No more pajama bottoms!!
For those who don't know, I've just had a baby - my beautiful Emily. She has her very own website, so you can see how pretty she is and read all about her.
But this is about me. And I am oh so glad not to be pregnant anymore - after months and months, I finally fit back into my jeans! And I can see my feet, too!
We got to revive one of our Sunday afternoon traditions today - Bocce Ball! We used to go out and play in the park across from our apartment; now we have a backyard. You can't throw quite as far, but that's okay - much more than we did today would've hurt, since I'm still recovering from surgery and supposed to be taking it easy. It was good to get out and exercise, though.
We came back in, made yummy nachos for dinner, and watched Iron Chef: Battle Chocolate (mmmmm!!), followed by the end of a Food Network Challenge that seemed to be about clothing made of chocolate (very weird). There was one dress though, that you couldn't really tell was made of chocolate, and it was a flapper dress - a style I've always loved, and never been able to wear.
If I'm very good in this life, then in my next one, I'd like to come back as a stick figure with a 30-inch waist, 32-inch bust, and no hips, so I can wear all those slinky beaded & bias-cut dresses.
1 med to large bunch spinach leaves
Colander or strainer
1 med to large skillet
1 1/2 cups (approx.) cottonseed oil
A spatula
Newspapers or paper towels, to drain
Large stockpot, filled with water
1-2 cups baking soda
1 sponge mop
1-2 sous chefs or spectators
A well-ventilated kitchen
Go through the bunch of spinach, pulling off the stems and placing the leaves into your colander - discarding any wilted, yellow, or otherwise not-so-tasty looking ones. Rinse well, then drain as thoroughly as possible.
Heat the cottonseed oil in the skillet; oil should fill skillet to about an inch deep, or about halfway. To test the oil, drop a small drop of water into the skillet; if it immediately sizzles and pops, the oil is ready. (Pay close attention to this phenomenon; it will be important later in the cooking process.)
Take a single, large spinach leaf and carefully drop it into the hot oil. It should sizzle and pop just like the drop of water did, only more so. Let it cook for about twenty seconds, then use your spatula to remove it to the newspaper or paper towel. Sprinkle with salt, and allow to cool before tasting. The spinach should have retained its dark green color, but it will now be very crispy, almost paper-like. Take a bite, then offer a bite to your sous chefs or spectators and see what everybody thinks. The flavor and texture may take a moment to grow on you.
Once everybody agrees that fried spinach is surprisingly tasty, you have the go-ahead to continue cooking the rest of the batch. Therefore, take a handful of the spinach and drop it into the cooking oil, then back away quickly, taking care not to let the tower of flame from the splashed oil, which will ignite on the stovetop, singe your eyebrows off.
(Remember that sizzling and popping? Yeah, spinach has a lot of water in it, especially if it's just been washed. When all that water hits all that hot oil, it should create a shower that could rival Buckingham Fountain. When all that hot oil hits the burner on your stovetop, it should catch fire in a fairly spectacular fashion.)
Quickly pull the skillet off the burner and set aside, taking care not to splash yourself with too much of the boiling oil, so that you can turn your full attention to the column of flame licking your kitchen ceiling. You may at this point choose to either scream or say a few swear words of your choice. This is purely optional.
Use your spatula to attempt to put out the flames by whapping at them futilely. Then try to extinguish the fire by covering it with a metal bowl. During this process, you may choose to let your sous chefs/spectators take over the job of screaming and/or swearing, but feel free to continue yourself if you wish.
When neither of the above methods for controlling the fire is successful, think about that stockpot full of water. You should be aware that putting water on a grease fire is never recommended, but don't let this stop you from wondering if the sheer volume of water available might just drown the thing out, regardless.
Before you grab the stockpot and potentially kill yourself by sliding across the kitchen floor, which is now covered with splashed oil, and landing head-first on the flaming stovetop, one of your sous chefs/spectators should choose this moment to remember that baking soda is what's recommended for this type of fire, and that there is a canister of it within easy reach. Find the baking soda and sprinkle it liberally on the fire, which should then go away.
(By now, your smoke alarm should be going off. If not, make a note that you need a new 9-volt battery. The dogs, if you have any, should be barking hysterically. If you do not have dogs, I recommend that you go out and get some, or borrow a couple from your neighbors, before starting this recipe - they add a lot to the cooking experience!)
Once the fire is out, wipe off the stovetop, put the skillet on another burner, and carefully continue cooking the spinach a few leaves at a time, putting them on the newspaper to drain and sprinkling them with salt soon after they are out of the oil. When the whole batch is done, and when the smoke alarm has stopped screaming and one or both of your sous chefs/spectators have recovered from their terror-induced paralysis, divide the fried spinach onto plates along with the rest of your meal - which will now be stone-cold.
Sprinkle a little malt vinegar over the spinach before eating. Find the room in the house that is least filled with smoke, sit down, and enjoy!
Afterwards, use the mop to clean the kitchen floor, to minimize the potential for broken body parts later, when someone tries to go to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Also, be sure to add "Kitchen Fire Extinguisher" to your shopping list.
WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!
39-14 vs. New Orleans, and now there is a party going on at Soldier Field that I would LOVE to be at! The thing I loved about living in Chicago was that there was always a party going on, and I'm sure that's more true right now than it has been since 1986. I watched that Superbowl with my dad and his friends; I'll watch this one with my husband and our daughter, and hopefully she'll grow up to be as big a Bears fan as I am.
WOOOOO-HOOO! GO BEARS!!!
Four more to go for a badge.
I like this game, but I'm getting really tired of it. All I'm doing now is playing to kill time while I wait for my husband to show up for our chat-date. (He's out of town on a business trip.)
Year of the Rat, here we go: Nine, nine, six, six, four, four, orchid, spring, spring, orchid, north wind...where's the north wind? I know I saw one...guess not. Okay, back - would you just go when I click you!?!? Seven, seven, two, two, spider-guy...
I have been sitting in this chair for two and a half hours now - and I haven't even been playing games! (I need to get to that...I'm working on getting to the next rank in Mahjong.)
So what have I been doing for the last two and a half hours? Updating my Yahoo!360 Profile Page. The one that I never use. I also have a MySpace, which I never use.
There are so many sites on which to let everyone know all the trivial details about you that those who know you already know, to share your photos and favorite music, and to keep up with all the friends you never keep in touch with otherwise. I mostly use those sites to refer my friends back here - my friends, and any random visitors who might happen across my profile and be interested enough to want to know more.
To view my main site, go to http://halaylah.blah.blah.blah...
(ok, don't click that, it's not really a link - I was just sort of making a point...but not really.)
So I have all these other sites and profiles and pages, to direct people back to this one...but those others still need to be pretty. (right?) So every now and then, I spend way too much time and energy updating and uploading, and getting everything just so - just in case anyone should happen to stumble across it, and have an opportunity to say "oooooh!"
Ok, that was a brief meltdown, in a moment of sheer panic and frustration.
Here's how cool my life is: my sister read the last entry, apparently just after I wrote it, and she called to make sure everything was okay, and to remind me that nobody could make me do anything by 5:00.
I knew that...but as I said, I don't do well under pressure and threats - especially when they come in the middle of my afternoon at work.
And since I'm not the type to sit around singing Woe Is Me...let me finish by telling what happened after all the panic.
I called both loan places to find out exactly what I needed to do. The first place - the one I've been making payments to - told me that the loans I have with them (which include all but that one that I got the call about today) are two payments away from being out of default. Yay! They told me to make the minimum possible payment on the other loan until the rest are out of default, then I can re-consolidate, and include all the loans, or defer the first group until I can get the last loan out of default as well. And once that happens, I can go back to school. Double Yay!!
When I talked to the second place - the ones who were making all the threats - they were much nicer, and confirmed what the first place told me, except that they offered to go ahead and defer the one loan until I could get the others caught up. Which means I keep paying what I've been paying anyway, for two more months, and then I can re-consolidate and possibly get the whole mess deferred, or keep paying - at a much lower payment, hopefully - or see about getting back into school.
The school thing may still have to wait a little bit, because by the time all this happens with my student loans, I'll have a brand-new baby to take care of. But maybe next summer, maybe next fall...maybe we'll have to wait until we're sure we can afford it. But whenever we decide, I'll be able to do it. I can finally finish school.
Which means I may finally have to decide what I want to be when I grow up...
Oh yeah...and my husband's bosses? Well, they didn't just kidnap him for the day - right now they're taking him to get a 4-in-1 printer, to go with the brand-new notebook computer they got for him (on which I'm typing right now), and they're going to fill our car up with gas. And he'll be home soon - possibly in time to watch CSI.
So all's well.
I don't know what to do.
I thought I was paying my student loans; the payment is just about killing me - it's taking almost half of what I make every month - but I've been paying it.
Then I get a call from someone about another loan that apparently got left out when I made the other payment arrangements. And now these people are making the same threats that I thought I'd finally put behind me. They're calling me at night, calling me at work, threatening to take my paycheck (which isn't even worth the effort they made to locate and contact me), and even though I only found out about this a few days ago, they're giving me until 5:00 today to make some kind of payment arrangement before they "resort to other actions."
I thought I was taking care of my loans - I thought I was paying all of them at once - and I can't afford to pay any more than I'm already paying.
My husband isn't home, and I really need to talk to him about this. I'm not good at these decisions; I panic, and I don't understand all the technical-sounding financial lingo that they keep repeating. I don't understand what my options really are, and I don't do well under pressure and threats. I know I've been told how to handle phone calls like this, but I don't remember. Ken would remember, and he wouldn't be panicked and unable to think clearly. I thought he would be home before I was, but he's out with his bosses - who don't live here, so when they're in town, they pretty much kidnap him, and he ends up having meetings and dinners at the most random hours of the evening. He doesn't know when he's going to be home tonight, and I don't want to bother him with this while he's doing work stuff...but I'm scared, and confused, and I don't know what to do, and I'm afraid to make any decisions or committments without talking to him first. I don't know what to do...
I didn't even finish college! All this nightmare and I don't even have a degree to show for it, and I'm working in a retail job for next to nothing, and most of the time I really hate it. Shouldn't I get some kind of a break? Some sort of discount, for working in a crappy job with kids who are working their way through college, and knowing that I dropped out, and being ashamed when people ask me what I do for a living, or what I've been up to in the years since they saw me last?
Guess not. I hate my job. I hate that I didn't finish school. And I really hate that I'm paying more than I can afford, for things I hate already.
The man next door cleaned his gutters yesterday. Downspouts too. He's done it before. I saw him last year. Amazing. I was forty years old before I even knew that people cleaned gutters and downspouts. And I haven't been able to get around to doing it once yet.
I live in awe of people who get those jobs done. The people who live orderly lives. The ones who always do what needs to be done and do it right. I know of people who actually balance their checkbooks each month. I know that's hardly credible, but I swear it's so.
These people also have filing cabinets (not shoe boxes) with neat, up-to-date, relevant files. They can find things around the house when they need them. There is order under their sinks, in their closets, and in the trunks of their cars. They actually change the filter on their furnace once a year. They put oil and grease on mechanical things. Their warranties runneth not out. Not only do their flashlights work, they actually know where the flashlights are!
When their car was last serviced - they know that too. The tools in their garage are on the pegboard - right where they are supposed to be. Their taxes are based on facts, not hunches and prayer. When they go to sleep at night, their list of Things to Do has a line through every item. And when they arise in the morning, their bathrobe is right there beside the bed and it is clean and new. Socks - right there in the drawer, folded into matching pairs. Yes! And as they prepare to walk out the door into a new day, they know exactly where their car keys are and are not worried about the state of the car battery or if there is enough gas to get to work.
There are such people. Ones who have it all together. Exempt from the reign of Chaos and the laws of entropy. I see them every day all around me. Calm and easy pillars of society. They are the people in your high school yearbook you wanted to be. The ones who made it.
Well. I am not one of them. Out of the frying pan, into the spilt milk is more me. Most of the time daily life is a lot like an endless chore of chasing chickens in a large pen. Life as an air-raid drill. Never mind the details.
But I have a recurring fantasy that sees me through. It is my stick-polishing fantasy. One day a committee of elders will come to my door and tell me it is time to perform the ritual of the polished stick - a rite of passage for the good-at-heart-but-chronically-disorganized.
Here's the way it works. You get selected for this deal because you are such a good person at heart, and it is time you were let off the hook. First, a week of your life is given to you free of all obligations. Your calendar is wiped clean. No committee meetings, no overdue anything - bills, correspondence, or unanswered telephone calls. You are taken to a nice place, where it is all quiet and serene and Zen. You are cared for. Fed well. And often affirmed. Your task is simply this: to spend a week polishing a stick. They give you some sandpaper and lemon oil and rags. And, of course, the stick - a nice but ordinary piece of wood. All you have to do is polish it. As well as you can. Whenever you feel like it. That's it: polish the stick.
At the end of the week the elders will return. They will gravely examine your work. They will praise you for your expertise, your sensitivity, and your spiritual insight. "No stick was ever polished quite like this!" they will exclaim. Your picture will appear on TV and in the papers. The story will say, "Man who is good at heart and well intentioned has thoroughly and completely and admirably polished his stick!" You will be escorted home in quiet triumph. Your family and neighbors will give you looks of respect. As you pass in the streets, people will smile knowingly and wave and give you a thumbs-up sign. You will have passed into another stage of being.
But more than that. From this time forward, you may ignore your gutters and downspouts. Your checkbook and files and forms and closets and drawers and taxes and even the trunk of your car will be taken care of for you. You are now exempt from these concerns. You are forever released from the bond of Things to Do. For you have polished the stick! Look at it hanging there over your mantel. Be proud, stick polisher! This is really something. And, it is enough.
Oh, don't I wish.
Robert Fulghum
All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
It's somewhere around 5am, and I've been awake for two and a half hours. Don't know why.
I went downstairs and got a glass of milk, and came back up to play on the computer, in hopes of lulling myself back to sleep, rather than staying in bed, tossing & turning, and ruining my husband's night's rest.
Now the milk is gone and I have a sour taste in my mouth. I can't go brush my teeth because the noise would wake someone up. I'm playing Mah-Jong and doing pretty well at it - I've already beat my own best speed (twice) - and I'm starting to get shaky, but I'm not falling asleep.
I have Green Day stuck in my head (not a bad thing) and my mind is still spinning around the recent discovery that a friend of my husband's has been cheating on her husband - who is fighting in Iraq - with just about everybody in the small town where she lives. I never liked that girl much to begin with...
The alarm will go off in another hour and fifteen minutes; I don't have to work today - just some laundry and dishes to catch up with. Between doing that I can sleep.
It's nights like this, when I wake up with my thoughts racing, that I miss my days of chemical dependency. At least then I had a way to turn everything off and get back to sleep.
Eight more puzzles and I'll get a new rank. This Mah-Jong game is animated; when you match the season tiles for Winter, it snows - and it always makes my feet cold.
