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Thursday, November 27, 2003
soleil du turkey
Today is going more easily than I thought it would. (did I just hex myself?). The turkey and the ham are in their respective ovens and I am free from culinary duties till around 1:15, when all hell will break loose in the kitchen for the following hour and a quarter or so. Guests should start arriving in about half an hour, and the house smells properly appealing.
It's funny, I'm using a roaster oven for the turkey, and the instructions for cooking a turkey in there state very plainly several times that you WILL NOT GET a brown turkey out of this oven unless you use browning sauce on it. And since no Norman Rockwell grandmother ever served a pasty-pale turkey, I can't either. Browning sauce is like fake tanning lotion for turkeys, seriously. I was spreading it on (mixed with melted butter) trying to keep it as streak-free as possible, cause who wants an obviously-faked-tan turkey on the Thanksgiving table? It was eerie seeing the turkey look all brown and crispy when it was still completely raw and cold.
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what a nice day!
Aahh, peace. Everything went really well (nothing worth panicking about at all), with only the 45 minutes or so right before dinner feeling frenzied. Of all the problems to have, we had good ones: Too much food, and the turkey (such a tender turkey!) and ham were done ahead of schedule so we ate a little bit early. I did not overdo too much, although I did get really full which I haven't done much lately so it seems really uncomfortable. Oh my, the pecan pie. It was way too good. Fortunately there's only one piece left so I can't do myself too much damage with the leftovers. (refusing to think about the barely-dented three cartons of ice cream in the freezer).
Also of note: No broken bones. Although we didn't get the lights up, either, come to think of it. Maybe I'll work on that tomorrow while T is at work, if I finish early enough with the résumé I'm working on.
Now I'm going to build a nice fire, take a shower, and read a book in my bathrobe until I can't stay awake anymore. I'm sighing with bliss already.
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Friday, November 21, 2003
the Ugly Duckling Girl at 29
This morning I was getting ready to go out with the kids and I looked myself in the mirror and gave my reflection a great big raspberry. The nerve of my skin, to look so - so -- THIRTYish! I mean, I'm not OLD, and my skin doesn't look OLD, but it doesn't look 16 either, all even and glowing. It's more blotchy and multicolored and just ... thirtyish. I looked like the "before" picture in a magazine woman-on-the-street makeover. I read a while back that once you're thirty you can't get away with the "natural look" unless you're really blessed, and you start to actually need makeup, and I decided that today was the day I hit that point, at a month shy of 29. Now the problem was, what to do about it. I do own makeup, but I wear it so infrequently that it generally gets bad long before it gets used up. I couldn't find my mascara (which actually was probably only barely out of date; I wear that probably once a month), so I just put on eyeshadow (the eyeshadow I bought in 1994, for my wedding. Seriously. I also wear this maybe once a month). Didn't like the effect of that, my skin still looked distractingly icky. So I pulled out a sample-pack of Liquid Powder (bought for family pictures in May) and used that, still felt the need for a little powder on top of that, because it just felt wrong not to put powder over smeary stuff. So much for the "all in one" idea, I guess. I tried actual lipstick (don't know how old it was, so let's not think about it), liked the autumny red color and faint sparkliness it had, but got sucked into the "too much -- blot -- not enough -- add -- too much" vortex and finally gave up and pulled out my trusty "Touch of Bronze" CoverGirl LipSlicks -- a product which I think is aimed at 14-year-olds but I still like it, so shoot me. It's the only makeup I wear with any regularity at all. I also dug out a pair of earrings and put them on (later on I forgot I had them on, felt a tickle on my earlobe [which was, of course, my earring], and went to pull on my earlobe to un-tickle it, nearly ripping the earring out the painful way. duh. And I'd forgotten how weird it is to try and talk on the phone with earrings on). The effect of all this was that I looked, well, nowhere near the "after" picture in the magazine, but better than I had looked before, at least.
The whole experience made me feel like the Ugly Duckling Girl. You know, in those movies with the "ugly" girl, except in the movies it is sickeningly obvious that she is actually a staggering beauty who's been given professionally frazzled hair and unflattering clothing and accessories in an attempt to make her look ugly until her character learns to wear the right makeup and clothes and emerges as the staggering beauty she has actually been all along? Yeah. You know what movies I mean. Anyway, I was that girl, not in the shining emerging-beauty-gasp scene. Nope, never had one of those and don't expect it. No, I was that girl in the just-before-the-makeover scene where she attempts to put on her own makeup. Just so unsure and clueless. When my junior high best friend graduated from eighth grade, her guardian took her to the makeup counter at a department store and, as a graduation/coming-of-age present, bought all kinds of makeup and had the makeup person show her how to apply it properly and all that. That is such a great idea. I wonder how long and hard they would laugh at my retreating back if I went in at 29 and requested the same service. I need a good slumber party, that's what I need. Any takers? :)
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Thursday, November 20, 2003
up early, long day ahead
I have a fun filled day in the valley today -- shopping for Thanksgiving dinner, getting a few more presents, and taking the car by the dealership to get a new keyless entry transmitter tag thingie since when my keys were lost they got wet and the one we have is almost ruined and only works very intermittently (so that one becomes T's, and I get the new one, grin). It's not that we're some kind of snobs who can't bear to actually use a key -- sheesh, for the first five years of our marriage we never drove ANYTHING manufactured after 1972 -- it's just that I keep remembering this one time I was in Fresno at night and this drugged out person was following me pestering me to give him money (of which I had none on my person) and that keyless entry thing allowed me to get in my car just in time before he actually reached me. Plus we had already ordered the thing before my keys were turned in.
Anyway. I woke up from a nightmare at 7 am, after having been awake reading The Princess Bride (I LOVE THIS BOOK, and does anyone still believe that S. Morgenstern was real?) until *ahem* 2:30 a.m. I couldn't get back to sleep, so for once in my life I am awake and both the kids are asleep. I feel like I should commemorate this moment in some way. A pester-free shower maybe? except I took one last night. Gonna go wake them up before I decide it's my duty to use this time to wash dishes or something horrid like that...
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
letter to myself
ooh, interesting one today from Diarist.net (it's actually a random one, not today's per se).
Pretend to be 20, 30, or 40 years older and write a letter to your present self.
Dear 28-year-old Me,First off, way to go on losing that weight. Good thing you did it at 28, because lemme tell you, at 58 you don't even want to try it, it's just too depressing. And while we're on the subject, would you quit griping about your looks already? For crying out loud, look at your skin! No wrinkles! Look at your hair, it's all there! (yep, you guessed it, those Flint thins-before-it-grays genes are just sitting there waiting for you. Sorry to break it to you.) You're worried about some stretch marks and that weird faint bumpy breakout you get and your teeny little mustache? I'm not even going to tell you what you have in store for you, just appreciate what you have while you've got it is all I'll say. And drink more water, and take your vitamins, for both our sakes.
And while we're on THAT topic -- appreciating what we have while we have it -- let's talk about those kids of ours. Yeah, I read where you whined about them not loving you enough. Girl, you do not know what you HAVE, did you not just carry that sleeping 4-year-old ballet princess to bed? And get a stuck-on kiss from the local Lego champion? They might be less attached to you than they were last year, but hon, they love you. They need you. They're there every single day for you to love on and influence and take care of. You want to see "don't love me enough," wait till they live an hour away with their own families and dogs and mortgages and kids and worries. Grandkids are fun, your parents (God rest their souls) are right about that, but it's just not the same. Quit looking at what you haven't got and enjoy what you have. And give them a big kiss for me while you're at it.
And woman, your priorities are screwed way up. Who cares if people read your goofball diaryland ramblings? Who cares if they leave comments? Did you really need to spend two hours today reading episode guides from "Little House on the Prairie" and "Saved by the Bell"? Not to mention the sneeze? OK, so maybe the sneeze was worth the time. But for the love of God, get away from that computer and do something! You're only young once.
See you in 30 years. Brace yourself, it's going to be rough at times.love and kisses,
58-year-old you
OK, so it's not L.M. Montgomery. ;-)
funny link for today:
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Monday, November 17, 2003
the ballet lesson and other stuff
C's ballet lesson today was just precious. There's no other word for it. Unfortunately since we haven't bought a digital camera yet (although it's in the works), and Snappy sucks and I don't have it installed on this machine anyway, I can't post pictures yet. I'll have some up when I get the film developed, and you will agree, "precious" is the only suitable word. The studio hasn't changed in the ten years since I was last there (nannied for a family whose daughter took ballet there), and there's just nothing more precious (really! with all its connotations) than a gaggle of 4-year-old girls in ballet clothes running around on their tiptoes to the tune of scratchy vinyl LP music (the same music she played when I had ballet lessons 20 years ago, I'm sure it's the same records), there just isn't.
I am feeling all this parental guilt, though, because now things are uneven. As far as scheduled weekly activities go, C has ballet and Awana and Sunday school. LT just has Awana and Sunday school. Maybe this is how families wind up with five different activities for every day of the week. We've been contemplating Cub Scouts for LT but they meet on the same night as our Bible study so we're still just thinking about it. That's as far as we're going; I refuse to do soccer and all that (LT doesn't want to anyway). I simply won't. Maybe gymnastics...
Today I experimented and made mini meatloaves (in muffin tins), for the sake of speed of cooking. I wholeheartedly regret this now; I ate too many of them (BAD me!) and now just typing about them is making me nauseated. urrrgh. For the record, however, if you should want to try it, it does make cooking much faster, but cleanup is a royal pain, especially when the smell is making you sick to your stomach. Oh, please, can we talk about something else?
I finished a book today. I've been reading a new-to-me Maeve Binchy, Circle of Friends. I really do like it; it may be my favorite of hers so far. I love how real her characters always are, and in this one she does an even more masterful job than usual of exploring the relationships among her characters. If you like that sort of book I can definitely recommend this one.
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Sunday, November 16, 2003
diving into the Christmas chocolate already
mmm, oh yum, bliss. I was a really good girl today diet wise (and I'm down to 171 lb! lowest weight since 1995!), and then right after the kids went to bed I got a huge, HUGE, H*U*G*E chocolate craving. I commented to T that I was contemplating driving to the little convenience store downtown (yes, our teeny town has a convenience store, and it's actually open until eleven p.m. No traffic lights or big grocery chains, but there is one convenience store) to satisfy it. T instantly got this mysterious, scheming sort of look on his face and said that he could provide me with chocolate if I were truly desperate. wink wink. So he raided the stocking-stuffer candy he'd bought yesterday (while we were completing all but three people's worth of our Christmas shopping, did I mention that? Jeesh, the nightmares I had last night about our house burning to the ground with all that stuff in it and no renter's insurance...) and produced a few Hershey's miniatures for me. Bless him, praise him, he is perfect. Those four miniatures have satisfied me wholly without giving me a huge load of guilt to carry around about having ruined my good diet day.
Also in the Feeling Good About My Accomplishments category today is the fact that the four of us pitched in and cleaned off our porch (note: I am glad I proofread. For some bizarre reason, this sentence had read "cleaned off our couch" until I caught it. Perhaps it's some Freudian thing; our couch is a 7-foot expanse of stacks of folded laundry right now and has been since last night). You know that Jeff Foxworthy bit, the redneck one, and one of the things he says is that you might be a redneck if people think you're having a yard sale all the time and you're not? That's us. Well, we say "that's us" about a lot of those redneck jokes, but this one -- we were really bad. We have a huge porch and there was a whole pile of stuff over in the corner, mostly T's stuff that I'd gotten tired of moving from one place to another in the house and so I'd put it outside waiting for him to take it to the basement. Someday our basement will just explode, we cram it so full of stuff that has no other resting place. Hmm, maybe I'd better check out that rental insurance tonight. Anyway. Our lovely large porch is now fully respectable-looking, and I'm having porch swing fantasies again. Our porch would be perfect for a porch swing. Maybe in the spring.
Tomorrow is C's first ballet lesson. We decided to let her start now instead of waiting for Christmas. Tomorrow is actually the "trial" day -- she'll go and watch, maybe participate a little, and make sure it's something she really wants to do. If not (ha! not likely) she'll have some darling ballet clothes for dress-up, I suppose. The teacher she'll have is the same one who taught my ballet lessons when I was in elementary school twenty years ago*. We're not expecting the next Isadora Duncan to come from our family -- neither C nor I are built along dancer's lines, and we're slightly more graceful than, say, a pair of 18-wheelers, but only slightly -- but it'll be fun for her and she'll learn some body control and make new friends as well. It does mean that this was a really bad night for me to wait until 10:30 p.m. to think of the fact that T needs clean uniforms tomorrow, since I now have to be up till 12:30 to get his uniforms out and hung so they don't wrinkle, and the kids and I have to be dressed and ready to leave by 9 tomorrow. oops. I am a girl who likes my nine hours, even interrupted as they usually are by a young ballerina-to-be wanting drinks of water. oh well.
*There's small-town life for you, that kind of thing happens all the time. One of our high-school secretaries called me by my mom's name all the time when I was there (and still does, when we run into each other around town) because she, like a number of the other staff at the school, had also been there when my mom was there, and Mom and I look similar.
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Saturday, November 15, 2003
look at me, being all smug
Only three more. Three little presents to buy and then I will be able to go around feeling all superior while everyone has the annual Holiday Panic, because our Christmas shopping will be all done. It is amazing how many people were shopping today. And you'd have thought it was Christmas Eve or something, the way T and I were going around in a near-panic because we couldn't find just the right thing -- as if there were no time at ALL to look around online or in other cities or whatever. (Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a frilly nightgown for a little girl that doesn't have Barbie on the front? Never did find one today; that makes four presents yet to buy, I guess)
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Friday, November 14, 2003
yum-o-rama
I was being so good on my diet. Then we went out to dinner tonight, at my favorite restaurant. This is the kind of restaurant where they serve really, really wonderfully good food, the kind of food you think you should be able to cook at home except it's way, way better than anything homemade. It doesn't seem fancy, but it tastes fancy. And they serve it on these huge plates. Plates the size of turkey platters. Plates with their own ZIP codes. Plates the size of minor unpronounceable Hawaiian islands. Plates loaded down with enough amazing food to make up for three or four days (at least) of eating exactly according to plan. But oh, so worth it. mmmm. I was determined to only eat one deck-of-cards-size serving of my steak, and take the rest home, but I arrived home, mysteriously enough, devoid of a takeout package, having consumed a serving more the size of a trade paperback novel than a deck of cards. In other words, the whole wonderful delicious mouth-watering steak, complete with mushrooms and sherry gravy. My excuse was that we'll be out all day tomorrow so the poor steak would feel all lonely and rejected in the fridge. Much better to put it out of its misery in the restaurant, n'est-ce pas?
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003
emergency room, ho hum
T was grinding this afternoon. He had been, as was his intention, grinding the metal on a truck rear end. Then, for a change of pace, he ground his arm. Um, ouch. Big gaping scary-looking (but not very bloody, good thing) wound on the outside of his wrist. So off we went on our third ER visit in the last twelve months. It was not as bad as when we brought LT in, last February, for a split scalp -- we were only there about 2 1/2 hours, as opposed to 4. He has to go back on Thursday to get his wound stitched; they cut away some of the dirty flesh and irrigated it, but decided to leave it open but bandaged for a couple of days to reduce the risk of infection, since the grinder wasn't exactly sanitary when it bounced off his bone. Yeah, ouch.
Surprisingly enough, this doesn't feel like a cruddy day. I smiled a lot. The kids were well-behaved during the long, tedious ER wait. I had to drive and pick up some tools for T (this was before the grinding thing; in fact I was picking up the grinder, come to think of it), and I listened to Tchaikovsky's "Marche Slave" at full volume on the trip there and back. Didn't get a lot of cleaning done -- I was just gearing up and getting started on that when we had our little ER detour.
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the round of life Archives | Page 23 of 28
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