7.15.2011

the sickness.

the today show is the background noise to my mornings. i never really liked it until the last year, but it does a good job of giving me a bit of news, ridiculous pieces to keep me ranting and awake, and a nice solid chance to make fun of ann curry for her horrible fashion choices and her inability to do an interview with absolutely anybody. the way she touches people and the tone of her voice make me so uncomfortable. and, to be honest, i just assume matt lauer is the biggest prick off camera. my mom loves him and i just don't get it. i miss meredith. 

anywho, this morning their concert series pick is chris brown. okay, whatever. i wouldn't put him on my show, but what bothers me more is the droves of women, and their many young daughters, that are in the audience celebrating this guy and his shit ass music. i just want to grab them all by the shoulders and scream, "you know he beat the crap out of his girlfriend, right? and as women we shouldn't really scream and cheer for someone like that, right? RIGHT!?" taking abuse is a fracking sickness and we seem to allow it in our culture without even thinking twice. i have been abused and it is awful. i see people like chris brown getting off on the fame that he has and i wish him nothing but the worst in life. there is no repentance, there should be no fame after that. and, just so you know, the same goes for women abusers, too. don't even get me started on the fact that i heard there are men sending casey anthony money in prison. that is disgusting. 

and, by the way, chris brown has still been running all over the place slinging homophobic slurs and hatred on his douche bag tour of daily celebrity status. you may like a persons music, but we need to learn to turn on back on people that make bad life decisions. our nation needs to go to the betty ford clinic to figure out how to stop enabling celebrities. i am just so tired of it. 

chunk didn't sleep last night. no, that's not why i am pissy (i would have been anyway), but still - she is evil. she is crawling and cruising and getting into absolutely everything she can. i think that her brain is spinning in over drive trying to figure out how to walk and that is resulting in only stress inducing insanity moments for me. she is just so intense right now and she refuses to sleep. i have had 5 hours of sleep in 2 days and today is house cleaning day and i am starting to look at the walls of my home as if they are made from the worst things this world has to offer. like chris brown is pictured in every corner of my home. ugh. the sickness. 

on a positive note ge is still cute. and he is trying really hard to help me with chunk. i decided to start walking at night and i feel so much better. the last 2 nights the moon has been beautiful and full. wednesday i walked 4 and a half miles and listened to american gods by neil gaiman, last night i walked about 4 and a half miles again while listening to mumford and sons, kings of leon, and hanggai. there is a route that is a steady climb up a hill right by the golf course and i am enjoying the pain it is putting into my legs. i feel so much better getting out of the house again. i make dinner, do the dishes, and then push myself out the door. once i am in the cool of the night my ipod starts dripping sweet voices into my step and i propelled forward into a healthier and happier me. good things. 




7.14.2011

food!

This weekend I decided to have an indoor picnick. Well, actually, I decided to make potato salad and (baked) fried chicken and pretend like it wasn’t completely bad for me. Somehow rationalizing that meal with the thought of a checkered table cloth made enjoyment possible. That and I have already blown my diet up completely the last few weeks because of reasons that would make most men go all “ewww gross, don’t talk about that very natural thing that happens with women because we are children.” Yeah, who would have known that after I stopped breastfeeding (we made it 9 months, WOOT!) my body would decide that I needed 2 months worth of a reminder of what I had missed during my pregnancy and my awesome food making body time. To say I am angry and over it is an understatement. 

But I digress. 

Potato Salad is delicious. I love mayo, I love potatoes, I love onions and eggs and indulging. I adapted my own take on a very good recipe by Ina Garten.

3 ish lbs red potatoes
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
Salt and Peppah
1/2 cup chopped celery
3/4 cup chopped red onion
6 Hard boiled eggs
Place the potatoes along with some salt in a large pot of water. I like to add a bit (like a tbs or 2) of apple cider vinegar because I am convinced it makes them mo bettah. Boil the potatoes until you are happy with them (I personally like mine a little mooshy, but you might not). This should all take about 15 – 20 minutes. Pierce them with a fork to check for doneness.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, buttermilk, Dijon mustard, whole grain mustard, dill, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of peppah. Set aside.
When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut them into a size that fits your potato salad needs. Place the cut potatoes in a large bowl. While the potatoes are still warm, pour enough dressing over them to moisten. Add the celery and red onion, and chopped up eggs. Salt and Peppah to taste. Toss well, cover, and refrigerate for a few hours to allow the flavors to blend. Serve cold or at room temperature.

I served this delicious potato salad with The Neely’s Buttermilk Baked Chicken. The only changes I made to the chicken recipe were that I used bone-in split breasts (they were huge, juicy, and delicious! I am not much of a chicken pieces kind of person and I hate dark meat), I soaked them in a buttermilk mixture for 24 hours, and I added some extra spices to the cornflake / cheese mixture. This chicken turned out so dang delicious. I had never soaked chicken in buttermilk before and now I will do it as often as possible. The husband liked this chicken more than he likes my roasted chicken, which is a lot. Like, a whole lot. Faboosh.

7.11.2011

over-drive

i am currently, for the first time ever, in the middle of watching every wonderful episode of grey's anatomy; it plays daily on lifetime and i have to often ask myself why in the world i never watched it before. and i go to thank the god's of television for women for bringing this to me and then a commercial for "dance mom's" come on and i am left with a very - bad! bad lifetime! kind of feeling.

if you don't know what i am talking about, be disgusted over here

i love reality tv. i love the jersey shore. i am all for trashy people getting drunk and making stupid decisions for the benefit of my amusement. i am all for those things because they are completely mindless shows in a life full of stress. i watch a lot of really bad television and i refuse to apologize for that. but dance mom's!? dance freaking moms!?!?! these women are horrible mothers. awful. to make money off of watching some nasty bitch scream at your kids is beyond bad parenting. it is bottom barrel scum sucking bad. i get that kids need encouragement and if they want to be dancers they need training, but there are dance coaches out there that can actually dance with your kids and won't be all screamy nasty mean face bitch like. gar. besides - kids don't belong on reality tv. assholes.

i hold the same issue with toddlers and tiaras, but on a grander scale. those women should be locked up and their adorable little brats should be retrained to know that 3 year olds shouldn't be drinking red bull so mommy can live out her twisted fantasy of being miss america. to me it really appears as if those crazy mothers want their daughters to grow up to be scantily clad head fucks, because that's where they are headed. little girls shouldn't be booty dancing in short shorts in front of a panel of judges for a cash prize of a thousand dollars - that's called stripping. and no, your 2 year old didn't want to to pageants, you did. and now your 8 year old thinks that the only thing that matters about her is her divatude, her trophies, and her ability to pull off showing her spray tan by showing as much skin as possible. you don't deserve children, ladies. hell, you don't even deserve a puppy.

i look at chunk and the thought of doing anything like that to her makes me physically ill. we are over-sexing our little girls at younger and younger ages. i never thought i would be such a prude, but i am. i want my baby daughter to be a baby, and then a little girl (a loooong stretch of that), and then a teenager. i want her to be innocent and adorable for as long as possible. i never want her to be one of those little girls i see walking around the mall in clothes that are barely fit for a night club. seriously! where the fuck are their parents!? how do you let your 12 year old wear a miniskirt? how do you look at that little girl and say, yep! you look like every skeavy guy in the mall is going to look at you like a tiger looks at a steak - good for you! have fun with your friends! NO. bad parents. BAD.

i know i won't be able to keep her from the grips of the katy perry's, keshas, and lady gaga's, but i will teach my daughter that not looking like them is more about self respect. i think that a lot of american's are obsessed with the royal couple right now because they are a refreshing change of pace from the "role models" our children have. that cathrine is a beautiful young woman with such grace and class. that is the kind of young lady i would love chunk to be. i would love for her to know that she can be beautiful without showing every inch of her skin. i would love for her to know that, as a female, she has more power in her mind than in her body. i would love for her to respect herself and have pride. i know that there is a lot going against me, but i am hoping just being honest with her and always talking with her will help her understand why i don't think that strapping on a meat suit and / or singing about one night stands in high school and / or just selling off any amount of self respect you have for a dollar are good options.

and as i finish this female centered post i look up into my tabs and the story i am in the middle of reading is "michele bachmann leads iowa race" and suddenly i think - mebbe meat suits have their good qualities. ugh.

7.06.2011

tell us what we want, we'll believe it

ge switched from watching nick jr to sprout tv. i would explain why, but the title of that blog would be more like, "every single cable company out there will fuck you over, so just choose the one that costs the least and quit your bitching." or, something like that. sprout tv is different from nick jr because they have active commercials geared towards reducing the amount of money in my bank account. ge's current favorite is for aquafresh toothpaste. the commercial has little happy toothpaste thingies dancing all around in their red, white, and blue toothpaste attitude glory. and so yesterday i bought it for him, because i am the type of mom who buys her child a lot of the things he desires and, well, it's toothpaste. if that breaks the bank we are screwed.

last night when we went to brush his teeth i was super excited to see if he loved his new toothpaste, but he told me that we were not to use the new toothpaste. we are not to break into the new toothpaste until his old toothpaste is completely gone. some days i think ge is just like me, yesterday he was not.

today i opened up his new toothpaste because i personally cannot leave new things wrapped for more than, oh, a second. the toothpaste smells like bubble gum happiness and when i asked him to smell it he smiled, sniffed the delicious scent and exclaimed,

"it smells like happy toothpaste!"

and all this time our old toothpaste was an angry dick. lame.

7.01.2011

no blog til sleeping

i know that i have been seriously lagging on my blog updates as of late, but i have a really good excuse :

having two kids this age is freaking hard.

i wrote up a post last weekend, but i never got around to finishing it and now it is just sitting in draft status all lonely without it's ending paragraph(s). i was going to finish it, but chunk is a lighting quick crawler, and also a 3 am riser, and by the time they go to bed i am so exhausted that i can no longer form sentences. hell, i can barely move my fingers by 8 oclock. but i do, because that's when i make dinner. and then dishes. and by 9 it is finally time for me to sit down and blogging sounds stupid. stupid, stupid, stupid.

the kids are driving me crazy doing great! chunk is a crawler, and is working on being a stander as well. the other day she stood up on her own by pushing off a teeny box and i thought it was going to go really badly, but by the time i got around to almost intervening she was safely down on her bum and she still had all of her eyes and toes. ge is insane and 3. he is really, really good at being 3. we have had a lot of activities for him lately to keep him busy and it seems to help him from not going crazy and speaking in tongues. they are both playing in ge's room happily together these days, which helps me do things like vacuum and make sure that the dishes we own aren't covered in gross. their ages may be hard at the moment, but i know in the next few months it will get a bit more easy.

the husband, the amazing husband, killed his fiscal year end at work and had a real live smile on his face when he came home from yet another 14 hour day at work last night. he threw himself into making june his month and he succeeded. we miss him, though, and i am so happy he is home for a 3 day weekend. we are going to go to the farmer's market, light of some cheap fireworks, and have a movie night with ge. should be a wonderful weekend. plus, backup! huzzah for backup!

i am going to try and blog more in july. i keep this blog for my kids so i really want to stay more updated on it. eventually a lot of the entries will make their way into book form so i can tell my children how awful wonderful and fun they were when they were little. time really does fly by with kids and this here word thingie helps me slow down and remember all of the moments we have.