Too Cute

I find this absolutely adorable for some bizzaro reason. Go to Boing Boing to find out it's details.

Flotsam and Jetsam

My parents came down to see us this weekend.

(This is why I wasn't posting.)

I'm always glad when my parents come to visit, or when we get to go visit them. I realize that this is not the case for everybody--some people deeply dread seeing their parents--but I always really enjoy it. Somewhere along the way I grew up, and my parents and I realized that we genuinely liked each other, rather than just putting up with each other because we're family and ergo love one another.

Blessings abound in my life.

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The tax return finally came in on Friday!

*le happy dance!*

This means that Wednesday the pieces and parts for Frank's replacement will arrive on my doorstep. This is a happy circumstance.

Viiiiiideoooooos. Muuuuusic. Photoshoooooooop....

This really makes me extremely happy. I've missed being able to clean up pictures and post things for ya'll.

Especially recipes.

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I hate food poisoning.

Sam and I have reached a place that whenever we eat out, nine times out of ten we get something and split it. This helps with both a) costs and b) portion control, since I'm too old for the kids' meals and too young for the senior menu.

The downside is that if we get a hold of some bad food, we both go down for the count.

Unfortunately, this means we also missed Something Catchy's Oscar party, which sucked.

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Words with Friends finally succeeded in invading my life.

I've known about it for well over a year, but for one reason or another I never bothered to put it on my iPhone.

While Mom and Dad were down, I got to talking to my Mom about it, and before too long we both had it downloaded and had started a game.

Needless to say, within 24 hours I also had a couple games going with Adorable Nurse and Literary Cat.

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Fact: I lack will's discipline when it comes to the 356 days of blogging idea.

Though it took some time, I've finally made my peace with that.

Still, I find it amusing and exciting that by the end of February I already have more posts this year than I did for all of 2010.

If for some reason I suddenly stop blogging for months on end now, it will be because I posted this. I don't know why that would happen--I really enjoy doing this--but whatever the external excuse would be, the root cause would be this little segment.

That's way my luck runs.

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Sam and I have decided to try and plant a garden this year.

I have no earthly idea what I'm doing. With our luck, there'll either be an overabundance of produce, or not a single thing will survive. Personally, I'm hoping I take after my Grandpa Jim, who used to grow orchids in his hothouse on the farm.

My husband an I talked about doing a garden last year. (For the record, it still makes me giggle happily inside when I get to call him my husband.) We were poor and living in an apartment, however, and by the time we moved to our little house, it was too late to jump in. This year, though, we decided to make the attempt.

You can blame the movie Food Inc. and the book The Hundred Year Lie for that.

How was the trip?

*bat* *bat* *bat* *bat*

Opening one eye, I see Nala's nose a mere inches from mine. With a sigh I reach up and scratch her ears, then close my eye and try to go back to sleep.

*bat* *bat* *bat* *bat*

Nala's decided I've been lazy enough for one morning, it's nine o'clock, and by golly she's going to bat at my face until I get up and get dressed.

For a brief moment I consider opening a Chinese restaurant, but decide she's too cute and I love her.

After stumbling out of my bed to brush my teeth and get dressed, I proceed to continue stumbling to the coffee pot before sitting in front of the computer.

I wonder what everyone's up to today? I think to myself as I open up Facebook.

Oh look, the local university has closed down for the third day in a row. They never did that while I was in school there. Kids these days... Hey, my friend posted pics of her wedding dress! She's so pretty. I hope I can make it down to Houston for the big day... Wow, I wish I was going back to London soon, lucky dog...

Having caught up on all the little updates that Facebook provides, I then move over to my blog reading, starting with people I actually know.

will's kid is so gosh darn cute. Makes me want a little one of my own. Literary Cat has posted new list of books for me to check out, awesome! Ah man, she's got a cold too. Can't blame Sam for this one--he hid away while Rapier Wit was in town. Aww, thanks Sherri! I now know exactly how much snow fell 'round these parts...


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You may be wondering why I just posted a snippet of my morning routine--it's setup for this fascinating op-ed over at Mashable about how social media is making us more like our grandparents' generation.

Here's the core of Josh Rose's argument:

Our grandparents talked with their parents. Family dinners were an essential part of life, not to mention ball games, religious discussions, family outings and just plain hanging out on the porch. But the culture of our parents’ generation became somewhat more escapist; James Dean, punk rock, The Outsiders, TV dinners, video games, and yes, even the Internet.

But, a good portion of our grandparents’ sensibilities are back today, thanks to social media.

Kids aren’t blocking their parents from their Facebook profiles — well, OK, some are, but not all of them. Teens are texting their parents about their comings and goings. And although it looks a whole lot different than the Cleavers’ family dinner, in a strange way the book is wider open today than it has been in 100 years. Because of blogging, tweeting, checking in and status updating, the lock is off the diary.

Additionally, emotions are more accepted. Pain more vocalized. I know someone on Facebook who is dealing with cancer and posts regularly about that for all her friends and family to see. We are rediscovering what we once knew inherently; community makes us less lonely.

And in many ways I see that reflected in my own life, as shown in the snippet up above. Even though I live in a completely different state from a large swath of my friends and family, I still know when people are going on trips, what the weather is like there, and how everyone's kids are doing in school. Having grown up in a small town, that doesn't seem very strange to me, as I typically knew that information about the people in the community. But I can see how it's easier now than it was when I was a kid, and I can also see why this is such a novelty for many people who did not grow up in a town of 10,000 people.

What do you guys think?

The Complexity of Screen Names

There's a post over on GeekMom that has got the poor hamster back up and running the wheels turning in my head. To summarize for those of you who hate clicking on an embedded link within a post to find out what in the seven hills the author is talking about, Ellen Henderson blogged about how she doesn't understand why women would choose to include the word "mom" (or some variation of it) in their screen names.

Because I've put so much thought into my own choices, I’m always curious about what’s behind other people’s screen names. When I became a mother a few years back and started visiting parenting websites and message boards, I was surprised by the number of people — well, the number of women, to be precise — who chose screen names based on their status as mothers. “ProudMommy” and “Mom_of_three” and “Lucysmom” were common configurations, and while I understood the enthusiasm behind them — we were, after all, connecting through parenting sites — I was a bit taken aback by these names. And later, when I noticed similar handles on groups and websites totally unrelated to parenting, I was, frankly, a little dismayed.

Maybe it means I’m a bad mother or a raging egoist, but I don’t identify myself primarily through my relationship with my child. I am delighted and proud to be his mom, but that’s not the entirety of who I am, and I just can’t see myself using his name or my position as “mommy” to project myself into the online world. Neither, by the way, would I use my child’s photo as my profile picture on Facebook — he isn’t me, and I am something more complex than just the person who gave birth to him.

And then, in the comments, there's a continued discussion over those poor deluded souls who have no other source of identification except through their husband or children. [/sarcasm]

This relates back into my ongoing irritation with much of the feminism movement (or, at least, the aspects I've had personal exposure to). Allow me to explain; if you look along the right side of this blog, you will notice links to such sites as Sociological Images and Historiann, which often reflect upon the role of women and the ongoing fight for equality they have. I follow them because I find many of the ideas they bring up to be interesting and thought-provoking. However, sites along these lines also frequently frustrate me.

There is an underlying assumption amongst many feminists, both online and in real life (because, trust me, I was trained and mentored by two raging feminists) that if you find joy and satisfaction in things such as cooking, homemaking, or children, then that means you are either a) uneducated, b) foolish, or c) a victim of society. Furthermore, if the choice you've made is to take care of your home and forgo a career, then you are a bad woman who is betraying the cause of equality for all women.

Please forgive the language, but bullshit.

I recognize and understand that the world is not an equal place--women are frequently pigeonholed as care-takers and men are thought of as unmanly if they choose to take an interest in their home and children. I realize that it is true that many women make less than their male counterparts in the work place. I have witnessed and even, shamefacedly, participated in perpetuating some of these problems.

However.

I do feel that it is okay to be a woman who stays home and takes care of children. I see nothing wrong with taking joy in one's house and being proud of one's children and husband. I do draw a certain sense of identity from my husband, and one day will likely do so with my children as well. I also draw a certain sense of identity from my friends, my parents, my writing, my reading, the schools I attended, the churches I've been a part of, and the theaters I've worked in. For some reason, many feminists look down upon women who choose to be caretakers, thus unintentionally encouraging the patriarchal belief that caretakers are less important than workers. Ms. Henderson mentions later in her post that she has no problem with the handle of "GeekMom" because it shows that she is something else other than "just a mom."

I doubt she would bat an eyelash at the screen-names of "Angel Cole," "Lighting Angel," or "Li'lBookWorm." The first is a character name I came up with a long time ago, the second is a reference to my love of theatre and angels, and the last is a description of my reading habits. That doesn't mean, however, that I identify myself only through said story, theater, angels, or books. It's one aspect of my personality. Just as, if and when the day comes when I have a child, "NewMommy!!!11!" would represent only one aspect of my personality. But because it is a reference to childcare, in her apparent worldview that means that I only identify myself through my children if that's my name.

In the end, what I'm trying to say is that I support the cause of women trying to make the world a better place for all people. I would love to see laws enacted that provided more and better opportunities for working parents to provide care for their children, or that people would be paid equally depending upon skill and ability, or that no one would bat an eyelash if little girls liked Star Wars or little boys wanted to dress up as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween. I just wish that these same women would support people like me who want to make a happy home and (hopefully) focus on my children, without assuming I'm either too stupid, too lazy, or too co-dependent to do otherwise.

I am myself, no more, and no less.

Thanksgiving 2010

Author's Note: I'm posting the self-created recipes in separate posts, because they were cluttering up this entry WAY too much, and will also allow for easier linkage and searching in the future. Once they're all posted, I will come back and update this entry with the proper links. Please have patience as this will take me about an hour to accomplish. For all of you who will read this after that hour, well, you now know how I work.

Author's Note 2: While I was working on this, Kim went into the hospital again for early contractions. Please take a moment to pray for her if  you're reading this. Remember, God's outside of time and space, so it'll help even if she's safe and home by the time you read this!

Kim is a very wise and intelligent lady. Ergo, if she gives you advice, you should at the very least give it serious consideration, and would be smart yourself to actually follow it. So, when she pointed out in the previous post that Thanksgiving meals and Christmas meals often overlap, I said to myself, "Self, Kim has just given you excellent and sensible advice. Go ahead and post your Thanksgiving."

So I'm going to go ahead and tell y'all (all six of you ;-) what Sam and I made/did for Thanksgiving, complete with appropriate linkage. Sadly, I didn't think to take any pictures of what we made, mostly because iPhone's are horrible for taking pictures of food with. Or anything that requires fiddling with one's aperture or shutter speed for, since that's not something one can do. At least, not on the 3GS. 

(When Sam and I were living in the Horrible, Dark, Crappy Apartment, we tried to take pictures of some of the food we were making for me to post on the blog. It did not turn out well, at all. Blurry, dark, grainy... ick.)

Ah well. That being said, here's what we did:

We got up at what normally would be the reasonable hour of 9:00, except that it was completely UN-reasonable thanks to staying far, far too late at Walking Hyperbole and Adorable Nurse's house the night before. Sam and I got home at approximately 3:30 am. 

But we finally captured that thrice-damned vampire! 

Ahem. Anyway.

We got up, and after having a light breakfast of coffee and cereal, we started out by making cornbread, which would eventually get turned into The Best Stuffing Ever (which was based on this recipe at allrecipes.com). Originally, my Praise-God-That-She-Is-Mine Mother-in-law was going to bring over the stuffing that Granny used to make, along with a sweet potato casserole, but due to Poppy's passing she and my Oh So Punny Father-in-law were unable to attend. Because of this, I had to punt and figure out how to do dressing on my own.

My first inclination was to go with Pioneer Woman's Thanksgiving Stuffing, but I didn't have nearly enough time to do it properly, i.e. let the bread chunks sit out for 24 hours to become sufficiently dried out, nor was I going to be feeding ten people. Instead, at about 5 o'clock on Wednesday I settled on playing with the recipe above.

Now, the original recipe called for just using a box of Jiffy's cornbread mix, but I like making cornbread from scratch, so that's what we did. 

Once the cornbread is done, Sam normally likes to take a stick of butter, peel back a bit of the wrapper, and spread butter over the top of the hot cornbread and let it soak on down (normally works out to about 1 to 2 tablespoons of butter). For the purposes of the dressing, though, we abstained. We then cleared off the top of one of the bookshelves and placed the cornbread (uncovered) on a cooling rack on said bookshelf, and then promptly forgot about until it was time to make the dressing.

After the cornbread was out of the way, we kicked the oven down to 275 degrees, and began prep on the Turkey. One of these days, I really, really want to try brining a turkey. However, from what I've read, brining is not something you want to do with a frozen turkey, which is what Sam and I had. Instead, Sam and I did a spice rub on the turkey.

This took us about 30 minutes to do in total. Sadly, probably 10 of that was Sam and I trying to find where the bloody bag of organs had disappeared to inside of the turkey. In our defense, neither one of us had ever cooked a turkey before.

The oven had gone down to temperature by that point, so we proceeded to follow Pioneer Woman's "How to Roast a Thanksgiving Turkey" and put the turkey onto the rack in it's roasting pan before covering it tightly with heavy duty aluminum foil. Ree's rule of thumb is that for each pound of turkey, you roast it for 10 minutes. We had a 14 pound turkey, so we set a timer for 2.5 hours, popped it in the oven, and heaved a sigh of relief. Don't worry though, we eventually got back to that turkey and cooked it at a higher temp later.

(At this point, I'd like to take a moment and make what should be a fairly obvious aside: I'm absolutely in love with The Pioneer Woman's website. It's all about food, photography, homeschooling, kids, dogs, cats, horses, cattle, prairie fires, burping, and Ethel Merman. If you like any of the above, check it out. If you have no qualms about cooking with lots of butter and cream, be sure to check out her cooking section. Or better yet, get a copy of her cookbook. Pick one up for me too while you're at it. ;-)

(Another aside: I am in no way, shape, or form being compensated to shill for her website. I just think it's pretty darn awesome.)

The time was now about a quarter to noon, give or take a few minutes. Having just popped that turkey into the oven, I then turned to my highly beloved Sunbeam bread machine to make Rosemary Tri-rolls. If you don't have a bread machine, then you can always use this no-knead bread recipe to get started with. I, however, am blessed with a bread machine, and took advantage of it.

Once the bread machine was set to work, Sam and I tried to figure out what to do with ourselves for an hour or so, since our cooking schedule had a nice break in it. After some waffling, I mentioned that I really wanted to watch the original Star Wars for some reason. Sam pounced on the idea, and declared we'd start a family tradition of watching the original Star Wars Trilogy on Thanksgiving, because they're movies we both love and can quote from memory, which means when we're busy doing stuff in the kitchen, it's okay 'cause we still know what's going on even if we can't see the screen. Plus, it's just comforting.

So we had A New Hope going, and around 1:30 or so the bread machine was done making dough for us. We then proceeded to make the actual tri-rolls, then set them on top of the stove with a dish towel over them to let them rise.

The timing worked out well, because as we finished setting aside the rolls the timer went off on the turkey. we pulled the turkey out and kicked the temperature on the oven up to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. We melted a stick of butter, and then removed the aluminum foil from the turkey. Setting aside the foil to be used later on, we brushed that wonderful, melted butter all over the outside of the turkey. Once buttered, we put the uncovered turkey back into the oven. Every 30 minutes afterwards, we'd remove the turkey and baste it with butter again, until the meat thermometer read between 165 and 170 and the juices from the turkey ran clear. Any hint of pink and back into the oven it went.

When we checked it at about 4:00, (we'd progressed to Empire Strikes Back, and Luke was finding out that the strange Muppet tormenting him was actually Yoda) the turkey was almost done, so we popped it back into the oven for a final 30 minutes. During this time is when we started prep for our side dishes: whiskey-glazed carrots, green bean casserole, mashed sweet potatoes, and, oh yeah, The Best Stuffing Ever. By prep, I mean we washed, peeled, and chopped up the carrots and potatoes, combined all the ingredients for the green bean casserole, and combined all the ingredients for the stuffing. When that turkey was done, we wanted to be ready to throw all the rest of that stuff in and get going. 

At about 4:30, Sam pulled the turkey out, checked it to make sure it was cooked, and then ran out to pick up Aunt Karen, our fantastic dinner guest for the evening. :-D As soon as the turkey was out, I turned the oven down to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for the dressing and green bean casserole, which would bake simultaneously for about 30 minutes. 

This, my friends, was a mistake. 

Not because I was baking them at the same time, but because what I SHOULD have done was pop the rolls in to cook, since they also bake at 375 degrees, but I just wasn't thinking. Instead, I did the green beans and dressing first, and I had to move the rolls off of the stove top so that I could cook the yams and the carrots, which resulted in the rolls collapsing back in on the tops before I could get them into the oven.

Live and learn.

The casserole and stuffing cooked up just wonderfully, however, and I'd just set the taters to boiling and the carrots to simmering when Sam came home with Karen. While Karen played with the kitties and watched Luke discover that *SPOILER* Darth Vader's his father, Sam started making the turkey giblet gravy. 

By 5:15, we were sitting down to a Thanksgiving feast, where the only thing sad was the the rolls whose tops had collapsed. The turkey was very juicy and tasty, Aunt Karen raved over the carrots, and I think had Sam not already married me, he would have proposed over the stuffing, and I'd have accepted because of his Turkey Gravy.

And if not the stuffing, then definitely would have proposed over the pie.

The pie!

I forgot to mention that on Wednesday, I'd gone ahead and made a Pumpkin Cream Pie with a home-made graham cracker crust and a splash of Southern Comfort for good measure. It truly was sinfully delicious, and I would make it for every holiday, except I think Sam really, really wants me to make a Mocha Silk Pie next.

So that was our adventures in cooking on Thanksgiving. :-D Mostly successful, and next year I'll know how to time things better!

From the "I felt like sharing" files....

It may or may not surprise you to know that I'm a little bit of a political junkie. There are approximately 8-10 political sites I keep track of every day, and another half-a-dozen that I check sporadically if I think they'll have something cogent to say on a particular topic. In addition, over half of the bloggers I follow will reference said political sites and give their interpretation of events, even if they're not primarily political blogs.

(It's amazing how many authors have an interest in politics. Just saying.)

As I'm sure most of you know, there's a pastor down in Florida by the name of Terry Jones who's been making noises about burning the Koran on 9/11, which has lead to a media frenzy giving him exactly what he wants--attention. Recently, he has indicated that he won't actually burn the Koran, first if the Park 51 project (aka the "Ground Zero Mosque") was stopped, and then later if he got a phone call from the president.

However, there is at least one group that says they don't believe that Terry Jones will go through with it--so they will. Meet Bob Old in Tennessee, who says that Terry Jones waffling shows he isn't "committed to the cause," and so he and his church will proceed and YouTube the whole event.

I'm pointing all of this out, to set up a comment from MA I read on TPM:

I remember being sent to monitor a tiny Ku Klux Klan rally in, of all places, Ann Arbor, when I was a stringer for the Detroit News in the early 1990s. Clearly they had chosen an avowedly liberal college town in the spirit of provocation in the hopes of getting some coverage. The editors told me that they didn't want to give the KKK any free press, but I should show up in case anything newsworthy happened.

...

I suspect editors still have similar policies in place about the Klan, but it's fascinating to me that they're willing to give Terry Jones's hate speech so much play. What has happened to the media environment that makes it possible for a fringe freak like this to get the media attention he so desperately craves, and without which he would have to close shop and find something else to do with his time? Why are media outlets unable to just ignore this guy like they ignored the Klan's transparent attempts at media manipulation. Being an editor still means deciding whose attempts at media manipulation will get play -- is this a symptom of the decline of editorial control in the internet era? Is this coverage being driven by shifts in the media environment that make it impossible to ignore any member of the lunatic fringe who might do something creepy enough to gain saturation coverage in the blogosophere? Is it a function of the shift toward focusing on the most sensational and polarizing figures in order to win ratings by catering to the kinds of excitement and indignation a figure like Jones incites? If so, are we going to see editors start reversing their long-standing policies about not catering to the Klan's media strategies? It's kind of depressing to see how this guy can make the media twitch and dance -- and the international media are, of course, eating it up, since it confirms so many international stereotypes about the US. Just how low do you have to go these days to get saturation cable coverage by outlets who clearly take pleasure in fuelling a productive spiral of incitement and indignation?

Obviously, MA was focused on the decline of editorial control which media outlets have. However, while reading it I found myself thinking that if the media had not given Terry Jones such intense attention, then Bob Old and his church wouldn't be holding a "Koran-burning Festival." Or, at least, the likelihood of it would be drastically reduced.

What do you think?




Editor: A person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
--Elbert Hubbard

New Digs

Consistency and I, well, we've always had an off-again, on-again relationship. Sometimes, consistency and I are like that couple who are constantly talking to and touching one another. Codependent, if you will. Other times, however, we're like that couple who are "in a long-distance relationship but still like to see other people."

Thankfully(?), the addition of J.J. has led to my, personally, having to stay consistent and follow a schedule; this aids in my desire to blog. Why it works, I don't know, but it does!

Now, as I've mentioned numerous times, Sherri also has a blog now. So I was checking out her page, and loved the way it looked. Personality, life, joy... so pretty to look at. Plus, I follow several other blogs through Google Reader, and after looking at Sherri's I went to check out their pages. Will's is simple and clean, with a gorgeous lighthouse, which I think is perfect because I think of Will and I think of beaches and curiosity. And sharks. But not jellyfish.

I peeked at Kelly's, and hers at least is laid out the way I remember--all those lovely books! Not to mention more "professional" sites such as Whatever, WWdN: In Exile, Boing Boing, and Pioneer Woman....

All of this to say that I became dissatisfied with they way my blog looked. So, I changed it! My home is brimming with life these days between family, friends, cats, and a dog, and I wanted to share that feeling with all of you.

I hope you enjoy it.

Also, because I felt the need to share.....





Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.
--Tate Linden