Cooking Week

So it was another cooking week. I made my ever so anal shopping list on Sunday, shopped for all the ingredients for the five recipes I decided to make this week:

Monday: Pork Tenderloin with Balsamic vinaigrette
Tuesday: Rigatoni with steak sauce
Wednesday: Buffalo Style Chicken Breasts
Thursday: Rigatoni with goat cheese - Only I added roasted sugar pumpkin and sage to this one
Friday: is supposed to be lamb meat balls with Greek yogurt dipping sauce, but we’re having a hard time finding ground lamb locally, so I had to order it through the meat counter.

Monday was a “keeper” recipe from the other week. We had to have it again.
Tuesday was effing delicious. We used a really good cut of meat and it was absolutely great.
Wednesday was another keeper recipe. Even G loved the chicken and I was afraid she may not because of the buffalo sauce. She really liked it though.
Thursday was good, but I probably won’t make it again. It’s a little bland….. but pretty good.
Dunno about Friday yet. Hope they can get us the lamb so I can try it.

G and her friend Krissy had a play date today. It was kind of fun to have the girls around all day. They even went outside and raked leaves, for which I offered to pay them. They had a lot of fun.

From Raking Leaves

And in interesting news, I went in to Bath and Body Works yesterday and struck up a conversation with one of the employees there. Out of the blue she says to me “you should work here, you’d be perfect. Our best customers make our best employees” Then she gave me an application and wrote her name down for me and told me to fill it out and bring it back in. She told me about all the wonderful perks to working there (all the freebies and discounts… that.would.be.heaven)… And after discussing it with Mr. Man I decided to fill it out and give it a whirl. I don’t know if they’ll actually hire me but I’d not mind working there a day or 3 a week. It would be nice to make some new friends at least….

I’m also consistently getting paid for blogging. Yesterday was my 2nd payday. In all I’ve made a few hundred dollars and I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks. It’s pretty interesting.

This was also the first time I went in there and had a conversation with someone I know only from the Internet. It was nice to meet you , in the flesh. I really shouldn’t have been such a heel and asked you what your real name was though. I guess I was a little nervous with all the application filling out and “official” stuff. “P

New Furniture

Well, we added some new pieces to our living room. I was afraid that the extreme color and patterns may clash a little with the carpet but I also thought the color of the carpet may bring out the color in the pieces. It turned out that it works pretty well. The white furniture is now in the basement and the mis-matched stuff we had down there is hopefully going to a friend from work. It’s in the garage right now. Check it out.

WORKING

In my experience (and I’ve had a lot of experience in this arena), job descriptions are rarely accurate. For example, in my last job the job description said that I would be monitoring North American Rail Car Movement across the continental United States, Canada and Mexico. It failed to mention that I would be doing that as well as training my new boss and moving my desk every 5 weeks and training every new person that joined our team and etc. etc. etc.

Mr. Man’s last job description was that he was HR Manager of a small call center. That was pretty much it. He was supposed to handle the day to day doings of his employees. It didn’t say he’d be responsible for payroll, event planning, running a POKER ROOM and a SOFTBALL TOURNAMENT as well as never getting home from work until about an hour after he was supposed to.
My current job description is most accurate. Monitor VMS related processes.
It should say watch movies, listen to music, read books and pay your bills.
I love my job.

We are… Delta Mustache!

We bought rockband. Here’s “Delta Mustache” sitting around in their pajamas tonight playing a little music together…

We’re such dorks.

Wildlife

Almost every evening when I drive in to work I see some wildlife.  There are 3 deer that hang out on campus and they are always wandering around together.  The cars don’t even phase them anymore.  They’re really beautiful.  The other day as I was walking up the walk to my building from the parking lot they were just on the other side of the trees from me.  They spotted me, I spotted them and I talked to them for a while.  They didn’t freak out and bolt away.  They just looked at me.  I wanted to see how close I could get (at this point I was about 10 feet away) but I was running a little late for my shift so I just chatted with them for a few seconds then went in.  It was very cute, they cocked their heads as I talked to them the way my cats sometimes do.  I don’t know if it’s just instinct or whatnot, but it always makes me feel like they’re interested in what I’m saying even though it’s usually just “Hi there, how are you…  you’re so pretty.  What a pretty ______ you are”

Tonight when I drove in the 3 deer were hanging out and checked me out as I drove by.  There was also the world’s fluffiest skunk lingering around in the grass by the parking lot.  I was a little nervous about that one, but I kept my distance and we were cool with each other.

We also have Fox and Turkey that live inside the gates here.  The turkey are entertaining and the Fox are super quick and fast (hence the old saying). 

Some days it actually makes the “coming in to work” process bearable.  J  I love me some wildlife.  It’s a shame to know a lot of it is being hunted and killed in these parts right now.  L

laundry

I am a laundry Nazi.  I admit it.  I am obsessively crazy about doing my family’s laundry.  I do it almost every day.  I buy nice laundry soaps and I’m obsessed with fabric softeners.  I even buy special designer scent soaps for our delicates and sheets, just because I want things to smell nice.

I haven’t always been this way.  I got obsessive about laundry when my step-daughter started living with us.  I noticed that whenever she’d come over wearing clothes from her mom’s house they smelled kind of milky and sour.  I don’t know what that was from, but I hated smelling her like that.  I made it a point to make sure she always went back in clean clothes.  I can’t say that much has changed (the other day she came home in the same clothes I sent her to school in the day before) but at least I knew that when she was under my watch she went to school clean and not sour smelling.

I hand wash all my bras and special underpants.  I hand wash most of our sweaters.  I know that the best stain spray is the cheap stuff you get at the dollar store, and I’ve bought about 15 bottles of it to have on hand just in case they stop making it.  I love the expensive Downy designer scents and I’ve been known to buy a bottle or two of delicate wash from Victoria’s Secret.

Lately, my step-daughter has taken to leaving things like pens in her pockets.  I don’t always catch this.  She’s also 11 going on 12 and has a hard time remembering to take the panty liner out of her underpants.  Those are always fun to find shredded up in the dryer. 

Mr. Man is infamous for leaving stuff in his pockets as well.  Kleenex is his favorite, but recently I’ve taken to washing SD cards, chap-stick and vitamins.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t been known to leave stuff in my pockets as well.  I still haven’t been forgiven for ruining our remote car lock to the Honda Element.  We’ve still not had it re-programmed and I washed that sucker about 5 months ago.

I don’t mind the hard stuff being left in the pockets.  When it starts to “clang clang clang” in the dryer, I know someone has made a boo-boo…  But the pens…  Those can ruin a whole load of laundry.  And Chap-Stick…  I don’t even want to talk about chap-stick.

I won’t let my family put away their own clothes (sometimes I let G do it, but not often and only because I want her to be responsible for it)…  But Mr. Man never puts away his laundry.  I just couldn’t fathom it.  It all must go in a specific spot and be folded a specific way.

People call this nuts.  I call it domestic organization and quite frankly, I’d rather have some “domestic organization” than a sour smelling family any day.

Up Your Gas

I used to work at a GNC (wow, back in the day I spent so much time in that damn mall just sitting there staring at pill bottles…. And one of our biggest sellers, before it got pulled off the shelves were ephedra based products. Anyone remember “Up Your Gas?” I loved the name of that stuff and I also loved the jolt it used to give me as a busy college student trying to work, go to school, live in sin with her boyfriend and create general tom-foolery in the evenings. Man, those were the days. I have completely forgotten what it was to be young and not really care if your rent was paid on time.
Anyhow, on the weight loss train as usual, I often look in to different products that may help me keep going. Because you know, losing over 150lbs isn’t enough… Mr. Man and I are obsessed with body sculpting right now and I’m constantly on the lookout for something that may help that along.
I found Ephedrasil Hardcore online… And it got me thinking of my days spent at GNC. Ephedrasil, huh? Can they sell Ephedra anymore? Apparently not. Check out the ingredients in this stuff. Not a trace of ephedra in there. Lots of roots and herbs and the same old stuff that’s in many other different kinds of diet pills… But no ephedra.
I still have a bottle of “Up Your Gas” around this house somewhere. It’s likely been expired since 1998, but maybe I should try one. I think I’ll just stick with the protein.

I almost hope someone tries to steal one…

So I decorated my yard today with a shitload of pumpkins and gourds and corn stalks. I think it looks nice:

But I live on a pretty busy road… And more than likely a few pumpkins are going to get stolen and smashed.

In an attempt to deter the stealing process….. I did something weird.

I put on rubber gloves, grabbed a jug of vasoline and lubed those suckers up.

I vasolined 25 pumpkins and 25 gourds. I got the stems and everything.

Like I mentioned in the subject line, I almost hope someone tries to steal one.

We also had the blessing of the pets in the field outside of our church tonight. If any of you are at all interested in seeing my silly cats on their harnesses, take a look below

Help with G’s skin

Lately it seems like all I talk about is my skin and it’s weird because G came home to us this week and her skin looked absolutely horrible. It seems that when she gets off her routine at our house and goes back to her mom’s she either gets lazy and doesn’t take care of her skin properly or she doesn’t have good products to use there. You know, she’s puberty girl and almost 12 and pretty insanely hormonal right now so it’s really key to keep up with things like that.

In all my years of acne issues I used scrubs like crazy. I tried everything from Proactive to things you could buy on the internet (like Acnexus) to everything you could possibly find at the drugstore. I told you guys before that accutane cured me. But you can’t really give accutane to an 11 year old I don’t think.

I guess I’m just looking for suggestions for G. She uses my prescription medication right now but I need to get her something effective that she can bring back and forth from her mom’s house to our house. Suggestions?

Move, or not to move

Being old, like I am, has me thinking about how I’ve basically lived in the same town for my entire life.  A few years ago a bunch of Mr. Man’s friends were going to move down to North Carolina because the job market was totally crazy and booming…  And something about NC health insurance being super awesome or something like that. 

And I’ve thought…  Yeah, it would be cool to move…  But is an awesome new job and (apparently) awesome health insurance (I didn’t get this one) worth leaving my home-town and my family and my friends over?

I want to move out of Michigan someday.  Some day down the road when most of my family is gone and when my husband and I are stable enough to enjoy it, though.  What’s the use of living elsewhere when you still have to work like a crazy woman just to LIVE.  I want to go somewhere and establish myself when I can take the time to enjoy it. 

Because face it…  I’ve always wanted to live in a big city.  Wouldn’t it just be nice to be able to go there and enjoy all the things the city has to offer without having to actually LIVE there.

I’m a dreamer, yeah, I know.