Random Tuesday Thoughts 5/11

At the rate of which I've posting over the last seven days (read: nil), I'm doing pretty good by giving you yet another peek of random crap in my life.  I wish my randomness was as funny as the Un-Mom's, but my funniness in real life doesn't seem to translate as well on the interwebs.  Or I'm possibly not that funny.  I really hope it's not the latter because then that makes me wonder a bit what everyone is laughing at whenever I'm around...

Anyway, it's Tuesday.  I'm working from home (again), trying to save gas and my sanity.  I somehow managed to forget I had back to back meetings this morning and early afternoon and I'm just now finally able to get some work done!  Ok, well I will be in a minute when I finish this post.  I needed something to transition my brain towards Excel and mindless tedium.

Someday when I get to posting about it, you'll get to see the pictures from strawberry picking and my birthday.  Oh wait, there aren't any pictures from my birthday.  Probably a good thing in hindsight considering that my skin decided to erupt in he worst case of acne I've had since I was a teen.  An article a friend posted on her Facebook says it's a sign of spiritual awakening.  Personally, I'd rather that enlightment didn't make me want to crawl under a rock and hide until my hormones die down.

My birthday was quite lovely besides the acne.  My friends made me hot wings (my favorite!) and I didn't make my own cake.  I didn't have any cake, but that's ok.  I'm not much for eating cake these days.  They gave me Final Fantasy XIII for my birthday which was awesome...until I opened the package and discovered that the disc had been stolen.  My spidey sense started tingling when I showed my husband the blank disc and made a comment about how it was strange that it didn't have any logos on it.  I ended up going to bed early in a huff because I couldn't get my game on.  Luckily, my friend's husband raised some hell at Best Buy and got me a new copy which I played all day long on my day off.

Mother's Day was lovely. My mom and Michael's mom came over for brunch and we made garden stepping stones with Sybilla for their gardens, natch.  Yes, I cooked and cleaned some on that most holy of holy days, but it's ok.  I got to play my game, read a book, and sleep in, all of which I don't normally get to do unless I slight someone or unplug myself, both of which do not bear pleasant results.  Except on Mother's Day, thankfully :D

Saw an article on MSN about macarons.  Now I must try to recreate them for the baking blog.  I love meringues, but I don't know if I can handle aged egg whites.  Wines are supposed to age.  People are supposed to age, but don't want to.  Egg whites?  I have my reservations, but hey, if it's all the rage in Paris, I have to try it.

Speaking of Paris?  A coworker is going in two weeks.  I'm jealous.  The only time I was in Paris I was stuck with a snobby brat who wanted to do four star hotels on a college student's budget.  Needless to say, it made for some interesting adventures, but I didn't get to see half of what I wanted.  I'm going on a wine tour in a couple of weeks to local wineries here in the Texas Hill Country and my friend suggested we swing by Paris, Tx.  Sorry, dude, it just isn't the same.  I've been to both, and I much rather prefer the one where I must present my passport to get in the country.

Time to get back to work.  Au revoir, mes amis!
Kelly

Random Tuesday Thoughts 5/4

Randomness is awesome!

I turn 28 on Thursday.  It snuck up on me this year for the first time ever.  My birthday I mean.  I've already been thinking of myself as 28 or 58 depending on how I feel when I wake up in the morning these days.  Mostly 58, but I'm working on that.

Read an article today that just irritated the hell outta me.  Sandra Bullock is adopting a black baby and apparently people seem to think it's for publicity.  Now, I don't Sandy personally, but people here in Austin don't take kindly to anyone badmouthing her because she is genuinely a very nice person and we love her here.  One of the other beefs is that people are like "Black kid? Why not white kid?"  Really?  Who the eff cares?!  Love doesn't care about race folks, and if someone, even a celebrity, wants to adopt a kid, let them.  Too many kiddos without homes in this country and everywhere.  Kudos to you, Sandy, for adopting from here in the states and not caring what color your baby will be.

My husband and I got the movie Where the Wild Things Are through Netflix the other night.  That was the biggest cinematic disappointment I have ever seen.  I'd rather watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3 instead of that tripe.  I realize it was based off a 20 page kid's book, but Sendak managed to cram a plot into those 20 pages and there was a moral to the story.  All this movie had was needless violence, some weird ass dialogue, and a child that needed some serious therapy and medication.  If Max learned anything, it was that he can run away from home and his mom will give him chocolate cake as a reward. Worst. Movie. Ever.  My mom's science fiction atrocities are looking real good right about now!

Now I'm hungry and it's dinner time!

Peace out, y'all!
Kelly

Random Tuesday Thoughts 4/27

Ah another Tuesday in my so called random life...

You know it's time to clean out the freezer when you find something in there you didn't realize you had.  Case in point: I discovered a pork tenderloin in all it's meaty goodness hiding underneath a mound of frozen fruit, vegetables, some random containers of I don't know what, and a pizza.  Sweet!  You'd think it would be easy to find something in a freezer so small, but the lack of space means everything has to be jammed together like Jenga blocks in order for it to fit.  Note to self: when we someday buy our first house, I want a nice fridge with ample freezer space.  And a game of Jenga, because that's always fun to play at dinner parties!

My new favorite drink is a Ginger Vodka Tonic.  It's a vodka tonic with candied ginger added to it.  Yum!  Side note, is it wrong to enjoy one midday while you're working from home?  I mean, hey, it's not like I'm driving anywhere anytime soon and it's five o'clock somewhere right?  And to be fair, I made it half strength since it IS midday.  Whatever.  Ice cold gingery yumminess here I come!

If you saw my post from Sunday, you saw my daughter chilling on the new patio chairs we got with her grapes and milk.  It was pretty funny, if I do say so myself.  I personally love this shot:

Hey, it's five o'clock somewhere!

Happy Tuesday ya'll!
Kelly

Random Tuesday Thoughts 4/20

Tee hee...today is 4/20.  And it's Tuesday!  Time for more random thoughts!  Woot!

I'm not the sort of mom who would enter my daughter into a pageant, but WERE there a pageant that was judged on pure spunk alone, my daughter would come out with the crown without even trying!  If the Terrible Two's are defined by a streak of independence and the subsequent naughtiness that follows close behind, well folks, we are in full swing.  This past weekend alone, Sybilla sat in timeout on six different occasions and got spanked at least twice.  And the worst part of all is that even though she hates both forms of punishment, neither of them are enough of a deterrant to stop misbehaving.  Ok, maybe that's the second worst part.  Really the worst part is that I hate having to discipline my child, because inevitably I reach a point in which my patience wears mighty thin and let's face it, there really isn't anything worse than acting just like the two year old whose behaviour is being questioned to begin with.  [sigh]  Parenthood is fun!

And speaking of little Miss Independent, several times this weekend I caught Billa doing things all by her little self without any help from a big person.  For example, she climbed up to the counter to snag a banana.  While I admire her tenacity at doing things herself and a desire for such a healthy fruit, it was the third one that day and I have to draw the line somewhere!  I can only take so many fruity smelling diapers.  Gross, I know, but anyone who's a mom knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about.  Poop should not smell like blueberries, especially when none have been consumed.

She also managed to turn on the water faucet in her bathroom by herself:

And did this too:

Honestly, I have no idea what this was about because it wasn't even close to naptime.  But hey, if she wants to nap in a laundry basket, who am I to prevent naptime?  Seems like a win win to me!

This evening we will be dining on tacos (heh heh...tacos rule!) at my sister in law's apartment, so to kill some time after I picked up Sybilla I took her to Target to try on swimsuits.  Sybilla did really well and I just about died laughing when I put on a suit and she's go, "Mama, dat's coot!"  Hey, at least someone in that dressing room was pleased with how I looked in a swimsuit!  It wasn't as bad as in years past, but I haven't lost all the weight I want and I'm in between sizes right now.  Plus, Target only has three different styles (in a myriad of colors) to choose from, so I may have to look elsewhere.  I just don't want to spend a ton of cash on a swimsuit for one season, knowwhatimean?

That's all the randomness I can muster...time for tacos!

Happy Tuesday!
Kelly

Random Tuesday Thoughts 4/6/10

Last night Michael told Sybilla (and I quote) "Billa, if your mama was MckMama, you'd be Special Sauce."  It made me laugh, but then I wondered what exactly he was trying to say.  I decided it was better left unknown.

Billa actually slept through most of the night a few nights ago, thank GAWD.  When she finally wandered into our room at 6 am, she whispered, "Mommy?  Mommy!  Up?  Up?" meaning, 'Please can you lift me up into bed with you for some quality snuggle time?'  As she settled into place in my arms, she whispered again, "Shhhh...no wake Daddy."  I wasn't sure whether to laugh at her sneakiness or be mildly concerned, but I was too tired for concern.  So instead I whispered back, "That's right.  We don't want to wake up Daddy."  In fact, I thought, it would be even better if you didn't wake up Mommy either.  Time to find her stepstool and put it back next to the bed so she can just climb in herself!

Since I got sick a couple of weeks ago, I stopped drinking coffee and took up tea.  Part of me felt that it was probably a better choice weight loss wise, because I don't feel the need to add sugar and cream to my tea whereas black coffee just makes my stomach turn.  I can drink black tea blends and still get enough of a caffeine jolt to wake me up until my internal clock says that it's the magic hour of 10 am.  I kinda miss the coffee though.  And the Sunday before Easter when I was at Target I decided to treat Billa and myself to a Starbucks snack before we got shopping (On a side note, does it make me a bad mom to distract my child with juice and lemon loaf in order to keep her from wanting to get down and tear up the store?)  I tried the Dark Cherry Mocha and oh. my. holy. heaven that was the damn best mocha I've ever had.  I want one everyday.  I must figure out to how to duplicate it in real life because otherwise, my already broke self will be more broke.  And we can't have that!

In the past month, I have found two gray hairs.  I was always under the impression that redheads do not gray, they turn blonde.  Apparently, my mother was pulling my leg on that one because the hairs pulled were most DEFINITELY silver.  They were quite lovely and the prospect of having a full head of silver gray hair is kinda sexy to me.  I know, I know.  Give it a few years and I may not think so.  Whatever.  Either way, I know the cause of these gray hairs and it's name is Sybilla.

I've been hankering for gumbo and I am determined to make it before the month is through.  I wanted to make it on Good Friday for a friend's birthday dinner (before we made gardening plans) but then upon realizing that the person is a very observant Catholic, we decided chicken and andouille sausage gumbo was not a good idea.  In the end, we decided to garden all day and I made lasagna roll ups instead, which were very yummy and easy to make.  I will post recipe soon!  But gumbo must happen soon...

My lemon tree is awash with buds and blossoms.  I have never seen so many on that little tree!  My tree is showing various stages of undress as the wind blows away it's leaves and I'm afraid the blossoms will be next.  I can tell where a couple of little lemons are starting to form already and I have to work really hard to keep from getting overly excited.  I am only going to grow herbs and the lemon tree on the patio this year and we'll go for tomatoes and peppers and other stuff in the boxes at the Marino house!

Left: My poor half naked tree.  Right: That is just one branch.  There are at LEAST 50 buds on it alone!

We finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender series finally and now I am sad.  I really love that show, it's such a great cartoon!  The writing is fantastic and it makes me yearn to write something of that magnitude in novel form.  Now that we've finished it, I find myself in a funk.  The funk could be related to hormonal timings, but I'm going to blame it on the realization that my Avatar fix is now over.  I am going to have to suck it up and buy it on DVD so I can enjoy it whenever I want and not when Netflix decides to send it to me.

Happy Tuesday,
Kelly

Random Tuesday Thoughts 3/23

Ah, it's nice to not be sick.  Well, as sick as I was last week anyway.  I suffered from the flu (or a really bad cold) on Monday and Tuesday, jsut to have it turn into bronchitis on Wednesday.   Dr. Google says bronchitis can last for about 2 to 3 weeks.  Oh goodie.  Just what I wanted–to be hacking my lungs up and unable to breathe for three weeks.  Spring in Texas is bad enough!

Since being sick, I have watched a lot of TV on The Netflix (yes, I deem it worthy enough to have a "The" placed in front of it).  I watched a movie called It's a Boy Girl Thing with one of the chicks from the OC.  It was cute and funny, and it made me forget the fact that my husband and daughter were enjoying enchiladas at our friends' house while I was home alone and sick.  I also watched all three episodes (about 6 hours total) of SyFy's Tinman.  That was an interesting take on the Wizard of Oz and they had a lot of great talent in the movie.  I loved Zooey Deschanel as Dorothy.  I sucked the hubby in watching more boob tube with me this evening, and we watched Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog this evening and it was HI-larious!  We found it on the Instant Play portion of Netflix and the next 45 minutes were some of the funniest, cheesiest, most awesomest minutes ever.  Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion as arch enemies singing and fighting over the same girl.  'Nuff said.  Now go watch it!

I made marmalade last night in preparation for a baking challenge I'm working on.  I was very disappointed.  I love marmalade and the experience was fun and really easy, but it was too sweet.  I know, I know, the baker was gagging on too much sugar.  The recipe said you were supposed to match the cooked oranges ounce for ounce in sugar and I cut back about 1/3 of it because I'm trying to cut down on the sugar intake (hey, 7 pounds lost so far).  Not enough if you ask me.  I had to add salt, it was that cloying.  And it sure would have helped if I actually had pectin on hand...I added some pureed mango from the freezer to it to add some natural pectin, which helped, but then it threw off my sugar ratio again and made it taste a bit funny. [Sigh]  Maybe it will taste better on bread or something.  I didn't spread it on anything because I haven't made the weekly shopping trip.  Being sick and all, you know.  And I'm not a quitter, but I'm really not looking forward to this month's baking challenge.  That's all I can say...because it's top secret until Saturday and I might have to kill you if I told you otherwise.

Something else that leaves me miffed: people who don't use proper grammar.  Now I'm not talking about typos, or using 'then' instead of 'than.' I am talking about blatant disregard for all the rules and worst of all, blatant disregard for punctuation.  Despite being an amazing speller (I won with the word "hippopotamus" in the 2nd grade spelling bee), I sometimes misspell a word.  And sometimes I use past tense when I shouldn't, or the incorrect version of a word (where and wear threw me off for years).  It happens to the best of us.  I don't really care if you use "ain't" or "y'all" instead of "isn't" and "you all" because I'm Texan and that's just part of who we are.  But for the love of sweet baby Jesus and all things holy, PLEASE USE PUNCTUATION!!!  And if you aren't going to use punctuation, at least do me the courtesy of creating a coherent enough sentence that isn't entirely constructed in texting shorthand. I don't care if you overuse the exclamation mark, or use a question mark in lieu of a period, or even forget to use commas.  At least tell me where your damn sentence ends!  GRRR!  And don't y'all DARE leave a comment without punctuation (although, in actuality, I might find it wildly hysterical...just don't make a habit of it).

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Now go watch Dr. Horrible and eat some marmalade.  This stuff ain't gonna eat itself.

Happy Tuesday,

Kelly

Random Tuesday Thoughts

Everyone should check out the blog that this links to...she's one funny mama!

Because it looked like fun...and I needed something to cheer me up...and because my remote desktop for work has decided to seize up on me.  Maybe it's a sign that I should be in bed and not working.  You know, being sick and all.

I woke up yesterday feeling like I had been run over by a Mack truck, hit by a train, and then had the rest of me hewed up by the blades of a helicopter.  I have to be pretty sick to be feeling that bad.  I should know, because I birthed a 9 pound baby in about 8 hours with no drugs and then popped a couple of Advil afterwards.  I can handle pain.  So if I'm feeling this awful, something ain't right.  And what sucks even more is that it would happen on Monday and Tuesday, my two busiest days at work.  And the guy who could cover for me is out on vacation.  AWESOME week I'm having so far...

Maybe it's because I'm sick, but I am about to throttle my neighbors.  They slam their door every. single. time. they go in or out and it's causing stuff to fall off walls and shelves in our apartment.  Seriously, five times in as many minutes is a bit much.  I wish I could blame it on their teen-aged daughter, but I know that her folks are just as bad.  How do you tell someone in a nice way to stop slamming the door?  [sigh]  It's not making my head feel any better, that's for sure.

My lemon tree is blooming like crazy.  It did this last year and then a huge storm blew in and knocked off all the bloom so I ended up with no lemons.  I moved the tree to the least windiest spot on our third floor balcony, but I'm super paranoid now that I might lose any chance of making any of the lemon recipes I've been harboring through the last year.  I'm already dealing with an infestation of scale insects, so hopefully the gods of horticulture will be nice to me this year.  Please please please, just let me have three lemons.  I'll even take two.  Hell, if I can get just one, I will dance a jig of joy. 

And speaking of jigs, tomorrow is St. Patty's day!  I'm hoping I feel well enough to actually partake in our annual Irish feast with Michael's cousin Stephen.  He does it up right... lamb, boxty, colcannon, and Irish car bombs.  If I have the energy, I will even contribute homemade soda bread and Irish apple cake.  Ooooh, or black and tan brownies as seen in this month's Cooking Light.  It's good to be an Irish-American, even if we do make the feast of St. Patrick a drinking contest.  Even if I don't make it, Michael's mom is taking Sybilla overnight and into Thursday morning which means a night of uninterrupted sleep. If my neighbors don't slam the doors, do housecleaning, or their techno workout video at 3 am...

On that note...I need food.  And it's time to pick up the munchkin and some more meds.  [sigh]


Hackingly yours,
Kelly