Yeah
coming up on the final hours until I have to have the house DONE.
(It isn’t, of course… Tex got broken and hasn’t been able to do anything for the last week…normally that would be ok, but it meant that I had to take care of him and Bunny and do everything. Feh.)
OK, pics tomorrow when I have done the last minute stuff.
Emerging from the fog.
I had possibly the worst headache I have ever had that wasn’t a migraine last week.
Ended up staying home from work 2 days (and missed the layoffs… my timing is amazing. Just was a little trepidatious going back to work just in case they saved my pink slip for me to be there. They didn’t, am still gainfully employed…phew.) and not doing anything for a solid week (last weekend was a complete wash, but then I didn’t know if I had a flu or what and didn’t want to expose others much less move from my bed.) Being home with Bunny was nice though. She was sitting on me most of the time save when she got a bit too cold and then went back to her heating pad.
This was on the heels of having one of the most awesome Fridays I have had in a long time.
Tex stayed home with Bunny and let me go see Zoe Keating and I got to know a person from work better (she’s awesome… now I think I am separated at birth from several people now… very strange.) Anyhoo, completely wonderful concert.
Bunny is doing pretty well. Tex works Saturdays and is home on Mondays, and since he is available to be her beck and call boy, we have instituted “snot Mondays”. Its not really snot, but you wouldn’t know to dish up this cat food. Its Hill’s Prescription Diet Feline k/d with Chicken and it is possibly the most disgusting substance ever created by man. She loves it until it gets oxidized and then won’t have anything to do with it. So Tex dishes it up on Mondays in tiny little bits until she refuses it.
This seems to help with her stomach acid problem over and above the pepcid I give her every night. The vet said that it shouldn’t be a big deal if she eats only the Royal Canin pouches all the time, but it makes a difference nonetheless. So, we do it.
Remember when music was EVERYTHING? (and, of course, it might STILL be for you, Rob Gordon)
You didn’t have to obsess over mortgages, side businesses, kids, illness, daily pill schedules and all that other pesky shit that being an adult entails.You could focus on the newest music (work in a music shop then discover music that no one’s ever discovered right in the back of the shop, on the left!), make mix tapes WITH DEEP PHILOSOPHICAL IMPORT and do cover art that is teh awesome and immerse yourself in it… wallowing in the angst (and joy) like a dog rolling around in something smelly.
Anyhoo, in the midst of my terrible weekend and ensuing bad week, I Netflix’d Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist and sat down to watch it.
Its another “all night teen adventure” movie, but it was definitely cute and the music kicked ass. Brought back those old immersion memories.
Seriously this last month and a half has kicked my ass 9 ways from Sunday.
But I just keep trudging though (its what I do) until I get through to the next part where it might not suck so much. Its just that sometimes its very tiring to do so.
There’s another post worth of crap to talk about, but I’m not in the mood to weed through my melodrama, so I will leave you with a charming photo of my shower curtain because I know that is why you read this…
New Year’s Day and beans.
I grew up with the dictum that you had to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s day for some reason (there actually is a reason, it just never made it into my skull) also I hated them, so I would eat 1 pea and run away.
Then I found a cheap store brand of canned black eyed peas that didn’t taste like playground sand and suddenly I put them in lots of things.
And when recently broke out my crock pot [black beans, beef stew] that had been languishing in a cabinet as it didn’t have room to work anywhere until I cleared off some things… and made some black beans that were utter heaven, I decided to try my hand at black eyed peas for New Year’s Day.
O. My. Gawd.
They were fantastic…and when I put a little brisket juice in there I just about wept.
We also put up the Stolmen in the kitchen (in between me eating huge serving spoonful’s of beans and Tex gnawing on the brisket like a great white shark on a dead whale); it looks rather nifty. (My arms don’t work very well anymore, but such trifles…)
I got one more stacking shelf on top of the one I have already, tucked it in to the area that the freezer doesn’t take up, and now I have a nifty set of shelves for my 400,000 pound cast iron enamelware pot that I… um… can’t currently lift, my other enamelware pan that is mocking me as well and my electric kettle that doesn’t get used too terribly much lately, the rice cooker (a.k.a. quinoa cooker) and some odds and ends.*
I also broke down and spent $11 on a wee tiny crock pot (<— 1.5 qt ChefMate @ Target, that image isn’t exactly it, but it is close.) so that I can lift it, clean it quickly and store it in the shelves easily.
I returned the 1.5 qt crockpot in favor of a 2.5 qt version. It isn’t as pretty, I did like the all white, but I needed that extra quart.
I’ll be doing little batches of beans here and there so this should make it lots easier. I’ll still have my monster crock (6qt) for parties and potlucks at work (I’ve been recently adopted by the Sales team who seem to like my cooking) and the occasional meal, but frankly, I think the size of it in my small kitchen kept me from using it more often.. not to mention that it doesn’t really fit in my sink to wash and it is stoneware, so it weighs a ton. After all that buzzing around, I’m too pooped to wash it immediately.
Bad.
It gets soaked with some soap in it more often than not.
(Also, I can’t wait to test the little guy with the Kill-A-Watt to see how it performs. I bet I could run it easily on a solar panel.)
I need to put together the last two magazine storage boxes from Ikea that will house things like travel mugs, tea cozies and other infrequently used linens, my KitchenAid mixer attachments (juicer, meat grinder), party ware (cups and plastic ware that I still have after years) and a few other odds and ends that I don’t need to get to on more than a monthly basis. I put a clothes rail on the long section so that I can hang my veggie hanging basket, but otherwise, aside from still being cluttered from the rearrange, its almost done.
Yes, I will post a picture soon.
Black Eyed Peas
Mine were done in a 6 quart slow cooker, it filled about half the pot when all was said and done.
- 1 pound dried black eyed peas
- 1/3 pound bacon
- 1/4 white onion chopped
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/4 tsp (?) minced garlic
1. Put the peas into a large pot covered with 2 inches of water over the tops of the peas.
2. Bring peas to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 15 minutes.
3. Turn off heat and let peas sit for 1 hour
4. Drain peas, remove unpretty and icky looking peas from the bowl.
5. Pour peas into slow cooker (its still off at this point)
6. In a pan, melt butter and saute onion and garlic until onions are translucent
7.
In another pan (or the same one if big enough-I do all of this in my cast iron enamelware pot.) cook the bacon, then chop into 1 inch pieces.
8. Pour ALL of this onto the beans in the crockpot (bacon grease and all)
9. Add water to cover about 1 inch over top of beans, set to LOW and cook for 12 hours.
NOTE: I tend to start these around 8 pm the night before and then add a bit of water just before I go to bed to make certain they don’t cook off too much water and dry out.
10. In the morning, about an hour before you are ready to spoon them, up, taste the beans. They may need some salt. I usually add about a tbsp of coarse sea salt and give it a good stir. Adding salt at the table for individual tastes at this point usually is pretty easy to make it right.
BONUS: If you have a brisket cooking as well, add a spoonful or two of juice to each bowl of beans you spoon up…
I’m seriously pondering using the big pot again next weekend and making a soup of collard green’s, black eyed peas, brisket meat and naming it New Year’s soup.
Spicy cornbreads to accompany it, natch.
Next experiment might just be a gumbo.
My uncle makes them so I guess its in my genetic makeup to be able to cook them (as well as being genetically a smart-ass and having a predilection for puns).
[Mom, send me Unc Gary's number please. Thankyouvermuch.]
*I’m not experiencing any strange neuralgia or weakening in any weird medical sense, but I go crazy cooking, cleaning and rearranging furniture after not doing it for a while then my poor little arms get sore. But really, those damn enamelware pots are fekkin’ heavy regardless.
after n’at
(Hi Eden!)
After all that stupid fluster over acorn pans and crap customer service, guess what showed up on my door on xmoose eve?
Yup.
I have no idea how they managed that since 1. it was supposed to be shipped to the store so I wouldn’t pay shipping and 2. I told them to cancel the order in my digust-I suppose the order wasn’t truly canceled nor were they actually paying attention.
I left it in its box and glared at it for a few days to let Williams-Sonoma know that I haven’t quite forgiven them for that whole FUBAR transaction (my guess is that they haven’t noticed), then broke it out on the 27th and made little spicy cornbreads for the party.
Yum… and yes, they were adorable…and no, of course I didn’t remember to take pictures of anything.
Some food blogger I am.
Party menu always fluctuates, since, in my haste (and in my teeny tiny nigh to overflowing kitchen) I inevitably forget something. Its not the end of the world, but I think I need to design a print out page for party planning for myself (I’ll post a PDF when it is done).
The menu turned out like this:
Black beans: with a can of Guinness, 1/2 pound of applewood smoked bacon and half an onion, slow cooked for 24 hours.
Wee Acorn shaped cornbreads: made with honey, sweet corn, Zatarain’s, heavy cream and parmesan cheese all on top of the Jiffy cornbread mix
Chicken salad: (based on Costco’s Chicken Sonoma salad which wasn’t in fekkin’ stock) chicken, cranberries, poppy seed dressing, pasta shells
baked brie
deli meats
french bread
chips and spinach dip
a giant cupcake
chocolate chip cookies
The little puff pastry appetizers that I got and baked stuck to the foil on the pan and WOULD NOT release, so i didn’t put them out, though I noticed that they got eaten anyway.
Still, disappointing.
Xmoose meal had to be portable, so i decided to try my hand at a brisket. I called the world’s expert in brisket making (my dad) and he told me the ‘recipe’ over several days (several different calls saying "Did I tell you this? No? Well, do this.")
Effectively it ended up being this:
- get a brisket
- stick it in a pan, fat side up (one of those disposable turkey pans is fine)
- cover it in pepper (who does he think he’s talking to? I skipped that step)
- cover it in garlic powder (now we’re talking)
- cover the pan in foil
- cook it at 225 for 8-10 hours (or till it falls apart when you poke it)
I think I got a substantially larger brisket than he does usually because mine took 12 hours.
I popped it in before I went to bed around 11:30pm, poked at it when I got up to feed Bunny then went back to bed for a few hours while it finished up, then let it cool and packed it up to go to Mikey’s.
It was yummy. So very tender (and fatty, but I have ordered a gravy separator to combat this…and considering I like my moo cow well marbled, this is saying something. I also bought a real roasting pan as this will start being a regular food in the house. Just have to plan the timing around overnight cooking. I wonder if I could do this in the crock pot…?) and it seemed to go over well at the dinner.
…and Tex keeps asking for more.
So, as it is cheap, easy and even *I* didn’t screw it up, I will do another…especially as I got that nifty roasting pan on sale and with a coupon. ;) Its not an especially heavy pan, but I just didn’t want to start buying and going through those disposable ones unless I really needed to (like traveling with the food); it just seemed a waste. But I think it will be ok if I am nice to it.
Last night I stood in the kitchen (doing a post mortem on my party) and looked at my current configuration of the dining area. I can’t do much to the kitchen itself (but if I ever bought this apartment – do you do that? mentally list the structural changes you would do if you owned the place you live in now and money wasn’t an issue? (provided you don’t own the place you live in already and are richer than Croesus?) as it is a mess o’ built-ins, cheap appliances and not plumbed or wired for much interesting stuff. Not to mention plaster and lathe walls that don’t support anything without crumbling. Plus, there’s that whole earthquake thing that you have to plan for just in case… though I’ve never had anything fall, the minute I put something up precariously, we’d have a big fucker.) Anyhoo… I looked at my options and they involved going up and being freestanding. I wanted that corner maple unit that I tried to order ages ago (with a couple of bookshelves, a corner storage area and closed storage) but it still isn’t orderable. I didn’t find anything else that suited my tastes. So Tex suggested Stolmen.
I like that idea, as it is modular, it can work in another space and he seems to like it. Fine by me.
So over the next few weeks, we’ll build a set that straddles the chest freezer, a clothes rail high enough to open the freezer door (and I’ll hang my veggie baskets on it which can be moved easily out of the way to open the freezer door), a couple of high up shelves for deep storage (like xmoose decorations and other things that aren’t too heavy. I might put a string around the top shelves to keep the magazine boxes from Ikea from sliding off if we have a shaker.).
Then I’ll get one more pole and do a short set of shelves where the Mac Mini is now with a clothes rail at the very top for hanging a paper lantern for light.
I got some pieces last night at Ikea… so I’ll bribe Tex with brisket, and we’ll put up the shelves (and snipe at each other while we do this as we always do) on New Year’s Day.
Living room still needs some tidying but I’ll get pics posted eventually along with the progress in the kitchen.
Also, I want a dishwasher. I’m just saying.
Also also, these parties are starting to kick my ass, I feel hungover after them… am I getting old? Arg.
I was trolling around Facebook for apps and found an iTunes gadget, it purports to post what you are listening to on iTunes in your status, however, as I am currently listening to a 3 song playlist *on repeat* for at least 5 hours a day (yeah, I know.) it probably is of limited interest to the Facebookians who watch my status updates with bated breath. But then again , most of my updates aren’t that startlingly interesting.
Last week, as you know, my aunt died and while virtually everyone in my family piled into cars and airplanes to get to a tiny town in West Texas, I did not.
This doesn’t mean I didn’t love her, but I would have been a mess and would have probably spent the weekend hiding in a closet blubbering incoherently and missing Bunny (as well as getting psychotic over my cat’s well-being) hence, my lack of movement.
I did spend about 50% of each day on mom’s iPhone or the house phone at my grandmother’s talking to anyone there. I got text messages, pictures and wildly incoherent voice-mails documenting late night cookie making processes and the subsequent torment of my grandmother by her older grand children and her daughter (this is not unusual, we do this anyway. And since Meme hasn’t smothered any of us in our sleep, we have to assume she likes it since she has had ample opportunity to put us out of her misery.)
Mom said the funeral and the memorial service was brutal, so while I will always feel guilty about not going, I am glad I made that policy and don’t go to these things anymore.
I did extract a promise from my cousins that we would all go there when someone wasn’t dead (though I phrased it as "during a happier time").
Lots of good pictures came out of it… and some video I will be squirreling away for blackmail at a later date. ;)
Am back at work now, and its kind of a relief. Sad.
Though I do get to start my new Moleskine 2009 calendar book this week! Hooray!
so…the living room.
This last week was not good.
My aunt died, and given how I deal with that kind of thing (umm…I don’t.) I decided to finally do the living room cleanup/rearrange/prep for a possible tv addition to keep myself from dwelling on it.
I pondered several systems (actual entertainment systems need not apply… I need the lego/tetris aspect of furniture to rearrange into something else eventually.) like the cube system from IKEA…but as much as I love it, I just couldn’t go shell out for it (that in itself is telling) because even though it was beautiful, it was a bit too expensive to be so inflexible and heavy for furniture …
Expedit
Then I thought about doing Stolmen in the living room..and would love to do that eventually, but I don’t want to lay out $350 right now.
OK, how about about rearranging my 3 shelf bookcase (see below, the little shelf on the right) and adding one more to make a stand ($20 additional outlay)… putting them together and it would be the perfect height.
Well, then I measured and pondered and schemed (and got my xmoose present from grama) and then hopped in the car at 9:45pm (hooray for Target’s extended holiday hours) and got several more shelves to go all the way across the wall.
I think the best picture I have of them is my craptacular Treo picture:
I still have some rearrangifying to do and artfully arranging all the Gameboy and PSP games that we have…but that shouldn’t be too difficult. That one big hole in the middle is about the only place that I really don’t have something that specifically lives there.
And here they are all fancy with little lights on…
OK, I like.
…and I promise to take a picture of the living room as a whole slightly before the party saturday (a.k.a. the cleanest the place will be until my next party. ;))
Tis the season
for my nesting instinct to go crazy ape-shit bonkers. (This is also exacerbated by HGTV finally freakin’ putting up content for me to watch on the web…welcome to 2008 kiddies. Also, if you think that you can watch this on a wee netbook over wireless, you’d be thinkin’ wrong my friend. Plug in for this.)
Quandry: Why are carpenters always so hot and yummy?
So several things are gnawing at me.
1. I can’t decide if I just love this cakelet pan because its kind of winter-y or if I’ll use it all year long (I’m not so obsessed by the acorns only being winter, I suspect that I will like it all year round but I also don’t know if I’m just crushing on it right now.)
Wouldn’t these be fantastic as madeleine, corn muffins (with black beans), yellow cake acorns…
I got the idea here…
2. I spend all week planning for a 2 hour period (generally on SAT morning) to sit and drink a cup of coffee, have a little nosh and possibly read some newspaper type device and enjoy the quiet…until Bunny starts yellin’. :)
(Oh my sweet yell-y cat.)
Hasn’t happened yet, but it gets me through the week.
3. Lesson 1 on how to kick me into house obsession mode: I’m having some folks over for a “Split the Difference” party…in between xmoose and New Year’s…
So far the menu is:
- A small cassoulet (using my smaller Ikea bowl-if you eat a lot of cassoulet, its all over… you are in happy coma and you won’t want anything else.)
- Crock pot black beans (with little acorn corn breads… lots of Zatarain’s)
- Giant cupcake
- Baked brie with caramelized onions (based on this)
hmmm… still haven’t figured out what else I’ll be making, but I’ll update later.
Also, this isn’t edible…. but I have my eye on something like this:
Well… I might gnaw on it a little because it is so pretty…
Weekend recap
Priority items first: Bunny is GREAT. (I didn’t post on Saturday and Mama texted me a little worried – she knows I just shut down when bad things happen, I think I posted it on Facebook though.)
No bloodwork back yet, but the vet was super impressed that she gained 2 whole pounds and is eating all the time.
He seemed concerned and asked how much regular cat food I was giving her but wasn’t all that upset when it only turned out to be about 10-15% of her food all day.
He said he had planned to test for hyperthyroid, but that since she hadn’t lost weight (and kept it on without me using the anti-nausea medicine AT ALL) he didn’t need to test for it.
He said keep doing exactly what I am doing, its clear she’s thriving (and I told him about her being excited about the renal diet food and trotting though the house, then levitating on to the very high bed and he looked thoughtful and said “amazing. at 17 even.”) and I might not have to bring her back for 4 months this time depending on the numbers.
I got a second prescription for a different brand of renal diet food to maybe get her off the regular cat food – it wasn’t a problem with Bunny needing the flavor, but when I tried to move her only onto the renal stuff, she got a bit runny and I sort of freaked out and didn’t want to lose any ground by letting her get anywhere near dehydrated again. So I went back to the previous mix. He said that was weird but if it made a difference, definitely keep her hydrated. I asked if he wanted to give me another script for a different kind of food to try to see if that would work instead, he did and I need to order it today..can’t find anything locally at all.
Saturday had started off way too early.
At 5 am (you know, that time I don’t ever want to see) Bunny was jumping up and down on me a little worried. I figured that she was just hungry, so I rearranged her food only to find that the ants were there before me.
So I dragged my arse out of bed, fed her in the kitchen so we’d have about 5 hours in between feeding and the vet visit (they say 12 hours, but it is just too hard on her to go that long without. I told the vet that and that the last time we came in she didn’t do 12 hours either and the numbers held steady then as well. We shall see, but I’m still not going to torture my cat when I know I can prevent it.). Then I attacked the ants with the Method Grapefruit Wipes and spray. Works like a charm, but I’m not charming at 5 am, so I made coffee and watched some infomercials.
I knew if I went back to sleep I’d miss the vet appointment, but I catnapped anyway and woke up just in time to throw clothes on, catch Bunny and go.
She was utterly unamused by this trip.
Survived the trip there, the appointment and back home (Bunny didn’t unwind as much as she had previously, so she sulked for a little while when I got back.) I knew if I fell asleep I was going to sleep all day, so Tex and I went to Mikey and Lee’s and got some errands done, had some AMAZING ribs then came home to feed the Bunny.
She’d forgiven me by then.
Sunday I got a harebrained scheme to fix my closet that refuses to be tidy. I moved my Elfa drawers back into the actual (and woefully inadequate) closet then decided to add another hanger rod where it used to be (here is a pic of the set, but it is two iterations out of date… the luggage was where the Elfa drawers were and now the new hanger rod.) to hang all my trail clothes/cold weather clothes/favorite new thing du jour.
Have I mentioned I LOVE Stolmen? Its like a closet version of Tinkertoys.
I got more hangers at Ikea on a kamikaze run last night before they closed (I was feeling that manic feeling where I’d never sleep if I didn’t get this done RIGHT THEN) as well as that light that I wanted originally, a new dish scrubby and some skirt hangers. Got it all hung and leveled (with the help of a free iPod touch app ;) ) and my clothes are being arranged slowly. I need a few more of those padded pants hangers from Target, but they were out of stock yesterday when we went. I’ll go today after the doctor’s appointment. (Podiatrist, the foot is immensely better, but still not there… it feel crunchy when I accidentally roll on it and that squicks me out something fierce.)
I’m tired and busy (nothing new) and all I want to do is hang out with the Bunny and either read or design new closet iterations (nothing new).Still need to win the lotto, but it is being recalcitrant.
the room progression is slow
It took a couple of weeks to get the latest stuff put up in my latest Stolmen variations. But we finally got a shelf upon high, another hanger pole (not for clothes, mostly for stability and for hanging a light… and the Ringer’s Lactate for Bunny.) and the stuff around them arranged this last weekend.
The other night I went to Cost Plus after work to see what kind of pendant/hanging lights they had for cheap and I almost settled for a lamp kit and a paper lantern, but it didn’t seem exactly right. I pawed through the patio/xmoose lights and saw some that would be ok, but not exactly right either. Then, as I made my 57th pass through the same aisle, I saw a set of lights with Chinese silk shades that were just about perfect (would have been more perfect if they were a bit cheaper and if one of the tassels weren’t missing. Its not terribly obvious though…) So I got those and then came home to put them up.
They look fantastic… I really love them.
I also got a “branch light” (that looks like a tree branch with no leaves and LEDs out the end) and was pretty excited about it, but when I plugged it in at home and half the lights weren’t working I was less excited. Then I sat back and couldn’t really figure out what I wanted to do with it so I will probably just return it rather than exchanging it. The good thing about this is that I will get some moola back, the bad thing is that I will be near to the red picnic basket that I virtuously resisted the other night. We’ll see if I can resist it again.
My closet is still a war zone, but I think I can get rid of a bunch of stuff (cross your fingers) and get it usable again. I’ve already gone through a bunch of shirts/pants and hung them up nicely and weeded out a bunch of clothes on hangers I really don’t need there. Anything that didn’t get on a hanger (or in one of the very few drawers I actually have) might just have to get gone.
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately… no idea why, just have wanted to. Tex is requesting alfredo sauce on a daily basis, so I guess he likes that. I still do my strange “have one thing for dinner” on occasion, such as Sunday night we had corn on the cob for dinner (organic white corn, yum.), another night I had an artichoke, etc. Though I did another roast bird (cornish game hen) and splurged with mushrooms, carrots and potatos! Wow! Variety!
Still haven’t figured out my next big meal. Might involve butternut squash (since I have one mocking me in the dish on the cabinet.) but might turn out to be a cassarole. Tony Bourdain ate an ant egg frittata on No Reservations when he was in Laos, but I don’t think I want to make that.
Leo Yahoo Horoscope
I hope I’m not repeating myself and if I am that you can forgive me but it really is a case of “hang on in there” right now for you. The Sun is slowly but surely coming to the end of its annual stay in your 12th House, which is basically the darkest part of your chart. When the Sun is here, it means it’s been 12 months (nearly) since your birthday and ergo 12 months since you last had the rejuvenating glorious rays of the Sun in your sign. Which, in a nutshell, is why you’re so ex-haus-ted.
In other news, its been 8 (7+1) years since I got married (and subsequently divorced) I am a whole new person now-cellular and otherwise.
Good.
I have to get the closet area cleaned IMMEDIATELY. Bunny now looks attentively at the floor from her bed upon high like she is sighting a mouse. It wouldn’t be out of the question in this old building, but it would be out of the question for one to be in my bedroom, thankyouverymuch.
So, I need to get everything tidied and make it so that there are fewer places for hiding. We’ll just hope she’s hearing it scurrying around in the walls or along the outdoor wall of the building.
Bunny is super well.
She was batting around a piece of paper on the floor the other day… its so weird having an actual cat again. (She never has done it for long… 10 seconds is her max at playing, then she gets weirded out and runs away). Still trotting around, eating incessantly, REALLY hating the fluids now that she’s so full. Its a struggle to be consistent about it, but I can’t even remotely give her the full amount each night so we settle for at least half every day and I sneak in lots of water in her food bowl.
She’s working out all the mats and grooming (hence the hairball the other day – nifty.) and looking really good. Her fur is back to Bunny silk again and its nice to run my hands along her and not feel boniness or rough fur.
I am trying not to dwell on it, but HOW THE HELL DID I LET HER GET THAT BAD?
I’m a bad person.
Gah.
…but every day I still tell her thanks for wanting to hang around with me and I send of mental thanks to the universe for the ongoing gift that is Bunnycat.
good weekend. suck monday.
isn’t that how it usually is though?
I actually felt like I got some things accomplished this weekend… and managed to walk to the front door without horking up a lung…progress!
I’ve been thinking about that sweater I felted… I think I will put a zipper in, possibly add a knitted neck and then I might embroider it a bit with grey thread for pattern but nothing really bright.
Voila, new jacket.
I repotted the ivy and put my little houseplant sized garden gnome from Target in it. (sorry Eden.)
Did some reorganizing in the kitchen with snapware (the kitchen; I am not in love with it lately with because of ants) and made breakfast twice.
I made some killer home fries (zatarain’s, onions, butter and chile powder), bacon and eggs then experimented with buckwheat pancake mix from Whole Foods the next day. They looked pretty weird (like hamburger patties) but tasted enough like pancakes that I didn’t just toss them.
Not a bad weekend.
Then Monday sucked.
Whatever.
Also? Fuck ants.
Home office v2 (v200 more like)
<– Well, it doesn’t look like this (which I love, but probably couldn’t realistically work in) but it is better.
I broke down after probably 6 months of trying to find a reasonably priced set of shelves that:
1. matched
2. I liked
3. held all my shite tidily.
I had been pondering ladder shelves for ages, but the $250 price really set my money sphincter into tight closure (you loved that image, didn’t you? I know. This is why you keep coming back, I’m such a classy dame.) So when I saw the shelves at Lowe’s for $119 and I passed them by, and then kept thinking about them I knew it was decided. That’s one of my shopping tricks; if you don’t immediately just buy it because price isn’t an issue and it s THE PERFECT THING then you really need to think. If after a week of other things you are still thinking about it, then go ahead.
The thing is, I was trying to find something that wouldn’t make things look cluttered (and with the amount of stuff I have, that is a task-plus, I like looking at all my stuff, so it always looks busy when you first glance at it). I went on Flickr to see what kind of home offices people had. Pretty much there’s a split between the highly visually appealing, yet unusable (puffy little stools to sit on, papers artfully arranged, scanner hidden etc) or there’s the “its all in bins but still looks like there are just piles of stuff up on the floor”, the walls are bare, the standard office chair sits there and cheap desk with everything tidy but super boring to look at. (I had at one point subscribed to the unclutterer site but they were taking it a bit to far for my tastes. (their workspaces of the week are more balanced though) It was generally the laptop and an uninteresting box pushed off into the corner and nothing on the walls.
Really, what’s the point? College students can do that. I’m not a college student. (To be fair, I understand the encouraging the cleaning impulse, but some people just trash everything to please and don’t look for balance.)
I live in a very weirdly shaped apartment, but building options are limited for me. So closing up my office area in a set of built-ins isn’t an option. I have a closet in the living room that would make a nice office, but I NEED the storage space (everything I own is pretty much in this apartment-a few things are at mom’s or daddy’s but not much.) Martha Stewart can do it because she isn’t cramming her whole empire into one place. She has freakin’ gift wrapping rooms fer crissakes (not that I begrudge that, I’d have a packing/closet/travel room if I had that luxury) but lets be realistic here, I spend at least 5 hours a night working at home and one day a week I have to accommodate another laptop and I must be kept amused.
So far so good.
I plugged in my KVM switch, which seems to have a short in it now and is a bit wonky, I can get to the scanner without un-piling it everytime, I can easily flick off the power strip with non-essentials during the day, I have enough toys out to look interesting but isn’t that cluttered and I can type and design for several hours at a time.
[edit:found out what was wrong with my KVM "You might have to jiggle the remote switch plug a little before you get contact. The light on the remote switch must glow either green or yellow. If not, jam the plug in harder. "]
yay me. ;)
hutch
Got it (and apologized profusely, again, to my ever suffering UPS guy) last night.
I knew I wasn’t going to get to it last night, but I had it on the list for tonight and tomorrow. What I didn’t count on was Tex screwing up his back at work, not because I expected him to put this together… feh, I’ve done more than this on my own for the past 20 years thankyouverymuch, but because he is so bitchy and pissy when he is sick or hurt.
One thing goes wrong? He’s negative and pissy for an hour.
So when I started looking into the parts of the hutch in the boxes, he put on his martyr voice and said he’d put it together. I told him while I snooping around the boxes that if was going to act like Marvin the paranoid android on the rag he could drag his happy ass out of my kitchen and let me do what I wanted. So he left, as he knows better than to argue with me when I *actually am* the one PMSing.
I managed to clean the area where it was going to go and moved books, wine, napkins that need a good wash, silver and other sundries around to give me working space until I saw a 9 foot spider with a mohawk scoot off into the wilds of the kitchen.
So I allowed as how I could work on this tomorrow.
(Though it won’t be perfect, one very visible corner is a bit munged from shipping. sigh. We’ll see if they will give me another one. I’m still putting the damn thing together for turkey day. )
I love this
but I can’t help but look at it and think… oh the bugs are going to get into my food.
Can you tell I’ve lived in buggy areas much?
But, I think (surprise) that I would do a red or black wallpaper for this instead of blue. This particular shade is nice, but would make me look like the undead next to it.
Also love this…
What NOT to buy in earthquake country
RUSTIC BRONZE PEDESTAL
Pedestal $8.00- $15.00
L-shaped shelves of bronzed metal mount to the wall, providing compact display platforms for small vases or decorative objects. Mounting hardware included. 4″ sq., 3.5″ h.
[Pottery Barn]
all over the fekkin’ place
I went to Marshall’s earlier this week to see what they had in stock for my vision of Turkey Day. I am not buying a lot, but there were just a few pieces I didn’t have for serving that I wanted.
I have these black square plates, but I only have 5 and I wanted a round number for a buffet type party thingy. 5 didn’t quite cover it. I looked at the usual places I used to see them, but I worried that they were out of print production. And it was Monday so I was in that nutzoid state that just clawed at my chest in frettitude. (as an aside, if I let myself fret like this by myself, I make this noise like my mom’s dog Sophie when she gets frustrated or whatever it is that she is upset about. I have no idea what that is. Its ok Sophie, honey. I understand.) And I just couldn’t find anything that would work along with them (I could deal with a black plate that complimented them or a white one – but everything seemed to be a too different feel) and so I did a serious amount of Google image searching, but then I finally went to BB&B’s website and found them! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I guess I forget they are online.
So, that’s ordered.
Now I was looking for little tiny soup bowls that are not curved at all, sort of delicate and white. Somewhat like ramekins, but without the fluting… and taller. I’d never seen any, so I really had no idea if they even existed. I’ll be making squash soup and I figured no one is going to want a huge bowl of squash soup (no matter how damn good it is with creme fraiche) with all the other food I’ll be shoveling into their gobs. (No one goes hungry around me on Turkey Day.) and I figured small bowls that they could put on the black plates would give them enough soup and they would be able to have it all on the plate without having to carry around two dishes. (Though I will have TV trays strategically placed around the house for setting things down.)
I found some normal ramekins at Marshall’s as well as some drinking glasses (my last set I bought in Austin during college; out of 12 I am on my last one. So I allowed as how I could buy another 12 and they would last for several years as well.)
So I bought 2 sets of 4 (and needed to go look for a third set hence the return to a different Marshall’s-and I got some at the other one, so I returned from the hunt triumphant.) and the ramekins that I could return if I found the perfect thing somewhere else later. I like Marshall’s. They sometimes have the weird pieces in my china pattern and I am a total Polish Pottery slut, so I go there to fondle them without buying. (Does that make me a Polish Pottery tease?) but they also have lots of cool pottery and dishes.
I am pretty good at resisting kitchen things since my kitchen is wee tiny and I have no real storage, but I am on a mission for Turkey Day, so I allowed myself a nice white baking casserole dish which will look beautimous with the soup in it.
I also found the PERFECT BOWL, however, it had no price tag and I was pretty sure it was a sugar bowl missing the lid. I would have tried to buy it, but only one of the PERFECT BOWL just wouldn’t cut it and I’d just completely get wiggy over it…. So, I. Just. Let. It. Go. (I’m working on it, really.) Though I did make a note of the manufacturer mark on the bottom…
Ah well.
But it happened that the PERFECT BOWL happened to be the same imprint as the casserole I got as well…
The imprint is b.i.a. cordon bleu and when I Googled it, the PERFECT BOWL appeared right there on the front page of the website. (Well, actually turns out I want the 8oz quiche dishes… and I found them here. But still… I love it when I find the exact thing that is in my head.)
Can you hear the chorus of angels? Yes, this has been an utterly manic/depressive week.
Now I just have to order some.
And then the bufet.
