Birthday Dinner Divine

Three days late but my husband and I just cooked and enjoyed my birthday dinner. OMG it was droolworthy. A small ribeye steak, grilled to perfection (we split it). Three long skewers of shrimp on the grill, but marinated in salsa verde, lime and cilantro. Delish enough to make you faint. Grilled broccoli, 3 kinds of onion and tomato. Whoa. Taste overload. But that wasn't enough. A sort of Waldorf salad with green apple, walnuts, dried crans and yummy poppy seed dressing with a splash of mayo.


I am full. But look at the ingredients! With the exception of the beef (just sort of bad all around but what carnivore can resist the occasional treat?) and the mayo.... not bad. Not freekin' bad at all.


It's time for a *happysnoopydance* but I'm way too tired and full. Tomorrow perhaps. :p

Wow, almost a year...

Let's face it. I suck at blogging. A lot has happened in the past 12 months but blogging just didn't seem to be the way I wanted to spend my time. Perhaps that was not a very good decision, for I suspect it would be rather cathartic to spew my feelings to the blog. So...let's give it another try.

September 2010. My son moved nine hours away to Sacramento. While I'm very (no, EXTREMELY) proud of him, it hurts to have him so far away. We've always been close and I pride myself in being a better parent than my own were to me.

Okay, so I miss him. And his dog Ryder. Yet, he left behind his two cats Smokey and Dean. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay. Little demons they are. Cute, but demons nonetheless. But more about them later.

My wonderfully sweet husband and my wonderfully sweet doggie Annie keep me (sort of) sane. But...is sanity all it's cracked up to be? Stay tuned for later blog entries to explore this idea.

Pain

I'm at wit's end. Pain is an amazingly strong and intoxicating force to confront. Pain battles on against you, never wearying, never waning. Pain wins. Hands down. Every time.

Why do doctors (the AMA, specifically, for my international friends) simply ignore when I am in pain...it's all in my head... ibuprofen is strong enough... you can use meditation and breathing to get through it. Bullshit. I'm fed up. I've done all that for years, now. Enough!

I want relief and I want it so badly. I'm ready to bare my soul to the Kaiser Medical Org. gods (very unforgiving gods, they are); that I'm ready to call it a life, I'm ready to drive my car into that tree (sorry, poor tree), I'm ready to give up. Will they believe me then? Probably not. So who loses, then? My poor family and friends. sigh.

So, I won't. I'll just sit here in pain and misery until all the little remaining brain cells have been eaten up by the process of "snapping out of it." Gods, I want to smack the next person who says that to me.

Ok. I'm done whining. sigh.

...as the blog turns

I've tried so hard to keep updating this blog but there are many days that I feel I have nothing to say. Pathetic, no? I mean, c'mon... EVERYONE has something to say, right? *sigh*

Perhaps my muse has decided to go south for the winter. I hope she sends me a postcard.

The Good, The Bad and The Borscht

I made sweet and sour cabbage the other day. I'd never made this particular recipe before but it turned out great, despite the AWFUL fragrance wafting through the vents in the house. By the end of dinner, the entire place smelled like...well...cabbage. Anyway, lots of leftovers resulted because, although it tasted great, one teeny cabbage goes a LONG way with only three people. Okay, so the good: a little pack of boneless beef ribs at the bottom of the freezer. OMG teh yums. I braised them all day (it was only a pound and a half) in onions, beef broth and applesauce, to get a sort of sauerbraten taste. Wow, I could have eaten the result right then and there. BUT, instead, we come to the Borscht. I'd never made Borscht before. I knew what ingredients I needed and I had the beets in the produce bin, added the beef and a few diced potatoes to the cabbage and OMG again. Teh yums. On the side, I experimented with molasses whole wheat bread. Very perfect union with the soup. *happy sigh*

2010's been nice, but ...

Since Friday, January 1, 2010, our dryer has gone out ($120 repair), the car broke down 50 miles away ($670 repair, two extra trips and a lost day of work), and my tooth has been extracted ($32 for now, but will be hundreds in the future most likely). Okay, I get it. I must have done something REALLY bad in a past life and the karma is continuing to bite me in the arse. ENOUGH. I get it. I mean really. I don't need a bus to run me over. ::: vrooooooom :::

Laundromat Wars, 2010

Our dryer broke - on New Year's day. It decided that enough was enough, I guess. So, I packed our dirty laundry into the car on January 2 and headed for the bustling metropolis that is the South Salem laundromat...or lavanderia, if you read the bottom portion of the sign. Saturday, 9am, was just before peak hours, which I very nearly missed but was fortunate (?) enough to get a teeny taste of as I was leaving at 11am. Yes, two hours for two loads of laundry. Oh, and $10. How do these families do it? I saw large families, apparently making it an outing that all could enjoy, with loads and loads of laundry. One family must have spent at least $60 on their clean but tattered clothes. It boggles the mind, I tell ya.

So, it's Saturday night, near 8pm, and the repairman has dismantled the poor little dryer, the dryer-guts hanging out for all the world to see. It's not a pretty sight. And I feel for the otherwise shy little appliance. He will have to remain this way for a few days while his new part is ordered. Keep him in your thoughts, please? Poor little gas-dryer. *sniff*