I Seem To Disappear A Lot Lately.

But I promise that I've had a majorly good excuse. Really.

First, I had to get ready for Thanksgiving with my grandparents - you know, the now 86-year-old grandmother who calls me a whore and questions how I raise my daughter every time she sees me? Oh yeah, that one. In anticipation, I decided to cook a little side-dish as sort of a, "look at me grammie, really, I'm a grown-up. I even cook." I made my friend Jessica's Spelt and Roasted Squash Salad, which was really effing yummy; you should totally try it.

Dinner at gram's ended up being quite pleasant - no name calling - and after 6 years, she's finally taken down the family portrait of my ex-husband, the kid, and I. Wow. Could we be moving on? That's all I want for Christmas......

After dinner, the kid decided to stay with my parents for the long weekend. As an added bonus, the boy was working 12 hour days. Are you adding this up? I ended up having so much alone time I wasn't sure what to do with myself. My intent was to work - which I did. Putting together holiday looks for baby boys, gift guides for baby boys and girls under $15 and $25 dollars, moderating forums, and pulling together gift guides for highly fashionable adults too. But all that only took me like, one day. I still had a lot of time to fill. So, what did I do?

• Trolled Facebook and surprisingly found my friend KLJ. Since her work email seems to hate me and I can't get messages about knitting to her that way, I'm hoping we can chat via Facebook now and set up dates that way. Hint, hint KLJ....log in to FB.
  
• I tracked down the man whom we purchased firewood from - who cheated us out of 1.5 cords, and asked when we would see the rest of our wood. He hung up on me so I called the police and was told I needed to sue him in Civil Court. Great.
• I played Guitar Hero - a lot.
• I ate 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked FroYo.
• I did NOT go shopping - except online.
• I watched a ton of television - HGTV, TLC, Lifetime......
• I knitted a new pair of fingerless gloves.
• I cleaned my house.

I was so productive I can barely stand it. And when the kid came home on Sunday afternoon, I felt so refreshed, it was like I was a new person. I'm not going to lie, I now understand how important it is to take a time-out and that will be my New Year's Resolution; taking time for me.

In other unrelated news, Prevention Magazine has asked me to participate in their Flat Belly Diet program for 32 days and blog about it for their online community. I think it's with like 49 other women. Do you think they're trying to tell me something??

Anyway, on to a diet, a lawsuit, and more gift guides.....I promise I won't disappear for another 2 weeks this time.....

Martha Effing Stewart

That's right b-yotch. I played Martha Stewart today. So at my house, what does that look like? A little something like this.

But instead of all sorts of boxes of Christmas goodies, today it was just lots of chocolate chip cookies and two loaves of homemade bread, courtesy of my step-mommas bread recipe. By the way, it's yummy. And if I get her permission, I might just put it up here.

Anywho, I do have a complaint about my chocolate chip cookies though. The recipe says that it will make 26 5-inch cookies, but somehow, I only make about 18 per batch. Which means that one of three things happened:

• I ate 8 cookies worth of raw cookie dough.
• Martha Stewart is a liar.
• I made 10-inch cookies.

I'm here to tell you that it was not option 2 or 3.

I Hate Stringy Bananas

I've been having some pretty piss-poor luck with food today.

First, I tried to beat the garbage guy today, but by the time I tossed all the spoiled food from the refrigerator into the trash and tied up the bag, he was just pulling off our street.  I contemplated throwing the bag in the car and chasing him, but decided against it because it was just too much effort before my second cup of coffee.  So now, I have a bag full of rotten food sitting in the trash can outside; who wants to lay money on a raccoon family moving in soon?

Then, I really wanted and egg and cheese sandwich from the Double D's, but remembered that we're trying to stick to this thing called a budget, and we're not allowed to use the debit card for things like that.  So I swore at myself because I didn't have any cash with me.  Then I swore again because the debit card thing was my stupid rule to begin with, so I can't even be the first one to break it.

I came home and made an egg and cheese sandwich here, but ended up with 1/2 the egg shell in my egg, but in a million little pieces.  So I, of course, swore some more.  I once dated a guy that could crack an egg with one hand AND keep all the shells out of it.  I probably should have asked him to teach me that at some point.  Needless to say, digging egg shells out of a slimy egg is really no fun, and it's a lot of work.  Had it not been the last egg in the house, I would have just thrown it away and started over.

And now, I've just had the pleasure of eating a little snack of precisely 28 almonds (yes,  counted them) and a banana.  But the banana was stringy.  I hate stringy bananas.  Just when you bite off a chunk, you have a big stringy thing hanging down your chin.  Or across your arm (not sure how that one got there).

If I didn't love food so much, I'd really contemplate giving it up.

Cakes and Pies.....and Cookies Too!

Ok, so there's not actually any pies involved at this point, but it could be coming.....

And I'm sorry that I haven't been around; the sad part is, I've spent much of my time lately as a recluse, and therefore, nothing all that exciting has happened. In fact, we've all been in pretty pissy moods around here.

The boy finally read the blog and realized that I was making fun of him here, and here, and he's been whiney since; at one point saying, "stop making me look like an asshole to all these people that read this stupid thing that don't even know me."

I tried to explain that it wasn't just him I made fun of.....I also make the neighbors look like assholes, his parents look like assholes, and random strangers I don't even know look like assholes when people read this thing. That didn't help.

Anyway, I digress. On to the cakes and cookies.

The kids' birthday is on Saturday - the big 0-9!! Wow! Where has the time gone? So, like any good mom does, I told her I'd bake her cookies to take to school tomorrow. We decided on these.

My mission today was simple: go to JoAnn's and get cookie sticks, sprinkles and some sort of "make the frosting pretty" contraption. My experience at JoAnn's, as usual, left something to be desired. However, instead of the annoying girl and Estelle Costanza, I had the really chic (and thin and tan) woman with her baby in the cart. "oooh, do you see what that says arie? It says light of my life.....who's my wittle wite of my wife??? Is that you arie? Are you my wittle wite of my wife???"

The poor child, who had a bow in her hair that was as big as her head just looked at her mother, screamed, and threw some soft of scrap booking supply at her face. Yet the mother was undeterred. I'm still not sure though if I was more disturbed by the way the mother talked to her kid, or the bow she had in her hair.

Anyway, back to the cookies. So, in theory, the umbrellas look easy and cute. And one mom even hopped on and reviewed them and said they were great, so I figured, why not? Clearly, they paid that mom because she lied. Those scallops are a bitch. A real mom's take? Don't waste your cookie dough.

So then we switched to daisy-shaped cookies on a stick. I had a cookie cutter, so I thought this would be a relatively easy alternative. They came out looking pretty damn yummy.

The problem? They didn't fit in the cute little bags with the twisty ties that I had bought. So we made them smaller, and then had a problem with the frosting smearing on the bags; admittedly, I should have seen that coming.

So nearly four hours later, the kid has cookies, all wrapped in cute bags with twisty ties that are daisy's, minus frosting, plus colored sugar - I thought it was a fair trade. Tomorrow, I have to tackle her cake.

Wanna hedge bets I'll be drinking by noon?

PHTSD :: Post-Holiday Traumatic Stress Disorder

I think it should become part of the line-up, don't you? After a 36-hour crafting marathon, 6 hours of baking, an unplanned trip to the pediatrician's office and a crap-load of wrapping, I've decided that it should be a federal mandate that the day after Christmas also be considered a holiday. How else are you supposed to recoup?

It started innocently enough. I called the out-laws to check on the attendance for the Christmas Eve dinner. To my surprise, there were all sorts of people coming that I didn't know about.....and they all had gifts for the kid! "Oh, yeah, and Suzie from next door is coming with her second-cousin-twice removed. Just so you know, they're bringing a little something for Sydnie." So, of course, I feel obligated to bring something for them. This is when all hell broke loose at our house.

And yes, that's an empty pizza box in the bottom right corner.....because I was too damn lazy to a) cook the night before and b) to put it in the recycling before I started cooking. I know, completely ridiculous. Anyway, some yummy goodness came out of it all, like this granola.



After baking brownies, peanut butter cookies, this granola, blueberry muffins, chocolate cheerio trail mix and pumpkin apple bread, I made up 8 boxes and headed to the outlaws where we dealt with extended family and friends; always a great treat. My family is crazy in a funny sort of ha-ha way; his family is certifiably nuts in a "should be institutionalized" sort of way. Lots of yelling at their overgrown puppy that kept taking food off the table and discussions about pregnant dogs and their enlarged nipples. It was great.

Back at home, we told the kid that she had to let us sleep for 8 hours. We didn't care what time she got up, but she had to go to bed 8 hours before. So, she headed off to slumber at 10, but ended up bawling her eyes out in frustration over not being able to go to sleep. "How do people do this?? It's agony!!" she sobbed. I felt terrible for her so I laid down with her and ended up falling asleep myself. All well and good until I woke up at 12:30 only to realize that I still had to put one more coat of Mod Podge on her suitcase and wrap a few gifts plus stuff the stockings. First I tackled the suitcase and figured it would dry while I was stuffing stockings. It turned out pretty well.


After stuffing stockings, I decided I was far too tired to wrap gifts, so several ended up under the tree just as they were. We had a small stumble at 4am, but she went back to sleep after grabbing her stocking. As I peeled my eyelid open at 5:58, I could still hear her snoring and I smiled, foolishly thinking that she would sleep until at least 6:30.....a full 8 1/2 hours after going to bed.

At 5:59, a small finger repeatedly poked me in the shoulder while a little voice shout-whispered "It's 1 minute before 6!" The tree was opened before 7:30 and we then made the trip up north where my grandmother was her lovely self - slanderous remarks and all. Just the exclamation point I needed for my theme slogan this holiday season.