My week in a nutshell

Just a few things from this week

THE POOL

1. Just because they make a bikini in your size, that does not mean you should wear it.

2. Girl in the orange floral bikini- YOU need a bikini that is 2 times BIGGER. Your bottoms are so tight you have a muffin top. Your top is so small your giant bazoongas are popping out like Pam Anderson. I have kids and would prefer pimply lifeguard to pay attention to them instead of trying to sneak a peek at your girls unleashed.

3. Boys who think they are studly- White bathing trunks are see through. You arent as impressive as you THINK you are.

4. If you are as hairy as a silverback gorilla, I suggest investing in some back wax. Seriously. Your girls can ride you like a bareback horse, grabbing your back hair as they would a horses mane.

5. To the snotty, overskinny, REALLY white lady in the ugly bikini and stupid Bug eye sunglasses: yes my kid threw up. He swallowed water which made him gag and he was running to the bathroom when it all came out. At least it was on the sidewalk and NOT in the pool. At least I put chairs around it and told someone and asked if I could help clean it up. They told me not to worry about it. So dont sit there in the snack area moaning and complaining and being completely ugly about it. I know you did not realize it was me, but when you call my kid germy and disgusting, it's personal. He was not sick from the flu. He was not germy from some sort of disease that I ("what kind of mother brings their sick kid to the pool and then makes someone else clean it up-she should be shot") didnt have him innoculated against. We were swimming in the deep end together and playing around. He swallowed too much water and it made him throw up. Your kid isnt going to get Hepatitis or any other germ that us white trash mothers let our kids get. So dont think I didnt hear you and immeditely place you and your friend on my poop list.

SALSA: I made salsa yesterday. I wish I could say it was from my garden, but it wasnt. We were really hankering for some good salsa. So here is Salsa Making 101. I dont really have any set measurments.

I dice a TON tomatoes and add a large can of whole tomatoes(drained). I would say probably 10 cups of diced tomatoes. I used 3/4 of a LARGE sweet onion, chopped pretty well. I added 3 chopped jalapenos, a TON of garlic(about 4 TBSP), and eyeballed the cumin, cilantro, salt and pepper. I added juice from 1/2 a large lemon as well.

Mix together and I used an immersion hand blender to semi-puree it until It looked like this:

Put into a large container, or containers, and put in fridge. Let it sit for at least 24 hours before eating it and making adjustments.

The jalapenos were really potent and the oils from the peppers stayed on my hands and made my whole night pretty miserable. My hands and nails and nailbeds were on fire. I tired everything. I even googled solutions. I tried rubbing a lemon on them. I tired pouring vinegar over them. I tried using dishsoap with no water. I even rubbed my hands with a piece of dry bread. It really was miserable.

SCHOOL:

today is Peters last day of school. I mean he has school on Monday, but they are just having parties and pizza etc.
We have a busy sumemr ahead of us and then at the End of August Peter goes into 2nd grade and Finn starts Kindergarten.

CLEANING:

Well I got the craft/computer room done. I then decided to get a little crazy and re-arrange some things in the family room. It looks much better PLUS It forced me to organize my bookshelves and vacuum around Jakes crate.


FREECYCLE:
We got rid of 2 tables, a Total Body Gym, an old computer, a Web Cam and have a few other things listed . They will be getting a good home instead of going into a landfill and I dont have to haul myself over to goodwill (a whole 3 miles).
Next I will be tackling the guest bedroom... THAT will be a chore.


So that was a portion of my week. Hopefully next week will be a little more exciting. Happy weekend!

Sneak Peek

As Promised!! Sneak Peek Pictures of my ALMOST DONE craft room.

These are mostly in progress and "look at that gigantic mess" pictures. I realized I only have 1 picture from before and it only shows the one corner. Here is A before shot:

So imagine this is wall one. A small craft desk and a set of two stackable drawer units, and some shelving. Then on wall two to the left, imagine a 2 tier computer desk, which was really too small for everything we have for it. Now wall three(which if you are standing facing this wall one, is behind it) had a small desk which our OLD computer stood on, next to some filing cabinets. Wall 4 which is to the right of this wall one had boxes lined up of packing materials, boxes, envelopes, mailing supplies etc. We had about 3foot by 5 foot area in the middle of it all. BUT in this clear middle was boxes of Cosmetics packagings, boxes of butters, oils, salts, fragrances etc. I had honestly enough room to walk in and sit at the computer and a tiny path to reach all my boxes and stuff. It was chaos and utterly depressing.

Top Left: The desk in pieces, standing against the wall in my TV room, waiting to be assembled.

Top Right: Mostly put together with Junk stuill in the way and needing a good cleaning

Bottom Left: Junk Junk and more junk, still needing to find a home.

Bottom Right: Getting there!!

imagine a few more hours of blood, sweat and tears.

Top left: The computer area before setting up the computer

Top Right: The computer area AFTER setting up the computer

Bottom Left: Before setting up

Bottom right: AFTER finding places for some of my craft stuff

So thats what I have so far. We have freecycled our old computer, our small computer desk and our bigger 2-tier computer desk. We are freecycling our Total Body Gym (which lets face it was a really expensive clothes hook). We are freecycling boxes of old computer parts, accessories, comic books, etc.

It is getting there, and I for one am thrilled. We have so much room in there now we could put a queen sized bed!

Now I just have to keep it this way...Aye, there's the rub (Hamlet)

My house is a disaster

Authors update: I know I said I was proud of Charles, however I am feeling like I need to take it back. He was pulling out old floppy disks to save. WE DONT EVEN HAVE A COMPUTER THAT ACCEPT FLOPPIES! He said that he wanted to go through and make sure there was nothing personal on them, such as financials, social security numbers etc. I NEVER store anything sensitive like that on floppy disks, and if I do I would write on there what it was. I finally got him to throw them away after getting snotty and refusing to talk to him.
He was saving the paper sleeves to loose CD ROM's we no longer have. We only have like 4 of those stupid CD holder cases he can use!! And dont get me started on the comic books...so despite our best efforts to De-junk, we STILL have too much stuff. (And yes Charles, most of it is my craft stuff, which I CANT get rid of because it is my business and scant livelyhood!)


My craft room was getting to be a bit "cramped". We pulled EVERYTHING out of this computer room/craft area ,distributed it evenly throughout the house, and decided to go hard-core getting rid of stuff we dont even use. I am so proud of charles! His need to organize overcame his need to pack-rat. I could see the raging internal battle over certain cords, computer parts, papers etc. It was KILLING him to get rid of a few things, but he did it. We put out 2 GIANT bags of trash(lawn bags), a 2 level computer desk, and a small craft table/sewing desk. If you are in the Charlotte area feel free to come by and pick them up and use them for your own.

We got a big bad voodoo daddy of a desk from someone on freecycle and have been putting it together. When i say Big desk, i really mean behemoth. It is an actual industrial L-shaped Cubicle, complete with walls, top filing drawer and overhead lights. No screws, everything slides together. We picked it up the other day and it was in about 27 different pieces. We didnt have instructions on how to put it together, nothing- just a van full of panels, desk pieces, rails, shelving, supports etc.

But with our impressive combined I.Q. we were able to figure it out and get it together. We only had to take it apart twice before getting it mostly correct. But it makes a HUGE difference in the room. There is so much more space and we have a TON of desk space and room for business, crafts etc. It really is amazing and I am thrilled with the results.

Now i just need to get everything BACK into the office, arranged, put away, dejunked even MORE etc...
I have been taking pictures of before and after and will post when my new office/craft room is finished. Prepare to be amazed.

Happy Hump Day!

A funny Thing...or three

So this weekend and up into this week has been pretty interesting. A few funny things happened, a not so funny thing happened etc.

1. (Not so funny). On Sunday at Church, Charles went out of Sacrament meeting to finish preparing his sunday school lesson or use the bathroom or a combination of both, I am not sure. Maybe he was mad at me. Who knows. The Kids automatically went into "brat" mode and I had to separate them. I put Peter in the pew in front of me and Finn was next to me. Finn starts crying and yelling "I want my brudder!" Peter starts pretend shooting me with his built in Optimus Prime Transformers lasar and is just being so very disruptive. I got Finn calmed down and back to normal, but Peter was just acting worse and worse. So I leaned forward and told him "Get out. Leave sacrament and go outside in the hall and wait until we are done in here". He gets up and yells "FINE!" and walks out. The rest of sacrament went fine and then Charles comes back in and asked "Where's Peter" I said "He isnt with you?" Nope. We walked around the enitre building, looked in all the classrooms and sunday school classes etc. Couldnt find him anywhere. I am starting to freak out and I see a sweet lady from our church walking hand in hand with Peter bringing him back to the building. Apparently he zoned out after I said "Get out and go outside". He didnt hear(or pretended not to hear) the part where I said wait in the hall. He went outside, walked up to the road and was walking along the sidewalk towards the busy main road. I dont know what he would have done once he got there. I am just thankful that Jane found him before he got much farther. I was SO EMBARASSED though. Honestly I cant even believe he did that. He got into so much trouble when he got home though. He has lost all Transformers for a week. he cannot watch the movie, he cannot watch the cartoon, he cant even pretend to be a transformer, in fact he cant even TALK about transformers. I had visions of DSS coming to take away my children because I lost them during church.

2. We have a married couple that live in our town that we see walking around regularly. They are both blind and they both have seeing eye dogs. The other day we were driving down the street and the woman was walking on the sidewalk coming towards us. Her dog was spooked about something. He put on the brakes and was trying to lean against her and backing up. He REFUSED to cooperate. So she leans down to talk to the dog and as we are driving by looks straight at us. Charles, not thinking, Does a friendly Head Nod to her. (You know you see someone, but if your hands are full you do the head nod). He started laughing and I asked what was so funny. "I just nodded to the blind lady" Just kind of a silly something that struck me as funny.

3. We thoroughly believe in Freecycle. This weekend Charles listed a computer system up for grabs. It was 10 years old, and just kind of worthless to us. I have been BEGGING him for the past 3 years to please get rid of it. So he finally listed it and within an hour had about 7 requests.
The funniest email: I am an expiring writer
I wonder if he is writing his Last Lecture?


See what we got from Freecycle this weekend....(ignore the ground that is in desperate need of a leaf blower and power wash)

It is a large Gas Grill and it is in perfect working condition. It comes with the side burner too. The exact kind of grill I have been wanting the past few years. (what I would REALLY love is the huge grill like Alton Brown has, unfortunately we just dont have the room for it) Maybe someday.

The grill needs a little cleaning, but other than that works perfectly. I also will be replacing the rocks in the grill as the ones that are in it are kind of messy and old. They still work, I just would rather have new hot rocks to make it look pretty. I am kind of vain that way, as I do all the grilling in the house and I like my grill to be aesthetically pleasing.

SO check out your local freecycle. It is an amazing network. After all one mans trash is another mans treasure.

Gardening Monday

Here we go again, kids. It is time for gardening Monday. A chance for me to show you my garden, and give recipes on how to use your garden vegetables. Here is a mini collage of just a few things in my plots right now.(I am going Green here...HAH!)

The Anaheim is starting to get big! It was just a baby bud a few days ago and now it is trying to catch up to his friend, the Poblano. The Poblano has doubled in size this week. Charles is REALLY looking forward to those. We actually have about 4 or 5 more started on the same plant.(Poblanos) This Anaheim has a few friends hanging out on his plant as well.

TIP: Want spicier peppers?? Dont water them. Let the plant get almost to the point of death and then water water water to bring it back to life. The less water a pepper has, the hotter it will be. Want a milder pepper? Water a lot. Last year I grew jalapenos, garden salsa peppers and sweet banana peppers. Well we were in the middle of a drought and I didnt water them at all. I picked some to make a chopped pepper topping for tacos. Generally jalapenos and garden salsa peppers are spicy, but not exceptionally so. And sweet banana peppers should NOT be spicy at all. Maybe a little kick, but certainly not 5 alarm. Well Charles and I sprinkled out taco's liberally with this chopped pepper mixture. Next thing I know my mough is on FIRE I cant breathe, I am sweating and crying. Charles is coughing and his eyes are watering and he is sweating. Our mouths were burning for the rest of the night they were so hot These were, without a doubt, the HOTTEST peppers I have ever eaten in my life, and let me tell you I have eaten some HOT peppers. These were honestly hotter than serrano peppers, almost to the point of being scotch bonnets or habaneros. So it goes to show that any pepper, whether it be a mild pepper like sweet banana, or a medium pepper like a jalapeno, has the potential within it to play with the big boys.

The Romas have gotten a few more clusters, last week I posted the first romas on this plant, this week I am posting the second cluster. Romas are GREAT for Bruschetta. I take a baguette and slice into thin slices. Toast lightly in the broiler. Then, rub the bread with a peeled garlic clove. Top with a slice of fresh mozzerella cheese and a slice of tomato. Top with Fresh Basil. (Or you can bake it and the tomato bakes into the cheese and has ths amazing flavor. Both my Roma plants are going to be bountiful this year and I cant wait!

The grape tomatoes are taking off. I have several clusters on ech plant exactly like the one pictured. Those are my favorite of the small sweet tomatoes. They have a sweeter flavour than the sweet 100 cherry tomatoes and are great in salads, especially pasta salad. We make the rotini pasta(the tri color) and then after it is cooked and cooled, we toss it with zesty italian dressing. We toss in grape tomatoes(sliced in half), cheddar jack cheese chunks and ham chunks. Top with parmesan. The Grape tomatoes have such a great sweetness, they are the ones my kids go to for a snack straight from the garden.

This is our first zucchini. It goes great in stews, stir fry, and breads. Zucchini are great. Dont let them get too big though, then they get seedy and lose a lot of flavor. They are best when about 8 to 10 inches long, still on the thinner side. Harvest with a knife. Do not twist zucchini off of stem.

Bush Beans: My Blue Lake Bush beans have really grown up this past week. I have flowers and even have beans on most of the plants. They are still babies(as you can kind of see in the pictures) but will soon be big enough to harvest. The great thing about beans is they grow so fast and they are so plentiful. I should have enough beans for the entire summer. A great recipe for beans: In a pan over medium-hi heat, combine olive oil and some butter(this gives butter a higher smoke point so it wont burn) add chopped shallots and 2-3 tsp chopped garlic(2-3 cloves). Let the shallots and garlic kind of cook down and get tender and make that oil all yum-0. Reduce heat to medium, Then add your beans, tossing every few minutes to each bean gets coated. Let cook through until crisp tender.You want to harvest your beans when they are about 5 inches long, they are most tender and flavorful then. If they get too big the pods inside get tough and chewy.

Pole beans are still growing and starting to send out their feelers to start climbing my trellises.

Next week on Gardening Monday I will take pictures of my redneck compost system!

Hope you have enjoyed Gardening monday. Have a great week and May you have a bountiful harvest!

In Memoriam: Harvey Korman

Harvey Korman died at age 81. He will be greatly missed.

This is one of my favorite Carol Burnett Show sketches. He and Tim Conway played off of each other so well. Tim could get anyone to crack up, especially Harvey. They were such a great team, and I love watching the reruns and seeing him try to keep his composure.

So please enjoy this truly classic moment in Television history.

Yet i STILL married him

I love white and nerdy dearly. He is my best friend and soul mate and we have been together over 11 years now. But over the course of our time together I have found a few things out about my man that leave me just shaking my head.

1. He has a touch of OCD. He washes his hands about 497 times a day. He washes them after making the kids breakfast, after doing laundry, after making a bowl of cereal, after tying his shoes, after setting the table, after unloading the dishwasher, and of course after potty breaks and before meal times. He washes his hands after taking out the trash, or putting out the recyclables. He woke up this morning to the alarm, and said "I had the wierdest dreams, now I have to go wash my hands"
No, it wasnt some sort of erotic dream, or anything like that, in his dream he was digging through the trash(and found 20 bucks!), so when he woke up he felt dirty, violated and sick. SO yes, he DREAMS of trash and it makes him wash his hands.

2. When we met he didnt like Chinese food. Honestly, that was ALMOST a deal breaker.
We would go out and I would try and get him to go out to a chinese restaurant and he would stubbornly refuse. "I just dont like chinese food. I have had terrible experiences and I just cant eat it." So after a little more poking and prodding and needling I find the REAL story. WHen he was like 7 he went to a chinese restaurant in EL PASO TEXAS that wasnt any good. So in the remaining 17 years he refused to eat chinese food. So I finally forced him to go with me, he fell in love and now I can't get him AWAY from chinese food.

3. He is completely UN-handy. All the curtain rods, pictures, bookshelves etc are because of ME. Up until about 6 months ago he was so hopeless with power tools and the complete opposite of being handy. We owned all the tools and drills etc, but he rarely used them. Finally, while helping my dad install blinds, he got a crash course on the ways of manliness and power tools. So we're getting there...and it only took 11 years!!

4. He hates ABBA. Again, almost a deal breaker. I personally LOVE ABBA. I Love them. In fact I love them so much I have even seen "ABBA: The Movie" several times. Charles on the other hand barely tolerates them. However the ironic thing is this: One of his favorite Musicals is "Chess"(London version). The music for chess was written by none other than Benny and Bjorn from ABBA, and most of that music has the typical ABBA beat and style. So how he can say he hates ABBA, yet loves Chess is beyond me. Sometimes I will purposely listen to ABBA when he is around, just so he has Chiquitita or Super Trooper stuck in his head all day. Someday I WILL get him to admit he likes them."If you change your mind(take a chance) Im the first in line(take a chance)...take a chance take a chance take a chance chance"

5. He doesnt like onions. A Long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away he went to taco bell and had a burrito with onions. He claims the onions gave him really bad gas and a stomach ache, so now, even to this day, 18 years later, he cant eat onions. Everywhere he goes to eat, "no onions" When I cook I throw in onions and even if I have cooked them so much they no longer have flavor, he has this mental block and it turns him green. We eat a lot of sweet vidalias, which really have very little onion flavor. He seriously starts getting stomach cramps just THINKING about onions. He makes comments like "pretty good. Would have been better without the onions". But if he DOES eat onions at a japanese restaurant or whatnot, he makes a point of telling me "Look honey! I'm eating my onions. Arent you proud of me?" Yes,so proud. Now where did I put your medal??

6.He walks around barefoot 24/7. He comes from a barefoot family. He would mow the lawn barefoot if I would let him.
He really likes to be barefoot. He has about 3 inch thick callouses and dead skin on his feet from it too. I want to take him to the nail salnon to get a man-pedicure. I would love to see that Vietnamese slip of a girl tackle THOSE bad boys. They are like frodo from Lord of the Rings

7. He speaks fluent Portugese(having lived in Brazil). We have a fairly large Brazilian population here and if he hears someone speaking portugese he will find an excuse to talk to them in their native tongue. Of course they are always so surprised that this white and nerdy gringo speaks Brazilian Portugese it is quite humourous. Example: we were at an ice cream store and a group of brazilians walked in. They were looking at the flavours and one was trying to explain to the other group hat passionfruit was. He couldnt think of the portugese word for it(or he didnt know what the english word meant so he couldnt translate) Charles jumps right in and says "blah blah blah blah blah". The could have dropped dead there right on the floor. But they were grateful and were shocked at the same time.I know in their head they were thinking "where on earth did he learn that?"

8. He speaks his foreign words with an over pronouced accent. It really used to bother me, now I am just used to it. We go to a mexican restaurant an he super pronounces everything. Kind of Giada De Laurentis on the Food Network. Burrito(which I pronounce burr-ree-toe) becomes Boor-dee-toh)(the r and d are kind of rolled together)
En-chill-lah-duh becomes En-chi-la-da etc etc etc. Remember those kids in your foreign language classes who thought they were so great because they would over pronunciate everything? yeah, he does that.

9. He is SUPER WHITE. I don't mean white bread or typical stereotype white guy dancing(although thats true too). I mean, he is WHITE. We had one of our friends say "Man, Charles you are so white I dont know where your legs leave off and your socks begin!"
We are talking bike reflector white. Dont take him out in the bright sunlight, you will get snow blindness. He cant tan. He has two colors: white and red. There is very little in between. His arms can get a little color, but thats after a full summer out in the sun. Even in HAWAII he couldnt get a tan.


10. He is a pack rat and trash picker. If I try and throw stuff away he will pull it OUT of the trash and say "Hey we can still use this".(Then he will go and promptly wash his hands)
When we got married we received SEVERAL blenders, mixers, food processors etc. We kept them for about 6 years. Finally one day I went through, pulled out the ones we never used and put them in a box. I put them out by the dumpster with a note saying "free to a good home". He comes home from work and says "Oh there was a box of appliances out there someone was throwing away. I would have brought them in, but I know we already have like 3 of everything". He found out a year later that they were ours.
When we were moving into our house and were packing up, I deliberately waited until he was gone before I started de-junking and throwing stuff away. I threw out some old clothesa nd towels and my roller blades that didnt even FIT anymore. When he got home from work he came in, my roller blades in hand from the dumpster and said "Look what someone was throwing out! They are still in perfectly good condition and they are big enough they might fit you!" My friend Amy happened to be there at the time and she just cracked up. She looked at me and said "I totally thought you were joking about his habit!".
We have a whole house FULL of "we might use that again someday"s, and "I will lose enough weight to fit into that again" and "It's broke? i might be able to fix it. I'll get to it later".
No matter how hard I try to throw things away, they always find a way BACK into the house.

One more funny story. He may drive me crazy, but he makes me laugh.

My kids had a Buzz Lightyear costume from Disney store. It came with that purple stretch lycra cap that you put on your head and velcro under your chin. Well one day he was doing laudry, got undressed, and put on a pair of tighty whitey underwear. He pulled the purple cap all the way over his big head and velcroed it under his chin. He jumps out of the laundry room in nothing but underwear and a purple cap. He puts his hand on his waist, sucks in his gut, puffs out his chest and says "I'm Buzz Lightyear!".
I had to change my pants I laughed so hard. Now every time I see that purple cap laying around (because our kids may shrink 10 inches and they would wear that costume again you know) I just laugh until I cry.

So those were just a few silly quirks and funny things the man in my life does. It certainly makes my life more interesting. I wouldnt be as happy as I am without him in my life.(awwww, arent I mooshy??)
I love you White and Nerdy!