This is me whining....again.

I have nothing cute or sarcastic to say. I'm kind of in a downer mood. The Dude is in Houston on a last minute business trip. The kids are upset because they don't remember him coming in and kissing them before he left. I feel am fat.

I don't say that looking for someone to say, "no you're not!" thanks anyway Dude . I have mirrors folks. I can see it. I also have a scale that tells me I'm losing this battle despite my efforts. I really am making an effort! I've cut my portions in half (at least). I only drink the occasional Coke (for you non-southerners, that is any carbonated beverage). I'm moving more, hell, my 30 minute break at work is now occupied by the treadmill or exercise bike. Yet still, I gain.

Something is amiss. I'm extremely tired despite the fact that I'm getting more sleep these days. My muscles ache all the time. Every morning I feel like I've been hit by a bus. My joints ache too, which is odd and new.

This is just depressing. My sister in law's wedding is in a few weeks and I DO NOT want to be in any of the family pictures looking this way.
I have a family party to attend this summer. I'm looking forward to it, but then again, not so much. I was always the chunky one in my family, but this will be the very first time that I am actually ashamed to show my family what I have let myself become.

Meh. I'm whining. Sorry this is such a downer post. You know what would cheer me up and always does? Baking. But that would only make my waistline grow even more.

Blah.

Memories on a Monday

Memories, light the corner of my mind.

Misty water-colored memories...

Did I go too far, with the Babs lyrics? Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

This past weekend we took the kids down to the island and stayed at the inlaw's beach house. Beautiful weather. The bluebonnets were in bloom and their sweet smell filled the air.

I remembered, as a child, pulling over on the interstate once to snap some pictures of all us kids in the blooming bluebonnets. Being in a nostalgic mood, I insisted The Dude help me wrangle the kids over to a patch of the bright blue flowers. Pickles grabbed a bunch of the flowers and repeatedly insisted I "(s)Mell! (s)Mell!"

It really was a beautiful weekend.

Is It Monday?

It sure feels like a Monday. Perhaps I fell into some cosmic wormhole and skipped right to Monday?? Hmm, worth investigating.

For whatever reason, I slept like crap last night. Poor lil Pickles is still fighting some bottom molars, so he didn't sleep that great either. When I woke up, my whole body ached. Body...boday....booody...what's up with that? It just doesn't look right. Let me spell check right quick here. Interesting. Spell check didn't have a problem with any of my spellings of "body." Weird.

Wait, where am I? Where was this blog going? Oh yes, yes. Today isn't really Friday, it's Monday. Got it. Back on track here. So, crappy sleep, achy body. On top of those two things, my house cleaning gnome TOTALLY bailed on me last night. I woke up to a dirty house! The nerve of that little guy! I'm writing him a strongly worded letter. Can gnomes read?

Ugh, so I had to do the dishes, laundry, and pick up before work. The twins, of course, were in great moods. By great, I mean their heads didn't do complete 360s and they didn't spit split pea soup at me. They did, however, hide my hairbrush and sunglasses from me. I bet I look awesome driving down the road. Hair like a crazy person and all squinty-eyed from the lack of sunglasses.

The cherry on top of my morning was that my Tahoe wouldn't start. Damn. Called the dealership and they can squeeze me in...on Wednesday. Happy Friday kids!

Sweet Success

Apparently, when one pisses off most of the nation with a stupid-ass proposal to charge veterans' private insurance for care of injuries sustained in combat, and the entire country throws up the the bullshit flag, one backs down. The White House released a big "Psyche!!!" after deciding maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

There is still the point that the President even proposed this idea. Speaks volumes, eh? All of the, "it wasn't him, it was his advisers" can cry me a friggen river, mmmm-kay? You can't proclaim that he's a wonderful leader, then turn around and use the old "it wasn't his idea" poop-scuse. If he were, in fact, a wonderful leader he'd have given a melvin to the guy that shoved this proposal his way, and left a flaming bag of poo on his front porch. Well, that's what I would have done. Perhaps that's why I'm not the leader of this GREAT nation. It is still great. I don't care what anyone else says.

K, I'm done with my little jig on the soapbox.

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I'm in a stellar mood today. Not sure why. Oh wait, I DO know why: the bane of my existence my boss is out of town till next week!!! Of course, he's on a trip to New York, that The Dude actually won for the company. Nice eh? Oh, oh! While he's away, The Dude and I get to care for his super high maintenance dogs. Seriously. One of the dogs requires a, twice daily, baby wipe-bath. You have to rub the sucker down with a baby wipe and then spray anti-itch stuff all over it. These aren't small dogs either. They're full sized boxers. Fun times.

I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Going to Take this Anymore!

This is kinda relevant again, no? The current economic situation is a roundabout reason for my pissed-off-idness new word, write it down. Yesterday I read about Mr. President's proposal regarding private insurance reimbursing the VA for treatment of veterans wounded in combat. Um, what? Let me get this straight, we're gonna send you off to fight for our country and if you get wounded we'll bring you home BUT we're gonna make your private insurance company pay for your treatment?! Wow, nice kick to the nuts there for ya. Not really surprised that the White House refused further comment on the proposal.

The administration is looking at it like private insurance companies are "getting free ride" by not having to pay for these veteran's treatments while the veterans pay the insurance companies premiums. Guess what, they're paying the premiums for everything else, not the combat related injuries. No one is getting a "free ride" here.

I think they're missing something here. Take for example our small, family run business. We offer insurance coverage to our employees. We pay part, the employee pays part. Standard, right? Say The Dude was injured in combat and needed medical care related to that injury for an extended period of time, or for life. If our private insurance plan had to pay for that care we, as a business, would probably NOT be able to afford to keep The Dude on our plan. The rates would be so outrageous that we simply could not absorb the premiums. So now, The Dude has to find insurance on his own. What insurance company is going to take him on, knowing they'll have to throw down a crap-ton of money on him (pre-existing condition much??!). OR, if they do take him on, how would we ever be able to afford the premiums? That is just NOT fair.

Mr. President essentially told the veteran's groups he met with that if they can come up with a better idea that would be great. Guess what to quote my Shasty "it's not my job motherfucker!" YOU, sir, took on this job with the promise of fixing everything. I realize it's a tough job. Personally, I would never want to be President. Perhaps this is the problem with having a Commander in Chief who never served in the military.

Oh! Oh! Pick me! Pick me!! I have an idea!!!! How about taking the 540 million the President is looking for, from the bailout money!! How much sense does it make to GIVE eleventy billion dollars not an actual figure to companies that made bad financial decisions, but try and TAKE money from those that this country should be caring for?

These young men and women sign up to serve this great country. The only thing they ask is to be cared for should they come home injured. Is that really too much to ask? It breaks my heart to read stories like my Shasty's. Troops should have better options available to them than a pat on the back, a "good job" and sent on their merry little way. Private groups are picking up the slack, or at least trying to, but how many veterans are suffering in silence. Too many I fear. Let's not add to their stress with passage of this bill.

Maybe we all should open the windows and shout like in the clip. Maybe the White House would sit back and say, yep, THAT was a stupid idea. What were we thinking??

This is it? Really??

**Crickets chirping**

Hmm, nothin huh? I was certain trumpets would sound and a choir of angels would sing, or at the very least a confetti gun would go off and I'd be stuck combing bits of paper out of my hair for weeks. But nothin'. I guess this being my 100th Post means nothing to John Q. Public. This kinda snuck up on me anyway. In my head I had intended to have a giveaway and all, but with the Spring Fling happening last week I'm tapped out for right now (p.s. Andy, I still need your mailing address, love). Sis in law's wedding is quickly approaching and we're ripping out our master bathroom (last Gustav repair, yay!!). I'm finding it hard to do much of anything besides complain ~ which I'm super good at. If there were an Olympic medal for complaining, I would surely take the Gold, Silver AND Bronze. I fancy the bronze anyway.

Ok, back to reality. I do have a little recipe and idea for you lovely peeps. Back in the day, when The Dude was in Iraq, he would long for some of my baking goodness. There was the slight problem that mail was taking a month or more to reach him (this was in the early days of the war). On some military wives/mothers chat room someone mentioned baking cakes in wide-mouthed mason jars. Oh man, it was on like donkey-kong.

I baked everything from muffins, to cakes, to brownies, all sealed and contained in little glass jars. I even did a "birthday cake." I did his favorite kind of cake in the jar, then sent a can of frosting and some candles along. Voila! Ah, but how did I keep the jars from breaking? Well, The Dude simply wore a pair of socks for several days before throwing them away (no washing facilities at the time), so he went through a lot of socks. I simply wrapped the jars in lots of socks! Those flat rate boxes were a god-send because those suckers got heavy.

I decided to pull out the old mason jars and bake away. I made a blueberry coffee cake (I guess that's what I'd call it).

I used half pint jars this time, but you can use larger ones. I used pint sized when shipping them to The Dude.

The ingredients:

*It should be noted that I decided to add a crumb topping AFTER mixing up the batter, so there is no picture of those ingredients.

1 1/2 C all purpose flour

2tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 C sugar

1/4 C butter, softened

1 egg

1/2 C milk

3 C fresh or frozen blueberries
Before you do ANYTHING, you have to sterilize the jars and lids.

Now, they have fancy-shmancy machinery that can do that for you. I am neither fancy, nor shmancy, so I just boiled mine. Take your biggest pot and fill it with enough water to cover the jars. Boil the jars and lids for 10 minutes. Remove jars and dry on paper towels. *While your jars boil, you can whip up your batter.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Sift together your dry ingredients onto a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper. In a large bowl, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add egg, beat well. Alternately add dry ingredients and milk into sugar mixture. Fold in blueberries.

I've experimented with various forms of greasing the jars and I've found this method to work the best. Using a paper towel folded around your fingers, smear Crisco all over the inside. Be careful not to get ANY on the lip of the jar. If you do, just wipe it off with a paper towel.

Fill the jars about 2/3 of the way full.

At this point, I decided a little crumb topping was needed. I combined 1/3 C flour, 1/2 C brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Cut in 1/4 C butter. Sprinkle on top of your batter filled jars.

To catch any spill-overs, and it's just plain easier this way, put your jars in a pan and THEN into the oven.

I baked mine for about 25 minutes and they were done. Test them the same way you test any cake. Of course, you'll need a much LONGER toothpick. Since I couldn't get the giant at the top of my beanstalk to part with his, I just used a kabob skewer.

Carefully pull the lids and rings out of the water. Quickly dry them off with paper towels and set the lids on top of the jars. As they cool they will seal. You'll start to hear little "pops" as they seal. Once they're sealed and cooled, screw on the rings and you're finished.

This last picture was taken with my cell phone this morning. I brought one to work for breakfast. I just loosened around the edge with a butter knife and the cake slid right out.

Tears of a clown

The Pecan Street Preschool Mafia strikes again. I was, yet again, not let in on the latest school event. I was totally stoked to have a prime spot in the pick-up line today. I should have KNOWN something was up. As my little Twinkies walked up to the car, I thought it scary as hell a little odd that their teacher was dressed up like a clown. "Ummm, what a lovely outfit Ms. Debra has on today, isn't it girls?!" She gives me a half smile and loads my little people into the car.

Twin A has this look on her face that is just gut wrenching. She looks like I have just run over her cat. "Hey Mr. Grumpy Gills, what's wrong?" She doesn't reply. Alrighty, I'll just skip over this little incident in the making. "What did y'all do at school today?" I inquire.

"You didn't come to the circus. ALL of the other Mommies came. But not you."

First of all, I heard NO mention of any circus event at the school. When I dropped them off this morning they certainly didn't ask if I would be attending.

"What circus?"

"We had circus day today and all the Mommies came. Why didn't YOU come?" She was almost about to break into tears at this point. Then she hit me with the kick to the gut.

"K's Mamma came. She let us stand by her. K's Mamma came and you didn't." Motherf..."K's Mamma" is none other than Alpha Beauty Queen Mom. GREEEAAT.

Is this woman now trying to turn my babies against me now? Gah! Like TODAY I needed that.

How do you apologize to a 3 yr old and make her understand that I did not intentionally skip their "big" day. I tried to tell her that Mommy had to work, blah, blah, blah. She wasn't biting. Thank GOD there was a bag of cotton candy tied to her school bag. As I pulled her out of the car at the babysitter's house I told her that she could eat all of the cotton candy she could stand, then made the "I don't know where she got that stuff from" shoulder shrug to the babysitter. Sweet. Redemption, in the form of sticky goodness.

This is only partially related to the story I just told, but here goes. Alpha Beauty Queen Mom has pictures of MY KIDS on her iPhone yeah, even her phone choice is better than mine. I kinda feel like the kid with the Payless tennis shoes while she has the Air Jordans....CRAP! I'm WEARING Payless shoes right now!!! How do I know this you ask? She ran into The Dude out somewhere and got all giggly talking to him about the twins and showing off the pictures she had snapped of them. Gag.