Stuology

I’m going to try Pumpkin-Ginger Pancakes - a recipe from Sunset.

Also, my meal plan went pretty well. The one thing that makes planning successful is your ability to adapt to changes in your plan. One night we had a family member with an upset stomach, so the meat ball subs were put on hold until last night in favor of doing leftover night then. That bumped pork chops to tonight. It is more involved with cooking and involves some prep I should have done an hour ago, and involves bacon, which I forgot to take out of the freezer. I could either use a different recipe for the chops or go for something else tonight and make the chops tomorrow. Tonight would be a good time to prepare some pumpkin and make those promised cookies with Ada.

In other words, it is 5:15PM, and I don’t know what I’m doing for dinner. I’m discussing going out to eat.

Ada went on her first field trip today. They packed the class up and went to the pumpkin patch. Ada came back with the cutest tiny pumpkin. It is perfectly shaped too. When I went to pick her up, I was waking towards the school as the lady who drove her got the kids out of her van. I greeted Ada there, grabbed her carseat and helped her with her pumpkin. We were walking away when Ada started kind of crying, pointing at the van and kept saying “my [something we couldn't understand].” We both asked Ada what she was missing. I had her carseat and her pumpkin, and she was wearing everything that I brought her to school in. After asking her a couple of times, I still didn’t understand her. I asked the lady who drove her, and she didn’t know. I got Ada in the car who was now crying and pointing at the woman’s van. It wasn’t until I backed up and saw a few more kids walking up towards the school holding bags of CANDY that I realized what she was saying. Ada didn’t get her bag of candy. I calmed her down with promises of making cookies tonight. Home baked cookies > bag of candy.

We are making a family trip to the pumpkin patch on Sunday. I’m going to be swimming in pumpkins. I’m going to sacrifice some to baking, and the others we will carve. I will have a plethora of toasted pumpkin seeds for snacking.

Oh, Sunday is pancake breakfast day. I should make pumpkin pancakes!

He is still in KC. I moved upstairs after I made my last post. To keep an eye on my kitchen chairs.

I’ve been feeling like run-down crap all day. Coffee has not perked me up. My sinuses were full of pressure when I woke up, and while that is gone, I have this in-the-middle-of-my-head all-day throbbing. Tylenol will not banish it.

About half an hour ago, I heard the gate at the top of the stairs shut and open. Or open and bang against the wall. And then walking. Our floor creeks, and you can hear people upstairs walking. I thought that Mac was home from his day in KC, so I went upstairs to greet him. The only thing moving is the ceiling fan and two Amityville flies buzzing against a window pane. After a walk through the house, I went into the garage. The car is gone, but the non-garage door light is on. Maybe he came and then turned around and left. And turned the light on in the process. Hopefully. I’ll find out when he gets home. Again.

We joke about our appliance-breaking poltergeist. If another appliance breaks, I will be suspiciously annoyed. If I go upstairs and my kitchen chairs are stacked on my table, we are moving out.

I just found out today that I have Monday off as a holiday. I haven’t had that day off as a holiday in forever. Maybe never.

Here are some things:

I didn’t get a good photo, but last week Ada was running outside at school, tripped and broke her fall with her face. On the sidewalk. She came home with a good sized fat lip and some pretty scraps on the front of her face from her nose to her chin. As clumsy as Ada is, I’m surprised she hasn’t broken anything yet. There is only a small scab left underneath her nose.

I grew up with extremely bad hayfever. July and August were particularly horrendous months for me. I couldn’t go outside without instant itchy, watery, swollen eyes, constant sneezing, a runny nose that itched so bad I wanted to rip it off my face if I could mange before my congested sinuses exploded. And this was while taking allergy medicine. When I moved to Lawrence, they improved somewhat, but it was still the case that when I went outside in July and August, I had to cover my nose and mouth with Kleenax to not suffer the instant torture before I could get back into the safety of air conditioning. As I got older, it subsided. Now I notice in July and August, but it is so manageable that I rarely even need to take medication for it–until September of this year. It happened last month while I was either making dinner or eating. My eye started to itch. And then the other. And then they got red and swollen. I popped some Benedryl and eventually it went away. Then my nose started itching. And running. It has been doing this off and on for about a month. It was so bad this week, I had to not only pop a Benedryl, but shut all the windows and turn on the air conditioning to filter out whatever was making my eyes swollen and itchy even though the weather didn’t warrant having it on. I’m also speculating that Ada’s constant runny nose and sneezing fits are caused by the same thing^*.

And for my third mention of Ada, she is still awake. I can’t get her to sleep. I decided to pull her out of the room with James because she keeps singing. This isn’t a horrible thing, but Ada still hasn’t learned volume control. I want James to at least sleep the entire night. We are having a slumber party night. I make a bed on the loveseat for Ada and a bed for me on the sofa, and we sleep in the living room.

I knew I could stretch this out.

*I also have bad eczema, the “bad” label comes from the fact that it gets so bad that my skin will bleed. Both of my children suffered from this when they were born, and while Ada hasn’t any problems in a while, James still has small troubles with it. I learned during their eczema treatments that infants who have bad eczema have at least one parent with bad hayfever, and that they are likely to also develop hayfever. That and the fact that Ada keeps rubbing her nose along with the sneezing is what I’m basing my assumption that she may suffer my same fate.

I know that I’m just regurgitating a link that everybody has probably seen already. It is making the rounds. I’m posting it for those few that haven’t.

This is the most awesome thing I’ve seen anybody do with a My Little Pony.

Mac says to me this evening, “Look at James.”

I glance at him and find him standing there naked holding his diaper. Fantastic.

We are back from an overnight trip out of town. I fared well with no internet access. I need to make my meal list for the week. I’m using this post as an opportunity to make my meal list.

Monday: Mexican casserole - this is basically an 8×8 dish with a layer of roasted peppers. Then a layer of cooked ground sirloin, onion, tomatos and spices, then a layer of corn, a layer of beans (black or refried) and a layer of cheese. This time I’m going to mix salsa with some yo-cheese via a recipe by L who was also kind enough to loan me her strainer to make the yo cheese, which I did this weekend.

Tuesday: Chili rubbed filet mignon salad, which didn’t get made last week.

Wednesday Meatball subs featuring the meatballs that I made last week. When I make these, I use a spoon to make a well in the bread. It holds the meatball goodness better and gives me bread crumbs for the next night’s meal. I need a vege to go with this. Ideas?

Thursday: Breadcrumb and walnut crusted pork chops. Probably having rice with this one. The rice will have veges.

Friday: Probably need to see if we have leftovers. I’m not making anything freezable. Although, I could make an extra casserole on Monday and freeze it with everything but the cheese/salsa mixture.

Generally, I can come up with a variation on main dishes that feature meat. With veges, not so much. I need to try to make a new vegetable dish every 1-2 weeks.

I have an apple crisp in the oven right now. I didn’t feel like mixing together some ice cream, so it will have to be without. And now that I have an ice cream maker, buying ice cream just won’t do.

I’m known (well, probably only in really small circles) to not be able to peel anything–vege or fruit. It takes me forever, and I hate it, and I’ve never understood how anybody is able to even use a vegetable peeler. That was until I bought the vegetable peeler of the gods. I peeled my potatoes with them the other night, and I did the apples tonight. Now I can peel like a normal person. I want to buy 10 of them to store up for the fact that they will quit making them now that I love it.

Okay, Apple did redeem themselves from the great iPhone Support Disaster of 2008. Not only did I hear about my laptop earlier than the given date, I heard that it was fixed!

They replaced the daughterboard that houses my power connection. I was excited as I powered it up. I let the fully charged battery run down a little. Then I plugged in the power cable and … a little better, but the same issue I was having before. It would power the laptop, but not charge it. I went to wiggle the cable and noticed that it was kind of dirty. It is my old cable. I grabbed the replacement we bought as a troubleshooting method to my not powering or charging the battery problem, and voila! Now I have a power adapter that will work. I’m sort of glad because it means that we didn’t buy the new power adapter in vain.

I’m now back on my portable, unix laptop. Happiness.