Bread and more

These are a pair of nice-looking loaves, aren't they? Too bad they're not really that nice to eat. One is regular bread for crumbs, and the darker one is mock pumpernickel. I had some of that toasted for breakfast, some with tuna for lunch, and the rest is in the oven becoming croutons to have with the split pea soup I'm also making. It was pretty dry and dense aroung the edges. I can now make pretty loaves that don't rise to ridiculous heights with holes all throughout, but I still can't make them edible. What you can't see on those pretty loaves is the evidence I found this morning. I put them in plastic bags on the counter overnight, and this morning I discovered that someone had flang a fang into one, right through the bag. Many little holes, nibbled crust. Stupid cat. It might be the same one who licks plastic bags for no particular reason, or the one who believes that everything edible in the house is rightfully hers. I also have a piece of beef in the crockpot with some onions, so it smells like Grandmommy's house. There will be no limas, however. This is my weekend cooking orgy so I have decent food during the week. If the boy doesn't like it he can eat Spaghettios.

I took the boy out to get Christmas presents today, and actually bought myself something I didn't need. It probably helped that I wasn't spending my own money - I had a gift card from my last co-op. I got CDs of Leonard Bernstein's Candide and his Beethoven's 9th. Barbara Cook's soprano makes the hair stand up on my neck, it's so good. And you can even understand the words, unlike opera singers.

Parking lot story. I pulled in, 3 spaces from a cart return. Lady next to me, 2 spaces from the cart return, sails in with her full cart and bangs it into my car. While I'm sitting in it. Never pauses or looks. Unloads her stuff, bangs into my car again (leaving a dent), then drives the cart around my car to park it 4 spaces from the cart return. Go figure. That one had me shaking my head all the way home.

Not much to report, but I'm trying to stay in the habit of writing. Just brain droppings, really. Oh, and the vanilla macaroni and cheese tasted fine - smelled like vanilla but didn't taste like it. Maybe make pudding with the rest of the rice milk. Weird stuff.

Ingredient FAIL

As I'm waiting for the gluten-free mac and cheese to finish in the oven, it smells like cake in here because the gluten-free Whole Foods unsweetened rice milk contains - vanilla. I thought I'd try rice milk because making mac and cheese with regular milk and forgetting to take a lactase pill makes me feel crappy. I tried LactAid milk, but apparently the active lactase enzyme can also break down cornstarch, so it doesn't thicken. Gluten-free, the rice milk said. Unsweetened, it said. Didn't look close enough at the ingredients, did I? Should be interesting. Either way I'm gonna eat it - not wasting all that cheese and all that good rice pasta.

As you can see, the boy is getting rather hairy. He wanted to grow it long and see what that's like, so I said fine as long as you take care of it. He looks like he came out of my high school yearbook. He has begun the heartbreaking struggle of high school social life - he likes a girl who does not like him that way. But she has a crush on a cartoon anime character that he resembles, so there's hope. How many times did we get our hearts stomped on during those years?

My former in-laws are ignorant cretins. But you knew that. Whenever we went there, it was excruciatingly boring for the kids and I, since there was no hospitality to speak of. No one cleared dolls off a chair for us. No one engaged us in conversations or seemed to be genuinely interested in us. No one checked to see if we were comfortable or in need of attention. The best the kids could do was wander off to the spare bedroom to watch a TV that wasn't tuned in to golf. Not much of a relationship to begin with, harder to maintain as the kids got older & had more interests of their own. Last week Ex bugged me to contact the girl (he can't seem to maintain contact with her himself, which is a whole story for another time) and have her call his parents. He had mentioned to us before that they believe she never thanked them for birthday gift. Okay, it's possible, also possible that she called and they just forgot. She agreed that she would be sure to apologize just in case she didn't. So she calls them, and they lambasted her for 10 minutes about what a bad grandchild she is, she didn't thank them, she never goes to see them, etc. Hello? Do they call her? Do they show any interest in her? Have they given her a reason to want to stay in touch? Do they understand that she has a full-time job, boyfriend, etc? She thinks her dad has been talking trash about her to them. Yes, she probably hasn't seen them since graduation, but she has been working the few times her dad went over there. I was so pissed at this. These people have done nothing to engender feelings of love or even obligation in these kids, other than overloading them with gifts. That family has never understood that material goods do not equal love. I'd be happy to never see them again. I'd love to tell her that she's 18, she can decided for herself how much contact to maintain, but I'll be the diplomatic parent and suggest she continue to make the effort, although what she will get out of it I can't imagine would be worth it. I have tried to be patient and civil with them, but it's just not worth it.

Rant over. In other news, I have finally bought a digital camera after the first one went missing, so I can show you the knitting projects I've done once I figure out how to put them here. Or just e-mail them. But for now, I'm going to go see what vanilla macaroni and cheese tastes like.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Like it says, happy Thanksgiving to all. I will make a pumpkin pie tonight, and lasagna tomorrow, gluten-free of course. I thought I might have to go in to work Friday (we have off), but my cells cooperated and the stars aligned, so I have 4 days off. I left early today (well, late compared to everyone else since we closed at noon) and thought I would stop at the grocery store, but the Shop Rite parking lot was full in places I didn't even know they had spaces, so I decided it could wait. The cats, however, are all thrown off by my coming home early and will spend the next two hours fighting because they think it's dinner time.

My 401(k) is now officially tiny, since I lost $100,000 in stock losses and split what was left with the ex. At least that's one more official thing that's done. They are still pondering the request to split the pension. It's all imaginary money anyway until I retire, which apparently I won't be able to do for a long time.

Not much else going on except for occasional robotics events. I suppose I should put up the tree one of these days, although I expect to be regularly extracting cats from it. I will do what I did last year and wire it to the wall so at least they can't knock the whole thing over.

Fun things I can do with a 4 day weekend:
- vacuum the dust from under the fridge
- shred assorted documents
- order new checks
- change sheets
- scoop the litterbox
- arrange old photos by approximate date
- eat lasagna
- make bread crumbs from GF bread

Are you excited yet? Woohoo!

Have fun, don't eat too much.

Back in the saddle

Ooh, has it been that long since I sat down to do this? Maybe I haven't been cranky enough to need to vent.

Things are pretty routine here. Last weekend's visit to Florida messed me all up, though, because of all the weekend stuff I usually do that I didn't get to do, like cooking for the week ahead. I still have yet to rake one leaf because it's either dark or raining or I'm not here. Today is windy and cold and maybe they'll blow away anyway, so screw it for this weekend.

I'm a bad daughter for saying it, but I don't enjoy those visits much. The travel is a pain even without small children, and a good chunk of money to boot. I get to have conversations with dad, but I found myself just enduring mom much of the time. She has very few interests that can get her out of the house, in contrast to dad who is out and about, but is bored in the house. He wants stuff to do, but he doesn't seem to want to do anything with other people, so no joining the Kiwanis or volunteering. Mom narrates everything we see, which really tries my patience, but I do my best to not say anything as she talks over whatever we're watching on TV or at Sea World, which is where we spent Friday. Anything that she finds offensive is "stupid" or "disgusting", her only two adjectives, usually related to sex. I guess maybe this is typical of older people to have fixed and narrowing opinions and interest as they age, but shoot me if I ever get like that. I'm not sure she enjoys our visits either, because she seems to be eager to get back to her routine (but then I guess I was too). And of course she is still more concerned with her possessions not getting messed up than with her grandkids feeling at home. That used to make me feel horribly anxious when I would take my kids to their house and have to spend the whole time making sure they didn't touch any of the attractive nuisances or dare spill anything or leave a crumb - I would get so stressed out I couldn't wait to leave. I love her, but sadly I can't find much connection any more. If I ever have grandkids I want to focus on them having a good time with me and not whether we are making a mess.

Sea World is different from what I remember from about 14 years ago - the shows are now big epic dramas rather than just putting the animals through their paces. No more trainer holding out a fish and explaining how they train the animals and putting them through their paces. Now it's Cirque Du Soleil that just happens to have sea mammals as part of the big costume/video on big moving screen/thundering soundtrack/touching backstory spectacle. They also are apparently very paranoid about ticket sales on line - you have to create an account, and you have everyone's name on their ticket and might have to show ID. For $70 a person (child price stops at 9 and is only $10 less) you get a few sea animals and a lot of very nice landscaping. And yet they want to charge $3 more for a ride up and down an observation tower. Man, I really sound like a cranky old person here. I just wonder, is this what the 2008 audience requires to have a good time at Sea World? Are children (and adults) so jaded that they can't just be awed by the fact that something as intelligent and carnivorous as an orca will willingly cooperate with humans in return for a mouthful of stinky fish?

Okay, end of rant or I could go on until I digust everyone. Yesterday I put a whole chicken in the crockpot. While I was cleaning it I found huge solid globs of yellow fat, and I wondered about how to render it and use it like in Jewish cooking, so I looked that up and saved them. I also skimmed off almost a cup of fat from the Crockpot, leaving behind 2 cups of other juices that cooked out of the bird, which will be broth for making tetrazzini tonight. I kept the skimmed fat also, which is now solid in the fridge. Then I picked off the meat after eating a leg, to use for the tetrazzini, salads, and whatever else. THEN (I wasn't done) I put all the leavings in the soup pot with water, salt, and an onion, and cooked it for 2-3 hours to make 6 cups of broth now in the freezer for future soup, risotto, whatever. I left the cooked solids sitting overnight (it was late), meaning to throw it out today and take it out to the trash. Apparently, though, some feline managed to knock the crockpot lid askew and steal the one leg bone that remained in there, so I'm hoping her digestive system can handle bird bones, being a normal part of a wild feline diet, because I don't see any sign of it on the floor.

Here's what the world wide web told me to do with that chicken fat: take those globs of fat (possibly saved in the freezer to make a large quantity) and the skimmed fat, melt it down, add salt and a sliced onion, and cook it until the onion and fat are dark brown but not burned. Pour through a sieve, save the fat in the fridge, and eat the crackly onion pieces and whatever chicken cracklings remain. Use the fat for cooking whatever would be good cooked in oniony salty fat. I may do this with the onion, it sounds awesome.

I have to thaw a bun for a sandwich for tomorrow, when I am helping disassemble 70 mice for their assorted parts and won't have a fridge or microwave for my lunch. We will be taking skin, kidneys, liver, diaphragm, blood, heart, tongue, brain, all four legs (one of the co-ops is still amused by my image of said mouse up on cinder blocks after removing all four tires) to have multiple muscles dissected out later, and spine with tail attached. In a hot noisy room next to the cage washer, with the sound of that and the smell of autoclaved mouse bedding all day, on my feet. And a new person who is pissing off everyone else by not listening to anyone, but we have to take her. Friday I spent my afternoon sorting through about 30 boxes of frozen mouse parts for another study, pulling out tubes containing 182 hearts, kidney pairs, and pieces of skin and then putting them in numerical order in other boxes. It was a swell time! One tube popped open while thawing and shot a kidney across the room, which I managed to recover. Mamas, don't let yer babies grow up to do in vivo studies.

The boy shaved - came out of the shower one night and showed me his clean baby face. He's so cute. His dad was disappointed he missed this father-son bonding opportunity, so I suppose he'll lay some guilt on him for a while because that's what he does. I got him some shaving cream and razors today so he doesn't have to use his sister's expensive razor heads again. He probably won't need it for a few weeks anyway.

In general, I find I am happy and content (notwithstanding the complaining above). I splurged on a whole pound of spring mix and I am eating awesome salads with chicken, clementine sections, and sugared sliced almonds. I put chocolate syrup on my plain yogurt with cashews for breakfast because I was out of fruit, and it was like a sundae. I got out yesterday (72 and sunny!!!) and got the two big Christmas items (Xbox for boy and PSP for girl) before the carols in the store could drive me nuts. The juvenile delinquent cat has discovered the joy of lap, and has been coming to curl up with us unbidden - he even tried to share this typing experience with me. My knitting is going well, bills are paid, kids are not in trouble. House could be cleaner, but eh. Hope all is well with you and your trips to Florida are peaceful and easy.

new adult - in theory

Wednesday night the nuclear family went out to PF Chang's (so I could get a real GF menu) to celebrate the girlchild's 18th birthday. Everybody was delighted with the food, even the picky child who declared he didn't like anything new. Girl got a TomTom for her car from dad and a bracelet from me.

Here's how the 18 thing is working so far: I don't tell her when to be home, but she has to tell me when and whether she will be sleeping at home so I don't worry more than I have to. If she chooses to sleep at scuzzy boyfriend's house my telling her not to will be ignored, so she tells me she will "sleep out", but at least she doesn't lie to me about whose house anymore. She is still covered by my medical insurance until 19, but she makes her own appointments and takes herself there (although I still pay the copay). For now I still pay the cell phone and car insurance because she doesn't have a job, and I give her $100/week out of the child support. She didn't want to accept it (like she had a choice) until she found out it was coming from her dad - I think that made it okay because she doesn't get anything else from him. In some ways this is liberating for me as well as for her. She is trying hard to get to the point where she can be independent, although I think she has no idea how hard that can be. You know how weird it felt that first September when you no longer had a school to go back to? She feels nothing but freedom and relief about that. She is looking for work and just learning hard lessons like, an employer who interviewed you but isn't going to hire you won't call to tell you. She complains about not having money, but rents movies with boyfriend and eats fast food. Class, what do we do when we have very little money? That's right, we cut back all unnecessary expenses and eat macaroni and cheese or free meals at mom's. We also put in applications at every store in every mall to find someone willing to give us part-time crap work just to earn some money while looking for the ideal job. She has not yet accepted that she's going to have to do this, but I think that point is coming soon.

I actually forgot my birthday in the preparations for hers. I got a card from the ex-inlaws and couldn't figure out why they were sending me a card - did they think I was sick? A thank you for something I forgot I did? It wasn't till I opened it that I realized it was a birthday card (no money enclosed, darn it). Ex- father in law called yesterday, told boy he wanted to talk to the birthday girl, so he handed it to me. I could hear the surprise on the other end - expected the girl. Had a kind of weird conversation, and I realized later that he had our birthdays mixed up.

The boy had two days of school, and wham - sick again overnight. Couldn't believe it. He said it was probably the milk at lunch, not the same thing as before, but I don't know. We will see how this first month goes and then check in with the doctor. It is nice not to have more than one school to keep track of. He has to walk home, and on the first day the brand new Land's End backpack strap broke. It appears that one loop of tape was not properly sewn in, but now I need to make a call and exchange it, after I threw away the receipt and all the packing materials. So much for their reputation for quality. Made in China, it says.

I got most of the painting done, although there are a few things that could use a second coat and aren't going to get it. Nothing left except the window frames in the living room. However, this shiny trim paint has the propensity to peel off at the slightest damage - it sticks together like a skin, but not very well to the paint below it. I might have to get something else for these windows or every little nick and cat claw scrape will drive me nuts. But first I had to deal with the damage from the previous owners who cut big chunks out of the molding to install their louvered blinds. Last weekend I puttied up the holes with several layers of wood putty (after seeing that one thick layer would shrink and crack as it dried). Then I kind of ignored them all week. Now I need to sand them smooth - my original plan was to try to sand them to match the contours of the original molding, but I don't think I have the skill or patience for that. Once it's painted it will be covered with curtains anyway. And there is some scraping - I don't mind that, it's cleaning up the paint chips that's a pain.

Cats. I came out to the kitchen today and stepped on something slightly crunchy and looked down to see the ragged remnants of an ear of corn. I had left 3 ears of corn floating in their cooking water on the stove last night (yes, I'm a slut of a housekeeper), 2 white and one yellow. During the night someone fished out the yellow one (preference? chance?) and gnawed every kernel off. Many of those gnawed kernels were still on the floor around the denuded cob, and I'm sure I'll see the rest in a pile somewhere or the litterbox. Those little yellow bits of germ from the center of the kernel tend to stick pretty tightly to linoleum as they dry. I gotta admit I was pretty impressed how thorough a job they had done on that cob.

Boy got a new shirt from his dad (who has already been giving him "early Christmas presents") for back to school, but it's kind of clever - picture of a trebuchet (a kind of catapult) with some equations and the words "physics makes me want to hurl". Okay, we nerds are laughing.

Fare update

As I suspected, airlines charge more for Valentine's Day weekend trips to Orlando. The weekend before and the weekend after are cheaper, or at least the cheap fares are still available.

Paint and petulance

It has been a long time since I updated, so you probably gave up checking it, but here it is. Summer is almost over and it's time to wring out the bits of commentary that have been sloshing around my brain.

That isn't my cat, but the message is the same. I have been painting, and the first day I had the roller pan out Not strolled through it. Fortunately I found the footprints on the rug and kitchen floor in time to avoid them becoming permanent, but since then I have to lock him up when I get out the brush and paint. He would rather investigate what I'm doing than eat, and I don't want to replace a rug.

School starts Wednesday for the one that's still in school. The other is busy looking for full-time work with benefits. I have been walking a fine line between too much help and letting her figure it out for herself. Having just gone through a job search in recent years I do have some expertise to offer, but I risk looking controlling, at least from her point of view. I have been called a hypocrite (I'm not even sure what the exact context was, it was just part of a bitchy rant), accused of wanting to pry into every detail of her life (because I ask her, when I finally see her at 11pm, what she did that day), snarled at for circling possible jobs in the paper. Then she will come and apologize. What I do doesn't vary as much as how she reacts to it. I am leaving as much of it in her hands as possible so that she can learn. I even offered to help with trash boyfriend's resume, which I'm sure has hugely exaggerated his abilities, since he needs a job too. With him with a GED and her with just a high school degree it will be interesting to see what they end up with. Her latest interview was for a receptionist for a car dealer, which might need a better wardrobe, so I suggested consignment shops. She and Trash want to get a place together some day, which I can't really prevent once she's 18, but it will take them a long time to afford it. It will be interesting to see if he can pass drug tests if he does get hired somewhere.

I looked into airfare to Orlando for Feb., and it's not as cheap as I had hoped. What, do people go to Disneyland to get married on Valentine's day?

I spent my vacation painting my living room/hallway/stairway a beautiful sky blue with white trim. Apparently the kids never knew that the walls were light blue - they thought they were white. Both of them approve the color, rare agreement with me. Boy helped with the furniture moving and roller work. I only used one coat, so we had to do some hole patrol - looking for the pale holes in the blue that indicated incomplete coverage. The hardest part was the trim - it needs two coats to cover the previous medium blue, and baseboard is hard since one knee doesn't bend enough to sit cross-legged for long. There are 4 doorways in the hallway, 3 at the top of the stairs, baseboard everywhere, windows which I am saving for last, and heat vents - too much woodwork for my sanity. But most of it is done. The windows have not been done in about 20 years - I skipped them last time, which was about 12 years ago (yeah, I'm a lazy slut). I might need to strip away what's there, which still bears wear from dog feet and has old adhesive from attempts to seal out cold air. Not only that, but there are big holes cut in the molding from the people who lived here before - they had louvered blinds on the bottom half, and didn't understand how to use the hinges, so they cut the molding to attach them instead of turning them around to attach properly. So now cold air blows in through the holes in the molding. I'm thinking of some serious quantities of wood putty and some careful sculpting. This whole thing has been the kind of upheaval in the house that I just didn't want to contemplate before divorce because of the fuss that it would cause. Things were out of place in the living room for at least 4-5 days and I'm still not done after a week, and there would have been whining like crazy.

I took a day off in the middle of that to take the Boy to Dorney. It was the best weather possible, and we had a blast because he learned to love looping roller coasters. The only downside was that some things were closed or short staffed because so many kids had gone back to college, but we had a good time anyway.

I made blueberry muffins with Grandmommy's sour cream blueberry cake recipe. Even converted to gluten-free this recipe rocks. Especially yummy to eat raw. I crockpotted a big batch of eggplant parmesan - not quite the same without breading and frying first, but I threw some gf breadcrumbs in between layers and it was good. The mozzarella I sliced didn't melt and spread, so I get it in chewy chunks, which is actually quite good. The boy just left with his dad for a few days, so I'll be living on the eggplant parm and huge salads for a few days - I got a head of red leaf lettuce the size of a laundry basket at the farmer's market today. I made peach crumble last week - hard unripe peaches treated like apple crumb pie. I just put a loaf of "gluten-free multigrain miracle bread" in the oven. I have to stop baking because then I eat it. Bad carbs, bad!