"Probably just your garden-variety disaster."

Lately I have been taking pictures of everything I cook. I'm trying to make every meal yummy and pretty instead of wasting opportunities on crappy food.


This is what we made for brunch, a raspberry braid. Matt insisted on frosting but it's not in the original recipe...takes a beautiful picture though.


The next photo is one of my favorite meals, chickpeas and spinach over pasta. I think the curly q's take the best photos in addition to having a nice texture.


Christmas breakfast was mini cinnamon rolls. The mini was accidental but totally adorable so I might stick with it!


All that cooking wore Knox out. That dog really loves pillows, the blankets and toy were my additions for a perfect furry nap.

"Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?"

The family dinner went very well. I cooked my crazy huge expensive turkey and it came out great. I found glasses and plates in boxes downstairs (I was serious about the storage problem) and even Matt was happy to pull out all the nice things for one perfect dinner.

Here is the table with the super cute flower arrangements I made.













This is a close-up on the flowers because I LOVE how they came out.














I used herbes de provence on the turkey and though it doesn't look traditional everyone thought it looked pretty, and tasted amazing. It was stuffed with onions and lemons and smelled amazing.










I made two pies because I couldn't help myself. This is the bourbon chocolate pecan pie I made especially for Matt's dad, the sugarholic.






Here is the apple, I missed my chance to get it without a slice missing but it looks more loved this way...appreciated you might say.


























Everything went off perfectly. I was shocked, I am shocked actually. I expected something to go wrong trying to do so much at once but nothing did. Maybe since it wasn't a real holiday there wasn't as much pressure. Or amybe I am just a goddess of the kitchen. Matt's parents make great dinner guests so it's always nice when they come over. The dogs love them and were perfectly behaved. They actually slept through the whole dinner and were well rewarded afterward. And now I'm looking at the weight watchers website because I'm genuinely failing on my own and I need a jump start. I haven't completely committed to the idea mostly because of the money but damn if Rebecca isn't a shining example of dedication to that program. Anyone have any personal experience either way with WW?

"the favorite of all my current bruises"

This morning I did some shopping for our fakesgiving dinner. Matt is calling it Festivus because apparently that's the only episode of Seinfeld he ever saw and it left an impression. I haven't hosted a dinner like this, ever, so it turns out I needed everything. If it was a real holiday with large and haughty expectations I'd be screwed. It turns out in addition to needing a meat thermometer and baster I don't have enough matching plates. I only have four chairs so I never thought the plates would be a problem and then we decided to add a fifth guest. I haven't solved that problem yet. I really wanted to find a reasonably priced not ugly plate sold in separates but it just doesn't exist and even I can't rationalize storing a set of 8 dishes forever that I'm not completely in love with. One person has to eat off of a salad plate while standing at the counter which is probably what Martha Stewart would do in this situation...that or put her head in the oven. I jest, I jest...she's immortal or something anyway...have you seen her skin?

I've been thinking about it and I can sew up a few more napkins that won't match but will be festive and I'll mix up the plates as best I can. I'm also debating about wine glasses. I don't have any but I bought some baby bottles of white just in case and now I'm thinking I'll have to hit up Goodwill and see what's available for the cheap and unprepared hostess. I feel a bit ridiculous buying something that we'll never use but will have to store FOREVER but I might feel worse serving wine in my mason jar glasses. CLASSY! If anyone has a better idea please let me know, not having the right dishes and glasses is pushing me over the edge. Funny I'm not that worried about the chair.

"I attributed the incidence to temporary insanity"

So, I no longer think my hair makes me look like a person who drains the blood of goats. Now I just think it looks like I write poetry in my parents basement and use too much eyeliner. I should just crash all the mirrors in my house because nothing drives me crazy like worrying over my hair. I am hot like fire after a long walk with the dogs. There is just enough crust on the snow to tire us all out in half the miles we used to walk. It's almost time for snowshoes and extra thick mittens and long johns. The mornings are actually very peaceful and wonderful and I'm really trying to enjoy them.

I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, including a 15 bean soup which is awesome and I totally recommend, and this weekend we're cooking a turkey. I should never have bought a turkey for thanksgiving in the first place but I did and then we didn't cook it so unless I want to lose 30 pounds of freezer space for another year I have to cook the sucker. I guess I'm trading the whole turkey for turkey soup and turkey leftovers and five more pounds on my ass. It has to be done and lesson learned...don't buy a whole turkey unless you're COMPLETELY certain you're going to cook the bugger in a prompt and timely manner. Someone remind me next year!

"Your performance as a disgruntled minion was spot on"

Long time no blog, eh? I don't know what to say, which I guess is sort of the whole point. Today I did some good things and some dumb things and I'm pining for this friday to be over. I started out dyeing my hair. I've had the highlights for awhile and I'm too poor to have them professionally fixed so I did a full color and it's VERY dark. Perhaps I shouldn't have left the color on for fifteen minutes when the box said ten. Perhaps when I'm doing permanent damage to my appearance I should pay more attention to the time. And perhaps I'll get used to it, I hated the highlights when I first got them too. Just because I made my hair look like I spend my nights sucking the blood of the living doesn't mean I won't grow to like it eventually. And then the pie.

Actually, technically I started ruining the pie yesterday. I thought it would be fun to make something for myself that I love on my birthday so I mixed up a pumpkin pie. It looked perfect when I took it out of the oven and yet...today...not cooked. So, I figured since it was already fucked why not try to re-bake it? Why not indeed? Actually I did it twice because the first second baking just wasn't bakey enough. It finally got set after the third baking and into the fridge it went and I just tried a piece and I do believe I neglected to put sugar in it. It tastes very much like gnawing on a raw but custardy pumpkin. On the one hand I don't need a pie but on the other that was a whole lot of work to turn to nada like that. I suppose on the one hand it's a diet friendly pie now, sad.

That's all the dumb things. Why do I always want to talk about the dumb things first? On the good thing list I finished two quilts and a baby blanket for christmas. I have a few more things to sew up for my sister's girls and some pretty little bags I might make for my girly bath stuff gifts. I'm almost in the spirit now that my birthday is over. It was a very peaceful day and there was ice cream cake and I received the gift of a semi-used crock pot and a zone free dvd player so I can watch all 6 ridiculous seasons of Shameless. And I didn't have to cook dinner which is possibly the best present of all. I guess since I have the vampire hair I don't have to ever cook dinner again...I can just make with the pillaging. Upside.

"How many times have I told you not to hit people in the face."

I'm enjoying an unexpected day off. It's been a long week and I feel like a total ass for whine about working all week. I've had a horrible fever and I've been so tired. I made some soup for the week but I'm starving all the time, I can't remembr are you supposed to feed a fever? I spent my worst day in a really cold house and I'm wondering how hard your body has to work to keep warm because it felt like feeding coal into a fire for steam. I'm telling myself that snacking all day was important to my health, pivotal even.

I'm not sure what's wrong with me but a fever is never a good sign. I was worried about sharing my germs with the children I was watching but their dad who is a medical researcher told me about new studies that say the more infections you come across as a child the less likely you are to develop diabetes. It's fascinating really. My sister and I were trying to remember how sick we were as kids to see how we'd fare. It makes me wonder how the development and use of antibacterials ties in with the whole thing but mostly I'm looking at my ouchies and hot hot face with more enthusiasm.

"You ran me over with a goddamn Buick."

Thanksgiving is over, the big trip is done and it wasn't so bad and now the long road to christmas. I have three quilts started and soon I have to start baking and I have this turkey to cook for no occasion at all. I had wanted not to do any christmas things until after my birthday but the sewing takes time and I don't want to leave it last minute. I have some projects I haven't even decided on yet so I really have to get my head screwed on. I have some patterns for cute clothes but I can't make a decision and if I don't choose soon the children will be unwrapping bits of fabric and sewing needles.

It's been a hundred years since I did any blogging and even now I've spent hours staring at the screen. My creativity is stunted lately. It was nice to have a few days off but it was so hard to go back to work today. I hate how lazy I'm getting, it's genuinely sad. My head needs screwing on in all directions.

moody head shot

spoons

remembering summer

sitting pretty

"I'd like to say I haven't run over anyone since."

This morning I got my new glasses and now I can stand to look at the computer long enough to blog. I thought it was just annoying that the dog ate my glasses but it turns out it's also painful. I missed an opportunity to pick up new glasses at the beginning of the week and I've been paying for it because every afternoon my brain falls out of my head. I had no choice but to get them today because we're taking a trip and I can't bear to go on vacation blind. It's nice to see again but it seems I have a ton to do to get ready for this trip. This afternoon I'm packing up everything I own to take the dogs to pennsylvania. Every toy, every bone...it's all coming just in case the doggies look bored. I'm leaving no room for destruction of personal property that isn't my own. With my fingers crossed.

"I have a real strong urge to take you home and hose you down."

We got our first egg and almost lost our first chicken in the same day. The excitement about the egg is pretty much diminished by the fact that the dogs chased a chicken almost onto the highway and I was pretty sure she was dead. Turns out while I was frog marching the dogs back to the house the chicken got back to her old self and hid under some brush. She seems to be ok but it could have been bad for all of them if they wandered into the road.

It's been such a long week. It feels like a self fulfilling prophecy kind of thing, I was seeing everything in a bad light so one insane thing after another kept happening. I'm working hard on turning my thoughts around but it's very one day at a time. I'm stressed about thanksgiving which is practically a requirement for a traditional holiday experience. I have some sewing to do which is cathartic and a to do list a mile long which gives me a certain amount of pleasure to cross things off of.

In the meantime Hilary gave me a lovely blog award and part of the deal is I have to pass it on to 15 other newly discovered lovely blogs. FIFTEEN! That's a lot of love. It seems like the less I work the less I spend looking for great new blogs. I'm an internet hermit, it's pretty sad actually. So, instead of passing on the award I'm passing the buck big time and asking for recommendations of awesome new blogs to check out. For which there will be linkage and blog love and personal growth which is important for all of us.

Anyway, thanks Hilary. When I have a big beautiful list of new blogs I'll spread the award love to all!

"'I see you looking at my cookies..."

This morning has seriously sucked. Last night Knox wouldn't give up barking at the cat. We all got really crazy and angry and there was shouting because we are bastards. Knox had to go to the potty and we just wanted to sleep and I feel really bad about it. And in the midst of all that barking and shouting Jolie was chewing on something hard plastic...only she doesn't have any hard plastic toys. And I thought "gee, where did I put my glasses after our last potty run" and lo and behold Jolie was chewing on my glasses. My new glasses as of June, I think, are now completely ruined. It's only hundreds of dollars, NO BIG DEAL.

And then something happened with the furnace and Matt was swearing. And then he was swearing about his toast not being in the fridge, and then I went back to sleep full of fury. We just went for a walk, our usual morning run, only Knox went off to bark at a dead porcupine and got three quills in his nose. That's when my brain exploded. I lost my shit and no wonder the dogs didn't want to come to the screaming crazy woman. So I chased the scared, injured dogs all over the woods because I am a calm, assertive pack leader. And an asshole.

So, I'm full of guilt and anger and I'm tired and we're going to the park! To take a walk! Because it's SO beautiful out. If they were children I'd be buying them ponies.

"I had an alarm, I had nerve gas, I had a yogurt."

I downloaded a ton of coupons from stonyfield farm and subsequently I bought a whole lot of yogurt. So yogurt is my main snack right now. Yogurt all the time! In the future I won't download every coupon I could possibly use so I don't end up buying an entire cart full of yogurt at once. Not that it's bad to eat yogurt all the time, I feel very morally superior with my fat free yogurt snacks.

When I was visiting my sister I picked up a really great tip about portioning, not that she meant to. Most of her dishes are plastic and disney themed so she served us cereal in her teacups. She apologized for it but I think it was brilliant. Cereal is one of the things that I definitely have visual problems with so using a tea cup for cereal is pretty much the best idea ever. She says they use them for ice cream too on occasion and that's a great idea too. The need to fill a bowl is so strong and it's so much easier to fill a tea cup. It might be the easiest most obvious thing ever but I think it's the kind of simple genius that makes healthy habits easy to follow. And also now I feel like I'm allowed to buy all the beautiful tea cups I want!

No smart ass title today, just a really beautiful blueberry field turning with the leaves!

"it's the guilt that puts the weight on"

Back from Halloween in New Hampshire with the kids. The dogs were so tired after all the cuddling and playing they could hardly walk when we got home. Dogs and kids had such a good time, we all did and it didn't occur to me until it was actually halloween day that I didn't buy any halloween candy save the bag of candy corn I dropped in the dish water. I think that might be a first for me, all the years past I have bought candy for kids that will never come and usually it's gone before the 31st anyway. I didn't even think about it this year. I've been fighting that "I have to have some!!!" feeling that comes up around foods like that. I keep telling myself I can get what I want whenever, I don't have to have anything now let alone a whole bag of it and that always works. If I have to have a snickers some day I'm just going to buy one, it's the "I shouldn't" and the "I'm not allowed to" that always get me in trouble...reminding myself it's not now or never is a great tool for me.

In that department I'm back to running tomorrow. I think my legs enjoyed the break but it'll be good to stretch them again. It's not that I can't run at my sisters house but it's more trouble with leashes and cars and I never get a good night's sleep there. I don't know how she functions with all the chaos. Actually, we discussed napping because naps are a priority for her and I've never been a good napper. We don't speak the same language when it comes to napping but then I get 8-9 hours of solid sleep a night and she doesn't so obviously she needs a nap all the time, and a tranquilizer. I really appreciate my bed and my house and my life after stepping into someone else's for awhile. Through all the sleeplessness I learned that jojo is a very good guard dog. She woofed relentlessly at my sister's husband who came in late afterwork and didn't meet the dogs properly. I tried to tell her he wasn't a burglar but she would have none of it, not yet twenty pounds of piss and vinegar.

Back to reality tomorrow and maybe I'll even weigh myself just for kicks. In the meantime, a very cute song my sister got stuck in my head...

"I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times."

The woofs and I just finished our second awesome long jog for this week. It's amazing how much faster the walk goes when you run it. We ran twice as far as we usually walk in almost the same time. I shouldn't be amazed but I am. I thought running that route would be a bigger ordeal but it seems our long walks have put me in good shape because I don't feel any of the pain or frustration with myself I felt when I used to run on the road. And we haven't been eaten by a bear yet so it's all good.

Somehow I'm just not afraid of the critters anymore. I'm done with that because I have no intention of sitting in my house because there might be bears in the woods in Maine. And with the racket we make no way will anything cross our path on accident. I am a bit worried about the hunters though because I think probably the bears are smarter. Hunting season starts in exactly two days and I really hope it doesn't mean we have to stop running just when I'm starting to really like it again.

I'm kind of amazed at how easy it is to start this time. I've been underestimating the power of our long walks because I'm not any thinner. How terribly vain. Anyway, my legs and my lungs must be getting stronger because I didn't get any of that feeling like I couldn't take another breath or step. Except for dodging the loose rocks, the ground is much softer and easier on my knees than the paved road.

My goal is to rebuild a sense of routine into my life because that's when I function best and not just in a weight loss way. Doing something everyday makes the difference between choice and habit and I'm not allowed any more choices because I suck at making good ones consistently.

"Thinking very often resembles napping, but the intent is different."

There are these bins at the front of my grocery store which are always full of things that no one would want to buy ever. It's always obscure jello flavor overstock or last season's paper goods. Who wants to buy fourth of july themed paper products in October and especially who needs a pallet of them, seriously. But anyway, the point is that I bought something from the bins of destitute marketing failures and it was this:




Who wouldn't be interested? I wonder what they were thinking, was it like "hey, we like gingerale...we like green tea...why not?". Actually it was pretty decent, I don't know that I'd go out of my way to buy it again or that I'd buy enough to survive the apocalypse but I'm not horrified. There are so many products that come out and you really wonder why they had to go there. Do there really need 15 different ways of selling a peanut butter cup, does it really increase Reese's market share to come out with a new peanut butter cup derivation every 3 months? What is the word for creating your own competition, is there a business term for that? At what point are the new products coming out going to be so ridiculously unnecessary that evolution just ends? I thought it was those disposable toilet brushes but the sun keeps rising so I guess there's something more ridiculous yet to come.

"Cupcake, your middle name is trouble."

Today I met a cake that was too much for me. It was my clients birthday and we had a lovely lunch at the new Irish pub in town with a guinness chocolate cake for dessert. The cake was very good, but it was also four layers which was three layers too many. It's so weird because I have been looking forward to an excuse to eat cake guilt free. Until today at least. This morning I wanted to wear some new pants for the special occasion but uh oh, they didn't fit so hot. Which is why I came home to do pilates for ONE HUNDRED HOURS. I hate it when clothes don't fit that used to fit, it breaks the illusion that nothing is wrong. I like being delusional and eating cake and pretending nothing is wrong. Bummer.