"...no dead end in sight..."

write what you know

Last night at around...9ish?...we drove through Steak n Shake. No, I can't eat their fries. It's not that they taste bad - they are tiny and delicious - but since my body warranted a visit to the gastroenterologist my body tells me repeatedly that their fries, and most fries in general, are a huge delicious no-no. I can, however, drink massive amounts of Diet Coke, ever present in a combo meal.

Can I say too that I've essentially cut Diet Coke out of my diet? And this has been really, really hard. I'm a Texas girl, and an office worker at that - Diet Coke and a bagel are like ambrosia first thing in my workday. Some people drink iced tea, but office minions chug Diet Coke like breathing oxygen. So I quit cold turkey and have been substituting Crystal Light raspberry lemonade packets when I need something sweet to drink. Sure, I pee all the time, but if I'm going to pee anyway it might as well be healthy, drinking-water pee. ...wow, that was totally too much information. ANYway.

So here's the formula. Caffeine + a huge nap yesterday meant that I was still awake at 3 o'clock this morning. I'd been playing Sims since before midnight but then I was physically exhausted and my mind wouldn't shut off.

I thought about all the projects I was working on, and then it came to me. I got The Idea, the motherlode-slash-jackpot-slash-Girl Scout Cookie equivalent of Thin Mints type of story. I crawled into bed and listened to Jay breathe in his sleep and tried to shut my eyes but my brain just wouldn't quit turning it over. It was a Rubix cube of a kernel of an idea and I wouldn't quit trying to get all the colors to line up.

My problem is that this happens, sometimes. I get an idea right before I fall asleep, and my brain says "HEY you might want to write that down!" It then gets into a huge struggle with my body, who is like "Shut UP, Brain, as I am tired and will hit you with something blunt and shiny." Brain says, "But -" and my body retaliates by falling asleep. It's wonderful how one-sided their symbiosis is.

So I have a history of waking up the next morning, knowing that I had an awesome idea the night before, but with a huge blank space in my memory as to precisely what it was.

So I wrote down one word, on a little post-it note, with a dark green fine-point Sharpie, and left it on my desk. Not that it mattered. I knew the minute I woke up this morning what I wanted to do.

This may provide an all-consuming void-filler for the next five months, until Nanowrimo starts up. Or it may fizzle out after the first page. But here I go again, on another lovely jaunt. And yes, waking up at 9 o'clock means that I am doing this on six precious hours of sleep, so it may not make sense. But here I go anyway.

last one for today, honest

Since June is just around the corner I am taking the mid-year mark as a cue to go over our finances. While there are lots of things that I want to save for in 2010, it looks like paying off my credit card has started to take precedent over most other pending financial issues. And I mean really, none of them are issues, per se. It's just a combination of me being infernally impatient and greedy XD

So the next six months are going to be paying that stupid thing off. Also trying to see where I can squeak out a few hundred bucks here and there, mostly in the form of Ebay. I heart Ebay. It's pretty dang awesome that people will pay me money for my seemingly useless junk.

This weekend has been relatively productive thus far. Pookie pretty much did laundry for me, which is supah, and I've cleaned most of the kitchen, which was gnawing at me during this week. OH AND ALSO took a three-hour nap today. I usually don't nap, but maybe I need to start. Just like I am thinking I may make a point this week to start doing the stairs at work again.

This is precisely why I update more frequently than every couple of weeks. No updates, and then a zillion. Time to go be productive (or not). Yay weekend~

a food post, sort of

Food-wise, I am jonesing to bake some bread tomorrow. I found a recipe for lovely kalamata olive bread, with a crunchy focaccia-like texture, but that's always so messy. I also think now that summer is official that the Foreman grill is going to be a semi-permanent fixture on our little countertop. Between grilling and finding crisp new summer salads (and sandwiches? I found a lovely one last night with white cheddar and - get this - crunchy green apple slivers) I would like to experiment with an ice cream maker.

Something I've learned, too, while shopping for produce, is that shopping with a recipe in mind is often a lot more difficult than shopping needs to be. Sometimes I crave food that is out of season (ie: peaches in the winter), and maybe it's easier in the long run to say "fruit" instead of "peaches", find what you can, then get home and go online and see what all you can throw in a pan to make a meal. I have mad respect for people who can do that - just open up the fridge, find a bunch of ingredients, and toss them all together.

I also have been saving glass pasta sauce containers, with the hopes that I can somehow reuse them. I thought about making homemade ice cream and keeping it in the freezer, like we did at home with pasta sauce, but I don't know how reusable the lids would be (and rustproof, which was my main concern other than the cleanliness of reusing a lid that was formerly crusted with potentially moldy pasta sauce. Would washing the lids in scalding soapy water impede them from sealing correctly? Who knows. I don't want to ruin a batch of delicious ice cream, or other food, trying to find out). My next question is, could I buy standard canning lids at the grocery store that would fit my glass containers? Do they even sell lids separately (I'm pretty sure they do - but don't hold me to it)?

Also, I'm not sure about freezer canning - but I'm pretty sure that if you're going to store frozen food in a glass container in the freezer that boiling the containers for disinfection before filling might be a good idea if, and only if, you give them enough time to cool before stuffing them with ice cream and putting them in the freezer. Would washing with soapy water be enough? Maybe. When we did canning at home growing up it was mostly to prevent our pickles from spreading botulism. Yet another theory I have to research. SCIENCE!

Vacay for Nora

So I talked to my mom yesterday and apparently she is going to Europe with her sister in about two weeks. Not one particular country. Like, all of them. 

She. Is. INSANE. 

I don't know if she is just having a midlife crisis-type of thing but my mother does not usually haul off and do stuff like this. The first time she went out of the country was two years ago, on a trip to Cozumel. Not the crazy scary part of Mexico. Nice, shiny, pretty tequila-infused Cozumel. So suddenly she is ready to literally backpack across an entire continent.

When I say that she will literally backpack, I'm not being one of those people who uses "literally" for emphasis, in a hyperbole-type of way, because that annoys the ever-living heck out of me. This is my mother, the fashionista. She dresses better than I do on a regular basis, and that's even counting work days. The same woman who doesn't go out of town for a four-day weekend without any less than three pairs of coordinating shoes in tow. She is wanting to carry ONE backpack overseas and wear lots of light sundresses. Shoes? "Oh, some flipflops." WHAT!

I asked her to tell me the minute she gets back to the States so I can stop worrying. I mean, it's ridiculous. She hasn't even left the continent yet and I'm envisioning her texting me from a gulag somewhere.

And the whole "oh? I thought someone TOLD you ;_;"...no, Mother. No one tells me anything anymore. I get to hear things either right before they happen, or after the fact, as is the typical MO in this family these days. Ugh.

No, I don't want to rain on her parade. Yes, I recognize that she is an adult, and that she has every right to do insane things that make her happy. But this is so far beyond what I had ever perceived her doing in terms of vacationing that I am just...in shock, I think. It came so out of left field...but I hope she has an awesome time, and above all is safe.

Friday Five

1. What bad habits do you have?

I bite my nails. And obsess over stuff frequently. Also, I take on new hobbies, buy a bunch of equipment-slash-stuff for it, then just kinda...don't do it anymore -_- I'm sure there are more, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head.

2. What bad habit would you most like to break?

I'd like to find time to apply myself to more activities instead of procrastinating and doing things that are easy. Also, when I get manic and stressed I'd like to be able to calm myself down faster.

3. Have you ever overcome any bad habits? What were they?

When I get my nails done I don't bite them :D Or at least when I bite them it doesn't mess them up (usually).

4. Do you have any habits other people consider bad that you rather like about yourself? What are they?

Being pretty ADD about some stuff. I'm sure it gets on peoples' nerves but sometimes it's good for a laugh.

5. What habit annoys you most in other people?

People who are really, really demanding. I don't know if that's a habit, but when people are stressed all the time it stresses me out too. I like it when people can just sit back and relax and go at an even pace.