Wild Child Strikes Again

This morning, S and Z were doing their usual "destroy all order to the couch cushions" game, and S either jumped or fell off the couch. I'd been in the process of telling her to quit jumping around on the couch, so I got to watch the whole thing.

She managed to put two teeth through her lip (one upper canine on each side) and break her right side incisor. The break looks pretty bad. I have called our dentist. He was not planning on coming into the office today, but hearing my description, is going to meet me there at 10.

I don't think the teeth through the lip will need stitches, as each cut is only about - that long. I think the broken tooth will need to be pulled though.

Her only comment is that this hurts more than her finger did. I'll believe it.

Princess Style and Monster Truck Shoes

When I was a small child, I was OBSESSED with princesses. I would have completely freaked out if I lived in the current climate of Disney Princess marketing. I even begged and begged and begged my mother to change my name to "Princess". She told me that she was sure I would grow up and not want that to be my name, but I was equally sure I would NOT change my mind. My mother proved to be right on this one.

One of the things borne from this time was the "princess" hair style. This sounds much fancier and more elaborate than it actually is. It's basically where you take the top third or so of the hair on your head and tie it back with a barrette or elastic. I've been calling it the princess style for so long I have no idea what other people would even call it.

A week or so, I caught myself doing something similar with Z. He recently watched a monster truck competition on tv with his daddy and was a huge and instant fan. He has a normal, unassuming pair of loafers that haven't been getting much wear lately because he doesn't want to wear them. However, I have started to call them his "monster truck shoes", and now he almost always wants to wear them. Funny how that works, eh?

Don't these just scream "Monster Truck"?

In a Quandary

Last summer, a friend of ours announced that she was getting married. She wondered if J and I could make it to the wedding. We were thrilled for her, and said that OF COURSE we could come. We wouldn't be bringing our kids because she lives in Japan.

We figured we could use frequent flier miles to get there, and then hotel points to pay for the hotel. We don't have a lot of spare cash floating around, so this would be about the only way we could afford it. T is a wonderful friend though, and we would love to see her (and Japan) again.

A couple months ago, she told us the dates. We start looking for plane tickets and hotel, and the price was a lot more than we thought it was going to be. Huh. Weird. We decide to wait a bit and see if prices would come down as it got closer.

Instead, the opposite happened. Right now, a plane ticket to Japan for the wedding would cost us 100k frequent flier miles. Normally, it'd be around 50k or so.

Finally, a couple days ago, it clicked. She's getting married during "Golden Week", one of the biggest holiday weeks of the year in Japan. Travel TO the country, as well as within the country is an absolute nightmare during that time. Hotels are often booked solid.

To go there is going to cost us thousands more than we originally anticipated. Frankly, we can't afford that, unless I sell a couple houses, or help a couple buyers (any takers? Anyone?). I feel bad flaking out on T though, since we did tell her that we'd be there, and she really is a good friend.

What would you do?

Boeuf Bourguignon

On Sunday night, I watched Julie/Julia. I thought it was a pretty cute movie. It inspired me even more to do some fun cooking. Watching the movie wanted me to try something fancy. I decided I wanted to cook Boeuf Bourguignon. I looked at Julia Child's recipe, but ended up deciding to go with Anthony Bourdain's recipe. I somewhat regret that, since Julia put a bit of tomato paste and bacon in hers, and I think that would've been nice.

It's really quite time consuming. I have to admit that the toughest part was taking Z to the state liquor store and finding burgundy. A two year old in a huge room full of glass bottles at his level is a very stressful thing! After a bit of help from the cashier, we had our burgundy in hand and were out the door.

Here are my ingredients:

The recipe called for fresh herbs, that are tied up into a bouquet. I had all of the herbs in dried form, and didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for the fresh stuff, so I just tossed in my dried stuff. Next summer, when my herb garden is producing again, I'll try again, but with my fresh herbs.

I used a chuck roast from our lovely, wonderful, grass fed, hormone free, free range, happy cow. The meat was to be cut up and browned before being added to the rest of the ingredients. This is my raw meat. Isn't it gorgeous?

Then browned.I started cooking around 1pm. By 3pm, everything was assembled, and it was just supposed to simmer in a pot for a couple hours.

At 4pm, the kids and husband were home, and all were immediately nagging to eat dinner because they were STARVING TO DEATH!!!!!!!! The whole house smelled of the bourguignon. Finally, at 6pm, I caved under the constant nagging for dinner, and served it up.


The kids gobbled it right up and loved it. The older two both had seconds. J brought leftovers to work the next day. I have to say the meat chunks were absolutely to die for- incredibly tender, the most tender beef I've ever had. The sauce part of it? I was kind of iffy on that. Given that I am an incredibly picky eater, I'll blame my palate more than the recipe or preparation.

Next time I make the meal, I think I'll do Julia's version because I think the tomato would really add to the sauce.

Worst Wife EVER!!!

You're probably thinking this is in response to my lack of dedication to housework. Yes, that is a major failing I have. I could make a feminist rant here about how just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I have to do all housework. However, J is at work all day, so I do think that more of the housework should fall to me.

But, housework is NOT the failing to which I refer.


I think I broke one of J's ribs.

Seriously.

I wish I could say we were doing something wild and crazy, but sadly, no.

Every once in a while, he'll ask me to pop his back. I have been successfully popping his back for 17 years now, and never had an incident. I try to go just to either side of his spine, and apply even pressure.

On Thursday, he asked me to pop his back, so I agreed, not thinking anything of it. When I got to between his shoulder blades, there was a weird pop sound. It didn't come from the spine (because I can kind of feel it when it pops), and he was immediately in quite a bit of pain in his rib cage, in the front.

He's played it down, but he is definitely in pain. And get this: There is a LUMP where he feels the pain the worst. The spot is a couple inches lower and to the outside of his nipple.

I feel absolutely awful about it.

I will admit it's spawned a couple of entirely inappropriate domestic violence jokes, but joking aside, I feel terrible. I will never crack his back again. I've begun to nag him to go to a chiropractor so he can fix whatever I did, but he hasn't been willing so far.

My new dinner leaf

If you recall, I've decided to experiment more with the food I cook for dinner. I think that exposing the kids to many new dishes is a good thing, and will make them much more adventurous eaters than I've ever been. As a result, I've been trying out some new recipes.

Tonight's recipe was a pretty great success. M complained it had too many tomatoes, but everyone else seemed to like it.

I made Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup. I made a couple changes. I didn't want to buy cilantro just for this recipe, so I skipped that. I also discovered I was out of bay leaves. Oopsie. Then again, I also discovered I was out of chicken. I put everything else in the pot, and then made myself go buy the chicken a couple hours later. I cubed it, grilled it, and then tossed it into the cooker a couple hours before serving. I also thought black beans would make a nice addition, so I tossed in a can of drained black beans. Instead of going through the process with the corn tortillas, I just crushed a couple chips on top of each bowl of soup.

Happy New Year!

I really don't have too much to say. I'm just sick of having that nasty post be my most recent blog entry.

I have my usual New Year's Resolutions: lose weight, be more organized, get rid of clutter in my life. I actually got rid of a pickup load of stuff in December, so hopefully I can continue the trend in January. As long as I just drop the stuff off at the second hand store and DO NOT GO IN TO BROWSE, I should be ok.

I have managed to not be addicted to Mountain Dew, and haven't had it on a regular basis since early November. I have had it a couple times though- when my throat was healing, the "burn" from the carbonation felt good on my throat. I want to continue my independence from soda.

Although I consider myself to be a fairly decent cook, I've decided I need to experiment a little bit. So, I am hoping to have the first 14 home cooked dinners in December be an unfamiliar recipe.

Tonight we had pot roast. Yes, I do pot roast a lot, but I used a different recipe. Much as it pains me to admit it, I think it was probably the best roast I ever made.

On New Year's Eve, we got together with J's sister, her husband and their kids. It was a lot of fun. We had the kids watch movies and play upstairs while we played Wii, watched the Jazz, and ate ourselves sick. I reinforced my reputation as being terrible at video games. Their dogs chose to stay downstairs with us, and Koda soon regretted the decision. We'd brought party hats because S insisted it was a party, and someone thought it'd be funny to make Koda look festive.

I hadn't realized just how embarrassed a dog could look. Soon after this shot, he chose to go upstairs for a while.