Not quite finished with the baking, the pumpkin bread is going right now - but here are the results of this weekends efforts:
Cookies!! We’ve got peanut butter, oatmeal chocolate chip, sugar, plain oatmeal and chocolate chip.
This photo was immediately followed by me yelling, “GET OUTTA THAT!!!!” (He did.)
My kitchen helper:
You know it’s time to go ahead and call it a night when you start thinking, “Well, I could just make one really BIG peanut butter cookie and that would be sooo much quicker.”
Overall, an extremely productive day in the kitchen. Scads of cookies - chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter & sugar cookies so far. Everything is cleaned up and ready to go for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and the pumpkin bread tomorrow.
Think I can finally say I have got a bit of holiday cheer going - things seem to be coming together and I am actually feeling like everything will get done, and I won’t even have to be up until 3 AM for the next 6 nights.
My biggest problem with the holidays is that it’s really hard for me to get into it until about the last week before Christmas. At which point, it’s kinda late to really be starting anything…
Of course, I could carry over the late-breaking enthusiasm into doing things ahead of time for next year…. HAHAHAHAHA. OK, it’s a nice thought, but probably not terribly realistic. :)
Chocolate chip cookies are done, sugar cookies are on deck. Not a single one burned!!!!
The scarf that really, really needs to be done by tomorrow night is coming along quite well.
The cats are exceptionally ticked at me as I won’t let them have any of the cookies, nor will I let them attack the knitting. I’m such a meanie.
“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.”
- Gore Vidal
This tidbit via Fark.com has kicked me into the holiday spirit: “Santa Claus is coming to town … and in these uncertain times, he’s being offered a jet fighter escort.
Canadian pilots seconded to the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) who normally spend their nights scouring the skies for intruders, will scramble on Christmas Eve for a special mission.”
This is the silly stuff I LOVE about Christmas. I remember when we lived overseas, Armed Forces TV used to cut into the programming on Christmas Eve to announce radar sightings as Santa came into the airspace in the area, and the phone calls would be made from house to house and Dad would get off the phone and announce, “Well, we may have to scramble tonight, we’re on alert because of what they’re seeing on radar - may have to go up and do an escort.” It’s got to be so cool to have little kids at Christmas.
I’ve got an insane amount to get done this weekend - fortunately, none of it involves having to leave the house. Baking, knitting & cleaning. Which doesn’t sound like much at all when it’s written out that way.
Only shopping I have left to do is Mom’s stuff, groceries for Christmas Eve dinner and stocking stuffers. My stuff from amazon finally shipped, and the tracking thing says it’s at the warehouse here, so things are looking much brighter for that to actually get to the house by Friday.
If I’m feeling exceptionally ambitious, I may end up over at Mom’s one night this week and get all my packages actually wrapped before midnight on Christmas Eve - that would be a nice change for me. :)
OK, time to go get the kitchen in some semblance of order so I can completely destroy it again.
sagamore, this is your fault. I was fine til you told me I was getting sick.
I’m tired as hell and feeling worse by the minute. I’d planned on going to the grocery in the AM before taking Grandma shopping, but sleeping in is looking MUCH better.
I’d go to bed now but I have to make an effort to at least stay up & watch Charlie Brown Christmas. It’s pure good, so watching it erases all your sins for the year. Please let channel 7 come in this evening…
No frozen dead body on the front porch this morning, and no vandalised car, so the 2:30 AM visitor hopefully got some help and isn’t too pissed at me.
Hindsight being what it is, I probably should have offered to call *anyone* rather than just the police, but my first thought was if someone is in trouble, then the police can usually help in some form or fashion. Made sense at the time. Oh well. Hopefully this isn’t going down on my permanent record somewhere as “didn’t help when she could have”…
Occurred to me that my house got picked cause there were lights on downstairs, so it probably looked like I was still up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t… Had been awakened by my phone making noises at 1:30 AM and had **just** gotten back to sleep and then that.
Took me a insanely long time to get back to sleep, and I am completely wrecked this morning. Figure I’m running on about 3 hours of sleep.
I don’t even know what to make of that.
5 minutes ago, LOUD knocking at the front door. I do NOT open the door, I’m not an idiot. I yell, asking who it is, get an female voice asking to use the phone as she’s gotten locked out of her house. I don’t recognize the voice as any of my neighbors - ask where she lives. She wants to know why.
Wrong answer, honey. She then says she’s been “put out” of her house.
I offered to call the police for her, but she declined and left.
Flank steak & noodles for dinner. Came out very well, grill works like a champ.
Learned that I need to be extra careful with the cancel button on the oven. Thought I was turning off the timer and unfortunately, turned off the oven altogether. Sadly, the rolls just could not be salvaged.
Was going to have some wine with dinner but totally forgot about it in all the juggling of food - guess that will have to be desert. :)
Clean up first, though. Bah.
Can’t argue with a horoscope like this:
Even coffee won’t boost your energy today. Try sneaking a catnap instead.
I wasn’t really planning on trying to do much of anything today as it is, so this works out well! ;)
Thanks to Amazon, I am near done with my shopping. I am very grateful to have a family that loves to read. Tomorrow should be the last of the shopping, next weekend is baking and that’s it.
Looks like Christmas Eve will just be lots of appetizers. A run to Trader Joe’s should take care of that quite nicely.
Perhaps that nap is in order.
OMG.
My brother just called. They lost my grandmother at the airport again this year.
It’s going to be a LONG night.
(Yes, they did find her.)
First, because I am in the process of ruining my dinner by eating now. (It’s for the best. No one wants to be around me when my blood sugar takes a dive.)
Second, I bought myself something…a yarn winder. We’re not supposed to do this 2 weeks before Christmas. But, it was finally in stock at joann’s and it was another 50% off, and, well, it should be here in the next 7-12 business days. :-D
Mom just called, the plane is delayed, so it’s a good thing I went ahead and ate.
In theory, I could have gotten out of all grandma-related events today… But, I just had to call my brother and check on things… Apparently, dinner is command performance, but no one bothered to actually tell me dinner was planned, much less that I was expected… But now that I know, I guess I had better show up. Of course, I could just be banished from all activities and no one has told me.
Did some Christmas shopping today - thank god for Amazon.com, or I’d be showing up empty-handed on Christmas Eve… Given that I also in charge of feeding people, I need to do some shopping for that, too… I also still have to finish the Christmas scarves - maybe I can get them knocked out this weekend.
I love the last line in today’s Calvin & Hobbes:
Dance numbers!! YES!! We need more dance numbers! :-D
You know, I wish Target wouldn’t flatten his ears like that when I sing along to Etta James.
My two cats never snuggle or sleep together. However, the bit of exposed flannel on the bed on a drizzly morning was too much for them to resist apparently
I have a new manager! Well, sort of. We currently have 2 managers of our group, one for front line (Mgr A - my boss), one for second/back line (Mgr B.)
Someone up on high decided we didn’t need two managers anymore. So, Mgr A*** is going back on calls full time, and is quite thrilled about it. (Or faking it well. Having done the management thing before, I think it’s genuine, “hot damn, I don’t have to deal with that shit anymore!”)
So, as of 1/1/05, Mgr B will be my boss! This is a good thing - we hit it off from the get-go, we are very much alike and have the same general outlook on things. She’s big into hands off management, as she said, “if you can’t self manage at this level, then you’re beyond hope.” She’s also really, REALLY good about backing us up when clients get out of hand, which is very important.
So, this is good.
(***thanks to
Coworkers biopsy came back totally clean. She is a very happy camper.
Came home and crashed hard for about 2 hours, very nice.
Much needed three day weekend. I have been a complete stressball this week.
Grandma arrives tomorrow. This will likely not help with the stress.
I have exactly one gift purchased so far.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1738245,00.asp
Looks like you’re part of the large AOL/AIM fuckup.
Sleep would have helped, had I gotten enough of it.
Two weekends until Christmas. Problem is, I can’t say I actually care… Seriously, I think this year I could stay home and not feel like I’d missed a thing. Grandma arrives on Saturday.
Having family that is interested in your life is a double edged sword. Nice to have folks to share successes with, but I’d just as soon keep the failures to myself, thanks.
I feel like I have near zero purpose in life right now. I get up, I go to work, I go home.
I have the cats to look after, but that’s about it as far as true purpose goes. I know I am very lucky in so many ways, and I really shouldn’t have anything to bitch about, but I still feel really eccchh. Like there should be more to it or something. Just lacking in some inner peace I suppose.
I feel like I’ve spent my whole life looking after others. It’s not that I am out for some grand reward, but it would be nice to have someone looking after me. (Especially given that I seem to truly suck at looking out for myself…) Everyone says, “Oh, Cindy’s tough, she’s strong, she can handle it.” Great.
Maybe I’m just tired. I know I’m emotionally fried right now, which really doesn’t help. Basically, I feel kinda rotten and I feel guilty for it, cause it’s really selfish, which makes me feel worse!
Looking at the oven, I have realized something. If the leveling feet don’t have another 1/4 inch of height left in them, I’m really screwed. While the width of the oven itself is fine, the top is made to extend over the counter on either side. One the one hand, this is good, because you don’t have crud getting between the oven & cabinets. But, this could be bad if they can’t jack up the height just a bit more… (I swear, I really did measure everything several times…)
Kitchen is done, laundry is in the dryer. Dining room is still a disaster, but I can tend to that tomorrow. Main thing is that everything is out of the way for the oven to be installed. Will be nice to have it on the wall instead of in the middle of the room.
I’ve run out of bin liners, which means a trip to Costco is in my very near future. Kinda dreading that - maybe after work one night wouldn’t be as bad as the weekend?
You know, something just occured to me. When dumbass cat (aka Target) made his dash out to the woods the other night, he ended up back at the front door with no problems. Til now, he has never been more than 20 feet in either direction from the house. I had left the front door open (the screen is still in the storm door), and Snoopy sat there yelling while I was gone. I wonder if Target was able to find the house again cause Snoopy was hollering for him?
I’m having a hard time with Christmas. Still can’t really convince Mom that there isn’t much of anything I need or want, at least not that comes in the form of a Christmas present. Also have no ideas for anyone else, either.
Fridge & Microwave working well so far. Lots of extra buttons on the microwave I’ll probably never use, but it’s amazingly hard just to get a basic microwave with a turntable without all the rest. It has a “beverage” button. Now, tell me, who doesn’t already know exactly how many seconds you have to pop your coffee into the microwave to get it to the temp you like? (The button makes my coffee too hot. Damn!! I’ll have to actually push 6-0-Start!)
The oven is filled with taped-in manuals & boxes - I am going to leave those as is with a note for for the installer to please do the removing, as I have no idea what all is in there and I am afraid of breaking anything. There did appear to be a roasting pan in there - WOOT! (I’ll probably keep my old one anyway, but YAY, cookware!)
Kitchen & dining room still look like an explosive device was set off. I have gotten the dishwasher & a load of laundry going, so that’s something. Will hit the rest this evening sometime.
Wish I could buy a bottle of motivation.
For what should have been a fairly simple Saturday, a ton of shit went wrong. (And please forgive the full-on spamming of the friends list, it’s been a frustrating day!)
mvllscott - tomorrow I will return the stepladder & keys - I’d drop them off w/MIL now, but don’t want to wake the little one if he’s out.
Delivery damn near 4 hours late.
They forgot to put the kitchen door back on the hinges. (Someone did come back and take care of it. Would have done it myself, but I am too short.)
Target got out and took off FOR THE WOODS. While I am tromping around in the dark, he went back to the front door and was waiting for me. Little shit. Upside: I did get to meet some new neighbors. The folks with the beagle three doors down are quite nice. I think this may have been the frat boy howling at the moon - he apologized for being pretty much three sheets to the wind, but Va Tech had won a big game today…
Because of the aforementioned incidents, missed the close of the pharmacy… Hindsight being 20/20, I should have just gone in the AM and let the installers deal with me not having a cleaned out fridge, but noooo, I had to be all proactive, and make sure the fridge was empty BEFORE they came, LOL.
Kitchen is an absolutely monstrous disaster area at the moment. I have decided that can wait until tomorrow. I just can’t deal with it tonight.
Despite all of it, my new fridge KICKS ASS. I actually have to go read the manual now, because it came with all these accessories and I have no clue where they’re actually supposed to go. Haven’t used the microwave yet, but I know that the underside light on it works at least.
Edit: The fridge bells & whistles are as follows: a “bottle caddy” for wine or beer depending on which way you put the bottle in, a beverage organizer (which I had already put the beer in - it just looked like a good place for it), an egg bucket, ice trays & ice bucket, and one plastic thing that I still cannot identify…
Edit 2: Got a follow-up call from the shop to make sure my kitchen door was back on the hinges and that everything was OK - found out they’re subcontracting delivery out now (No shit. I am really hating outsourcing.) and that there are still a few kinks in the system. Still sending the letter.
Finally. 3:50 PM arrival.
Looked at the routing sheet - absolutely NO indication that there was a 12-3 window they were supposed to adhere to. Looked at the other ones on the clipboard. If someone had a window, it was written at the bottom with the date. Mine just had the date. So, that would explain the arrival time.
Called the oven installer - he’s gonna come take care of it on Monday. Just no way to expect him to do it today.
One kinda funny thing. I watched the two guys bring the fridge in, and then they’ve got it in front of the wall, and they’re just staring at it and whispering amongst themselves. Suddenly, a light bulb goes on in my head.
“I cut the power to those outlets when you were messing with the microwave.” (One of them was doing something right around the microwave outlet with a screwdriver. As I have no desire to have to call 911 on top of everything else, I just shut everything off for the kitchen at the circuit breaker.)
Flip the circuits again and all was well. Apparently, when they plugged it in and nothing happened, there was some panic.
I just spent the last 15 minutes pulling what seemed to be 800 yards of packing tape off the inside of the fridge.
Dear god, I just realized they didn’t put my kitchen door back on…and I’m not tall enough to do it myself. Amazing - I just called the shop again and talked to someone different - they seem to know how to get in touch with them… Cause I KNOW one of them has a damn cell phone from when they were here.
Off to try and put my kitchen back together and possibly kick the ass out of the frat boy outside that has decided to howl at the moon….
Rather than just sit and bitch about the situation, I called the shop asking very nicely, “Where the fuck is my stuff!?”
They have no means of contacting the drivers.
I swear, when I got my dishwasher from these folks, there were no problems whatsoever.
Now, I have a house full of food that is going to melt here real soon - you can only keep stuff in iced down coolers for so long.
The reason I took everything out of the fridge just before noon is because
a) I didn’t want to be trying to do that while they were here, and
b) they said I was the first goddamned stop on the route and to expect them at noon!
Oh yes, there will be a letter written once all is said and done.
OK, they are not here yet. I know that 12 to 3 means just that, but when they also tell you that you’re first on the route, to me that means they’ll be there at noon.
It doesn’t help that I am getting hungry and all my food is under tons of ice and I am not in the mood for a scavenger hunt…
Other problem is that the later they get here, the less likely it will be that the installer will be able to do the hookup today for the oven…
Dammit, they’re still not here yet! I really want to jump in the shower real quick, but I know the minute I do that, they’ll show up. I’m half considering putting a sign on the front door saying, “In the shower, back in 5 minutes”…
No fate but the fate you make for yourself.
