn't have much to do with it, it's hard to say) speaking at half-speed about the advantages of his product and why ink costs so much, he sounds a lot like a person who's at a party having way too much to drink and who has accosted you against your wishes and sat down to tell you all about something that is doubtless very important to him but about which you couldn't care in the slightest, even if you were forced to try.

Not a lot of credibility, is what I mean. I keep involuntarily and unfairly thinking (not in so many words, perhaps), "What do you know, you pontificating old sot?"

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

how totally unlike me this all is

I am scaring myself.

I don't write, OK? I mean, I write HERE, but this is just goofball little anecdotes with the occasional serious post thrown in, and there are no rules, and the level of perseverance required is just perfect. "Finishing" isn't really an issue. But today I got an idea for a story. AGAIN. NaNoWriMo, the gift that keeps on giving, right? This story is about the parallel universe version of me, sort of. OK, OK, so really she's the complete OPPOSITE of me, but sometimes when my life is really cluttered and hectic and there are all these emotional demands being made of me and I have three people to answer to and they all want different things and I get that it-would-feel-really-fantastic-if-my-head-could-just-explode-right-now feeling, sometimes I calm myself with this vision:

Somewhere in a parallel universe there is another version of me. This is the universe where I went to college and studied something I loved, like, say, orchestral conducting, or the flute, or librarianship, because I didn't get together with my husband (bear with me, I didn't say this was a happy fantasy, just a calming vision) and because I worked harder in school and got better financial aid. After The Parallel Rachel graduated with an advanced degree, she moved to the city, maybe San Francisco, yes, San Francisco. She got a job she enjoyed and rented or bought a smallish apartment with hardwood floors and comfortable-but-sparse furniture. She got a cat and maybe some fish. And she lives alone, and nobody comes up to her and says, "I'm hungry" as if she's a genie who's just supposed to twitch her nose and make food appear, each person's favorite dish in each respective place. Nobody (including herself) leaves dirty clothes in the living room, and there're only two or three jackets in her hall closet and NONE on her floor, and she wears makeup every day, and is totally coordinated and socially adept to boot (those last two items are in absolutely NO way connected with any kind of reality, parallel universe or not, but this is MY calming vision, so lay off), and her apartment is never EVER messy, and she doesn't own a lot of stuff. She comes and goes as she pleases and can leave the light on as long as she wants to read in bed and she doesn't own a single children's movie no not one.

Now, this only works for a minute. Or less. Because really, this parallel Rachel, her life is Bleak. No morning cuddles, no compliments about her milkshakes, no marriage that is the epitome of a fabulous relationship, no love, none at all, except for the cat, and a cat's love is decidedly limited in comparison to what the real Rachel has. But for the briefest of times, it's, well, calming to imagine her going about her sparse, quiet, orderly day, somewhere imaginary. When I need it to be.

So as I was doing the dishes this afternoon, and actually thinking about a former high-school acquaintance who's going through a lot of painful stuff right now, and wondering if she's going to totally change her life around and move back to the small town which I'm sure she hates to live with her parents whom she disdains, and WHAM, all of a sudden Parallel-Universe Rachel popped into my head, and she was having to move back to her non-sparse, non-detached hometown to be with her noisy, loving, cluttery family for some unknown reason (reason is still unknown, by the way), and words just started FLYING INTO MY HEAD, I am not kidding, about what made this person enjoy her solitude so much and how she felt when it had to go away and how things changed for her. I could not get my hands dried off fast enough to get to the computer to start tapping out ideas. It was almost scary. And the only reason I'm writing about it here is that now that I've mentioned it to someone I'll actually feel like I have to do something with it and not just let it slide away. Maybe.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

we really know how to throw a party

(I thought about putting this entry in the photo blog, since it is rather image-intensive, but since it's more of a daily-life entry, and the photos are, um, not artistic in the slightest, I stuck it here. Sorry about the hugeness of it.)

One night maybe six years ago when T was going to be away overnight visiting a friend, I decided that I would do a lot of fun girly stuff to make his absence more endurable (up until he got a job in telecom with its requisite two-week overtime stints in fire season, we had only very rarely been apart overnight). I rented chick movies -- this was the first time I watched "You've Got Mail", which turned out later to become one of T's favorites, but oh well -- and bought Doritos (which T hates) and made myself meatloaf (ditto), and I stayed up as late as I could make myself so that I wouldn't have to lie in bed waiting to go to sleep without him. (shut up, that is NOT pathetic.) Anyway. Somehow this developed into a tradition wherein when Daddy is gone, the kids and I throw a "party". That sounds really bad, I realize that, but we're not celebrating his absence -- we're more taking our minds off it. Tonight T is at a men's retreat, so here, courtesy of The New Nikon and the fact that I'm feeling a lot better than I was, is a look into the debauchery that the mice get up to while the cat's away.

This is not for the faint of heart.

(OK, maybe it is.)

First we all played a good game of pretend. The kids had torches (flashlights) and were exploring a ruin of a castle (our house, with all the lights turned off). I was the queen, who inexplicably was still alive inside this ruin. Adventure ensued.

observe my stately mantle (made from, um, a waterproof crib sheet. C was the costume designer for this production). And if you look really closely you can see the brown paper crown on my head. (LT took this picture. He is suitably aware of the honor and trust I bestowed upon him in allowing him to use The Nikon.)


LT then made a map of an imaginary country. I am unclear as to whether this map represents the country over which I reigned. I'll have to ask him tomorrow.



Then C made cookies, almost entirely by herself, from a mix she'd been given, um, for her birthday. In September.

it's a good thing these were just for family. C still needs practice at not licking the spoon.


the finished project

Part of a traditional party is the freedom to stay up as late as we want. When the kids can't keep their eyes open any longer, they make a tent in the front room and go to sleep in it.

The sheet down the middle divides it into a room for each of them. Do you notice that their legs have to go between the chair legs? Why again is this fun??

So there you have it -- a virtual tour of our wild, wild life. I'd better hope T doesn't read this one.
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