Macaroni and Cheese

I hate (and I mean HATE) the nasty velveeta macaroni and cheese stuff you can buy from the store.  I hate the shells and cheese, I hate the Easy Mac, I hate it all.  Adam, on the other hand, loves it.

So last week I made real macaroni and cheese, made with elbow macaronis, two kinds of cheese, milk, butter, flour, and diced onions.  It was damn delicious and I ate like 4 servings of it.  Adam moved his around on the plate looking for the neon yellow cheese he is so very fond of.    And complaining that it didn't have enough cheese.

In a bold attempt at compromise, today I made the Kraft "Homestyle" Macaroni and Cheese, which still includes the neon cheese substance as an ingredient, but also calls for butter and milk.  As mac and cheese goes, it wasn't bad.  It's not my Mom-Mom's mac and cheese (which I inexplicably do not have the recipe for) but it was way way better than the other stuff and, although I hate to admit it, marginally better than my homemade attempt.

So if you're not a Neon Goop Mac and Cheese kinda gal, the Homestyle Mac will do for a quick fix.  But I'm not giving up on the real thing.  I think I just needed to use different cheese and more of them.

Parents

So, my mother is a kind and wonderful woman who worries a lot, which is where I got it from.  The worrying, not the kind and wonderful.  Only because I don't particularly consider myself kind or wonderful.. not that I think I am but believe it came from somewhere else as if I self-manifested it because I'm that awesome.  No, I think she just passed on the worrying.  And the flat chest. 
Anyways, hereditary worrying is okay by me.  I like being a worry wart.   If you don't embrace it, you'll just hate yourself and everyone will wonder why you're always trying so hard to act cool.  Few things are worse than someone trying too hard to act cool.  Just come out of the closet with your worriness and people will accept you for it.... and probably make fun of you a little too.  But in a loving way, not a mean way.
All that said, my mom's a worry wart and she worries about all sorts of stuff she shouldn't even have to think about.  And if I was a good daughter I wouldn't add to her troubles but I'm not, so I post all sorts of random stories about what a lush I am and how bad I am at cooking and yardwork, thus increasing her worry-ometer and pushing her, probably, to the brink of mental collapse.
So tonight I was on the phone with her and she said "Well, I wasn't going to get in the middle of it, but I think I will - " and I have to admit I held my breath, trying to think of which blog post she was going to zero in on this time.  Would it be my bad texting habits?  My tendency to tell people I'm away from my home over Facebook?   My coat doesn't look 'wintery' enough?   It could be any number of things.

It wasn't anything, just a random story really that was no big deal.  But the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I realized that my mother and I are slipping into this crazed rabbit hole, where I worry about what she is worrying about, and she worries about what I worry about her worrying about and so on and so forth - until one day we're just going to have to both go on Vicodin or something to make it all stop.

And so continues the saga of life after becoming your mother in adulthood.

How I Narrowly Avoided a Text-astrophe

So occassionally I drink a little too much and send out lots of embarrassing and overly affectionate text messages to random people, mostly those who are recent recipients of other text messages.  This is because it's easy to just go in my recent text messages and start replying to recent texts with things like "Luv ya!" and all sorts of other things that don't make sense or are relatively inappropriate.  Luckily for me, normally these people are actually with me, more than likely in the same room, and usually sending similar text messages to the same group of people.   We are, of course, the utmost in humor and quick wit.

Just such an evening passed recently, except we were experimenting with "group text" (this sounds dirty but it's not... we were trying to figure out why some of our phones 'reply all' to group text messages automatically and some of them do not).  This resulted in all sorts of ridiculous messages that would make absolutely no sense if read out of context by an outsider. 

During this enthusiastic episode of text messaging, I drank around four margaritas and a glass or bottle of wine, and was sending all sorts of messages to people on my "recently texted" list of people.  And I wasn't paying much attention.  And this happens all the time and then the next day I look at my sent messages and hang my head in shame, glad that my friends know and accept me for the overly sentimental drunkard that I can be. 

And it was on a morning just like this when I saw a number I didn't recognize in my recently sent text list.  Far too close to the list of messages that I had sent the night before in my tipsy state.  Close enough that it could have been a victim of my group texting.    Anonymous enough that I knew it wasn't someone who knows that when I drink, even just a glass, everyone is suddenly my best friend and no topic of conversation is off limits.  Even the really weird and offensive topics of conversation, like why someone would choose such to grow and maintain such an ugly beard.   Which, yes, I have actually started that conversation and it did not go as smoothly as I thought it would.

Holding my breath, I opened the message log.  And sucked in a very long and very deep breath of fear.  Because the number was my boss's boss's boss.  The string of messages began innocently enough; it was an exchange between my husband and the Boss about work.  I scrolled down.  Some questions about a building that had come up earlier in the day.  An answer from my husband.  A thank you from the boss.  And that's where it ended.  Thank God.  But it was pure luck that I didn't click on that number and send some random text thinking it was someone else.

The lesson I took from this was to never let my husband use my phone ever again.  The modified lesson I took was to make sure I delete any unknown numbers from my phone immediately so that I don't end up sending them overzealous texts in the middle of the night, under the misguided belief that everyone is as happy to have me as an acquaintance as I am to have them.  And also that they want to know it as much as I want to tell them about it.    At midnight.  Spelled wrong.  With exclamation points.

New Jeans

I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, but I think the Lauren Conrad brand demin from Kohls is currently the best affordable jean out there.    I normally try to steer clear of the celebrity-"designed" (and I use the term design loosely here) brands because I suspect they are really designed by some extremely underpaid groupie who is just trying to get in good with pseudo-celebrities.  Also I think that singers and actors should stick to their craft and stop trying to corner every market out there in their ever-increasing quest to take over even more of the world's share of wealth and leave some of it to the rest of us.  Just because they are famous doesn't mean they know jack about regular-people fashion - just look at Helena Bonham Carter.  And I mean that nicely because I LOVE Helena Bonham Carter - I think she has more STYLE than anyone in Hollywood, I think she just gets confused when she opens her closet.

All that said, I now have three pairs of Lauren Conrad jeans and I feel only marginally guilty about it since it's not like she's a real actress or anything.    Also I do have a sneaking suspicion that she might actually play a part in her brand because she does seem to care about fashion designing and all that, judging from her stint on The Hills, which I watched religiously - also embarrassed.  Anyway, about the jean.  Something about the material - it's soft without feeling flimsy of cheap, and the styles are fitted right for real live girls instead of paper dolls and 10 year olds.    Levis jeans can be scratchy; however, they never seem to degrade in quality and they fit nicely, but they are very unforgiving when it comes to periodic, um, expansion.  Old Navy jeans are ok but don't fit quite right, especially after a couple of washes.  Gap Jeans are probably my second favorite -  I still have a pair from my freshman year in college and wear them often (which probably means they should be my number one).  I stopped buying Express Jeans when they forgot they were selling to the middle class and jacked their prices up.  So it comes down to being all about fit, feel, and frugality and, in my opinion, the LC brand hits the target on all three points.

Extra bonus - the pair I bought yesterday was $60 but were on sale for $30 and I didn't find that out until I went to pay for them; thank you Lauren Conrad and Kohl's for appealing to my cheapie side.   For these reasons, Kohl's will always be my very favorite store. 

And no, unfortunately, I am not getting kickbacks from Kohls for this and any future glowing Kohls posts.   But I wouldn't say no if they were offered.....

It's Just My Allergies

Hopefully the supressed animal spirit inside of me is attempting to pack on winter weight because I literally cannot stop eating.  I scarf down an english muffin at 7:30 and by 8:00 I'm eating an orange.  The hours until lunch seem to go on forever and I cant' stop thinking about the rest of the english muffins tucked away in their drawer.  If I manage to make it to lunch, I hoover down some soup and chips and then spend the rest of the afternoon hunting for random pieces of chocolate and candy to fill the void until dinner.  Inevitably dinner is not satisfying because I am cooking it, so then I spend the rest of the evening trying to talk myself out of going back to the kitchen for snacks. 

God this is awful. 

Anyway, I just wanted to vent because I'm excusing it as normal but really I think maybe it's a tapeworm or baby.    I don't really think it's a baby.    Or a tapeworm.  I think it's something worse.  It's lack of willpower.  But instead I will blame it on allergies, because this time of year in Texas you can blame literally anything on allergies and someone will nod in agreement and pity you. 

Do these allergies make me look fat?

Self: Meet Diva Self

So, as any of you know, I am pretty much the farthest thing from high maintenance, mostly because I am cheap and lazy.  And cheap and lazy equals haircuts at Great Clips and junky purses from the 90s.    And wrinkled sweaters. 

But even so, there are plenty of medium maintenance people out there who live their perfectly normal and perfectly okay lives with a medium amount of diva.  And by that I mean the regular highlights (which I fall victim to occasionally), and the 40 pairs of shoes and so on.  I consider this a medium and acceptable amount of diva because from time to time I venture into that territory, but then spend weeks with buyer's remorse feeling guilty about my ever-shrinking bank account.

So now that you understand my slightly twisted and nonsensical philosophy on diva-ism, perhaps you will understand the undeniable urge to - just every once in awhile - go off the deep end and act like a celebrity.  Just for, like, 30 minutes.  I had my first brush (and by first, I mean one that is not triggered by abandonment issues following a nasty breakup) with this sort of behavior on Saturday.  Adam and I stopped by the Sunglass Hut for a pair of Oakley sunglasses he wants.  I am not allowed to buy sunglasses more expensive than $10 since mine always end up at the bottom of the lake because I have one reckless bone in my body and it comes alive on water skis.  So I wasn't really even looking in the store - actually I was trying on all the ridiculous throwback 80s styles and marveling at how horrible I looked.  Until.  Oh, my friends... Until.  The red military-inspired Versaces.  *Sigh* The ones I breezed past when we entered the store... their clever placement and glittering details caught my eye.  On a lark I tried them on and, as is common when you try something on for laughs (like my wedding dress, actually), the effect was breathtaking.  Suddenly I'm Charlize Theron on Rodeo Drive and I MUST have these sunglasses which cost over $200. 

After tearing, and I do mean literally tearing, myself away from the store empty handed, we stopped into Macys and then Walgreen's, where I bought an $8 can of almonds to assuage my inner-celebrity who was screaming at me to SPEND SPEND SPEND!

But readers, those sunglasses are still calling to me from their careful perch atop the tallest pedestal in the Sunglass Hut.   My Diva Self will not be silenced by almonds.

Yeah... I was...

As we were painting the other day, Janis Joplin came on the radio and I was singing my heart out, becuase honestly what self-respecting mid-30-year old doesn't know the words to "Me and Bobby McGee"? 
And then Adam said "who sings this?  is this Janis Joplin?"   And I had to choke back my disdain. 
And then I said "yes" and he was all "hmm I never got into Janis Joplin" and I felt bad for him. 

So I said that I did, and then I blamed it on my being a giant poser in high school, which i probably was if I even really know what a poser was at that time.  Which now I no longer know what a poser was at that time but I probably was it.   And he said he couldn't imagine me being a poser.  Because he knows I'm totally preppy and can't imagine me being 'alternative'.  Because I wasn't.  But I tried.

I did drink and smoke but not because I was tortured but becuase I wanted everyone to think I was tortured.  I wore huge baggy clothes, not because I was attempting to conceal my skin and bones frame but because I was attempting to accentuate it with great big baggy clothes.  I also went to some bazaar in town and bought old school plaid bell bottoms which I'm certain I looked ridiculous in.   I skipped school, but worried about getting caught and told my parents about it ahead of time to get their approval.  I had parties at my house, but made sure everything was cleaned up before anyone came home.  I ignored boys, not because I was too cool for them but because I feared they were too cool for me.  I did do some stuff I'm not proud of, but nothing worthy of the sort of 'cool' that I tried to portray by nonchalantly bragging about what a Janis Joplin fan I was when everyone else my age was listening to Nirvana. 

Which is ironic because there are probably high school kids, this very instant, listening to Nirvana thinking they are retro.  Because I am old.

This Did Not Happen

I received a big box today from my in-laws - late Christmas presents which was a total treat.   I love late Christmas.

Inside the box, there were several neatly wrapped boxes and one unwrapped item.  A bag of Herr's Salt N Vinegar Potato Chips.  I can't stop laughing. 

In completely unrelated news - I may have gained about 15 pounds since Thanksgiving. 

I'm Not Exactly Rachel Ray People

Last night Adam and I had some friends over for dinner and I made BBQ beef sandwiches which I have never made before.  I did them in the crockpot, meticulously following a recipe I found in a book given to me by my dear friend Michelle. 
The recipe was super easy and I was pretty proud of myself and how yummy the house smelled all day long.   I even cut up onions and pickles as a topper instead of coleslaw because even though I prefer coleslaw I think that is an East Coast thing.  Yeah, like kidney beans.
When our friends came over, I shredded the beef (which made me feel very grown up and wise about cooking, in the manner of Martha Stewart), poured some of the juice from the crockpot over it, mixed it all together and shoveled it out onto sandwich buns.
Our friends gathered their plates and sat at the table as I arranged my own and tidied up quickly in the kitchen, before noticing everyone seemed to be waiting for me.   So I hurried to the table with my plate, encouraging everyone to try the food and letting them know it was the first time I'd ever cooked a huge chunk of beef in my crockpot.  I could see everyone sort of inch away from their plates ever so slightly, so I dug in to prove that I felt confident about it, even though I didn't.   It was pretty good, but not super flavorful.  Even so, I still thought it was a bit better than "edible" which was the rave review I actually recieved. 
Oh well.  I'll file that recipe away under "don't do this one again".   At least they were honest.     :-)

Apparently I missed class that day...

It seems that everyone in the universe knows that a much more common way to hang a hammock is to tie some rope or something around a tree and hang it.  I say this because more people than I would like to admit have responded to my story about the hammock, baffled, wondering why I didn't just tie it to the tree.  To which I say - the directions said drill a hole! 

Also I have been reminded of the hammock hanger invention.  Yes, thank you, I actually did know about those but I'm cheap and it's much more cost-effective to go about destroying Mother Nature.   Actually the real reason is that I don't want one of those because we get 80 mph winds here and I was hoping to have something that I would not have to worry about catching a gust of wind and crashing through my neighbors windows in the middle of the night. 

Strangely, my husband is less concerned with the hole in the tree and more amazed that I found the drill and knew how to operate it.  Come on people.  He must be amazed that I managed to survive 27 years without him around to teach me how to turn on the lights. 

Well there's good news and there's bad news.

The good news is that the glass people brought the newly cut shower glass today and IT FITS!  As of right now, I can take a shower in my new bathroom and it seems that it is complete, although I'll leave the final decision to Adam when he gets home from work.  Undoubtedly he will see something that I did not.

Now the bad news.  After the Re-Bath people left, I was super hopped up on happiness because the glass fit and the workers were out of here in a half an hour, and it was only 3 pm and 70 degrees and sunny.  So I changed into outside clothes and went out and worked in the yard, soaking up that sunshine and melting away my depression. I pulled all the weeds and scrub out of my flower beds and played with my dog.   It was lovely.  Then I got a brilliant idea.  I have had this hammock in the shed for almost 2 years (!) and so I drug it out and decided where I want to put it in the yard.  I got the tape measure and measured the distance between the two trees and saw that I could put it there.  I was super excited and thinking I can have this hammock hung up in time for Adam to get home from work - he'll be so proud of me!  Keep in mind I'm like completely doped up on sunshine.  Can anyone guess what ridiculously stupid thing I did then?

Piece of Evidence Number 8,794,394 that I am not from Texas, nor did I belong in the Environmental Protection field ---> I followed the (probably written by a Northerner) instructions and pulled out a drill and drilled a hole in the tree.  Then I stepped back, looked at it, watched an ant crawl in it, and thought:  WHAT AN IDIOT!?!?!?!? 

WTF was I thinking?  As soon as I did it, I realized what I had done to my pretty little live oak and all the surrounding pretty little live oaks, so I ran and got the can of tree paint and totally slimed the entire tree.  I hope I got it in time.  If my entire yard dies of oak wilt I am going to be so so so pissed at myself. 

Adam wasn't exactly happy either.  So, yeah.  I don't have a hammock and my husband is not proud of me.  But I can take a shower.  It's a game of win and lose my friends. 

2012 Reasons to Be Happy

HA - just kidding.  You probably just clicked on this to see if I am actually insane enough to try to come up with 2012 reasons to be happy.  Which I am not.

But I do have reasons to be happy - we all do.  This weekend I told Adam I was grumpy - which I was - and he got upset and asked me what do I have to be grumpy about.  And he was right.  What complaints can I possibly have, compared to what some are going through? 

One of the reasons I really really love my job is because I feel like I actually get to help Soldiers.  I don't do anything honorable.  I'm not a nurse or a medic or a therapist.  What I do is try, however I can, to help make the places Soldiers live and work nice and comfortable.  And it might not sound like much but I try to make a difference and I try, through my work, to show my appreciation for their service.  Occasionally I get to develop a tentative relationship with one of the folks I work with regularly, and I get to know them a little.  Only a little, but still.  I get to hear about their holidays and their backgrounds and learn that they got to go home for Christmas for the first time in years.  Not because they had chosen not to these past years, but because they were physically unable to because they were deployed to a war zone.  And it brings tears to my eyes to think that this weekend I was feeling grumpy because my husband and I were having a hard time selecting a closet system for our tiny closet. 

Just who do I think I am?  I should be counting my blessings that I even get to choose! 

Okay so this wasn't exactly peppy.  I'll try again tomorrow maybe. 

Oh Yeah... My Blog

Sorry I haven't posted in so long - I have been consumed by rage and frustration over my bathroom remodel-gone-horribly-wrong and any postings (or other contact with human beings, for that matter) has the terrible potential to go downhill very quickly.  So I have been trying to not really talk to anyone. 

For example, this morning a guy I work with came by my office, probably just to ask me a quick question and then go on about his day.  Instead, he was subjected to a 45-minute diatribe about how people should live up to their promises and stop trying to weasle innocent consumers out of their hard-earned nickels and dimes.   I hope he didn't mistake my lecture at being directed at him, but probably he did - because lately every time I open my mouth whatever garbage spills out either is taken the wrong way or is so tainted with my own bad attitude that it can't help but be taken for exactly what it is - poison darts aimed at whomever is unlucky enough to be standing in my way. 

So, needless to say - I'm not exactly a fountain of entertainment these days.  I have to wake up at least 30 minutes earlier than usual because of the current shower situation.  As anyone who knows me even a little bit knows, this is a terrible strain on my lifestyle as I am sooo not a morning person.  Except what actually happens is that I don't wake up early, thereby throwing the entire morning's schedule off and causing both my husband and me to be late to work every single day.  And being late, even though I should totally be used to it and just accept it as fact, really puts me in the worst mood so then I'm grumpy when I get to work.  Then I spend the better part of the morning attempting to avoid any personal contact because that will undoubtedly end up aggravating me even more.  So I answer emails or play with my spreadsheets all morning and get a headache from staring at the computer screen.  By lunch, I feel alienated and disconnected and starved for conversation so I seek out my lunch date (read: husband) where we spend an hour eating soup and trying very hard not to talk about work.  After which, I return to my desk and spend the rest of the afternoon catching up on all the face to face communication I tried so hard to avoid earlier in the day.  By the end of the day, I feel tired again and ready to get home and relax, but then there is laundry and dishes and tidying up and the dog and the annoying neighbors and the dog behind us that never stops barking.  And, well, the list goes on.

And frankly, readers, all of this is nothing but a raging case of seasonal depression because I just cannot stand this cold weather.  And of course by cold I mean, like, 60s.   

So, I'll try again and see if I can write something a bit less depressing.  Stay tuned.