(This post is the latest installment in Bob's "The Geek Speaks" series.)
One of the things that I've had to get used to in sharing my home with a writer and a sometimes crazed toddler is that all of the things I used to do in my bachelorhood are now tossed out the window. I am a creature of habit and ritual; I have a way of doing things that requires time to hone the process and shape it into a lean and efficient system. In the before-time -- before K squared -- I got up at 4:44 am and got to the shower. I was done with the shower and back to my room by 5:05. I was out the door to the car by 5:30. I hit the freeway at 5:37, and knew that I would be at the parking lot at work by 6:15. I had these things down to a science.
Now, I get out of bed at 4:40 and stumble to the shower and try to wash up without falling and breaking my neck. (I have a huge somewhat irrational fear of falling in the shower.) I hopefully get out of the shower and go cuddle with Karinya for a little bit before getting ready for work. Unless toddler K has decided to join us at some point during the night and then she usually takes her half of the bed out of the middle. I'm still working on what time I need to be on the road to hit the freeway at that magical 5:37 point and in the month we've lived here, I think I've managed it twice. Still working on it but I have confidence.
Another of the adjustments that I've had to undergo is eating healthy. Karinya has this habit of wanting to make delicious dinners for me to eat, with foods that aren't filled with chemicals and other additives. I've been used to going to a variety of restaurants and plunking down my money and having someone put food of unknown origin in front of me. She insists on taking care of me!
I've been pretty self-reliant over these last many years. I mean, I know how to do my own laundry and (sort of) clean for myself and pay my own bills mostly on time. But I find myself having someone caring for me in ways that I had forgotten were possible. In that same manner, I find myself wanting to care for someone else -- two someone elses, even -- because it makes me feel good to do so. It takes time to adjust to these things that I'd forgotten existed.
Finally, instead of coming home to a basement apartment and watching TV until it was time to go to bed, I now come home to a family who looks forward to me being there and is happy to see me. When I come in, K rushes to hug daddy with a big smile on her face and Karinya smiles at me and gives me a kiss and a hug. It's like something that comes straight out of Leave it to Beaver, I know.
How will I ever adjust to all of these things happening to me? How will I figure out how many minutes it takes me to go from shower to the car? How will I ever get used to eating all of these healthy foods?
Dear readers, I cannot answer these difficult questions. But I can promise you this: I will, to the best of my ability, enjoy trying to find out the answers to these and a thousand others over the next 40 plus years of being with my family.
Showing posts with label operation cohabitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label operation cohabitation. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
This Week in Food
(We like food. A lot. I don't think this will come as a surprise to any of our readers.)
Until Friday morning (so early! Our furnace guy is either very in demand or very lazy, because he has a habit of waiting until a few hours after the initial appointment to call and reschedule, but aaaanyway --) we didn't have any real cooking capabilities. We had a crockpot -- and I'm actually a big crockpot fan! -- but no range or oven. Rather, we had them, but we had no natural gas line going into the kitchen. . . (Why does everything seem ten times more complicated than it needs to be when you're a homeowner?)
Anyway, early Friday morning our furnace/gas/etc. guy got here to hook up the gas line to the kitchen/clean the furnace/other fun things. My favorite exchange? When he said, "Hey, put your hands here. You feel that? That's a carbon monoxide leak!" To which I responded, "Oh." Sometimes I feel like people must think I'm -- I don't know, "special needs?" -- but really, what else do you say to that?
At any rate, he fixed it. He cleaned the furnace (which is older than I am!) and the water heater. He hooked a gas line up to the kitchen. He gave me a working range. When I went to write out the check, he said he'd send me a bill instead, and I'm not sure whether he was being semi-merciful (as in, "I know you don't have this in your checking account now, so I'll let you sweat it out/save/wait a bit,") or cruel ("muahahaha they'll never know what's about to hit them!"), but --
Our first week in the house was full o' crock pot goodness. Or at least crock pot edibleness. We made slow-cooker beef stew with mushrooms which was gooood, we made some kind of chicken and noodle and white wine stew that turned out a little too "eh" to bother linking to, and we made Stephanie O'Dea's nice pot roast recipe. (I love her book Make it Fast, Cook it Slow.
She's my crock pot hero!) The beef stew disappeared in a day. The chicken "stuff" is probably on its way out into the trash (sorry, starving African orphans or whoever), and the pot roast is on its way to becoming taco/enchilada/southwestern something for tomorrow night's leftover dinner extravaganza.
On Friday, after we were gifted with the magic of natural gas in the kitchen, we made plain old white bread to christen the oven. I know that's a totally lame/unadventurous recipe to use for bread, but it's served me well in the past. This time? Either my shiny new oven runs hot or the yeast really does die when the package says it expires, because it was a little flat/sad, but still pretty good. A friend suggested trying this recipe for No-Fuss Focaccia but I went with the tried & true recipe this time (because I'm boring?) but that one is going on the to-try list! My assistant helped me knead. With her nose. With a cold. Oy.
A few vitamin C pills and a good night's sleep later, we turned that bread into Overnight Blueberry Stuffed French Toast! Oh, goodness. I'm watching calories these days, but -- this is worth it. We made a few mods (mostly scaling back the recipe for a family of 2.5, and using slightly lighter ingredients when possible), but -- yep, definitely worth it. Especially on a snowy Sunday morning. I don't mean to be all gushy about my newly found domestic bliss, but -- Sunday morning family breakfasts are awesome. We had coffee. We had snuggling. (Later we also had more football than---- anyway.) We had glorious high-fat breakfasts with whipped cream. I don't care how many lunges I'll have to do or how many grilled skinless chicken breasts the next few days will bring. This morning was lovely :-)
Let's see, what else? Before the oven got hooked up, Bob had a rotten day at work and I wanted to surprise him in an "I'm a pseudo-SAHM-with-a-toddler-and, uh,-a-job-and-no-working-oven" way and K and I made a batch of no-bake bourbon cookies, as follows:
2 cups crushed vanilla wafers (because I like making cookies from other cookies)
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
...2+ish tablespoons honey (I don't know how much I ended up using -- it didn't seem sticky enough with what the original recipe called for)
1/4 cup bourbon
(Some recipes call for chopped pecans too, but we've got a toddler with nut allergies so we skipped that. Uh, not that we should be feeding the toddler bourbon to begin with...)
Mix cookie crumbs, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder together. Pour in the bourbon & honey, and dig those hands in! (I started trying to mix with a spoon but it was just -- hands were easier.) It should be kind of a clay-like consistency. Roll into balls, then roll in more powdered sugar. Refrigerate (they're supposed to be better cold & aged a couple of days, but they were pretty good fresh, too!) and enjoy!
At any rate: hello, new week. Why are you waving all those carrot sticks at me?
Until Friday morning (so early! Our furnace guy is either very in demand or very lazy, because he has a habit of waiting until a few hours after the initial appointment to call and reschedule, but aaaanyway --) we didn't have any real cooking capabilities. We had a crockpot -- and I'm actually a big crockpot fan! -- but no range or oven. Rather, we had them, but we had no natural gas line going into the kitchen. . . (Why does everything seem ten times more complicated than it needs to be when you're a homeowner?)
Anyway, early Friday morning our furnace/gas/etc. guy got here to hook up the gas line to the kitchen/clean the furnace/other fun things. My favorite exchange? When he said, "Hey, put your hands here. You feel that? That's a carbon monoxide leak!" To which I responded, "Oh." Sometimes I feel like people must think I'm -- I don't know, "special needs?" -- but really, what else do you say to that?
At any rate, he fixed it. He cleaned the furnace (which is older than I am!) and the water heater. He hooked a gas line up to the kitchen. He gave me a working range. When I went to write out the check, he said he'd send me a bill instead, and I'm not sure whether he was being semi-merciful (as in, "I know you don't have this in your checking account now, so I'll let you sweat it out/save/wait a bit,") or cruel ("muahahaha they'll never know what's about to hit them!"), but --
Our first week in the house was full o' crock pot goodness. Or at least crock pot edibleness. We made slow-cooker beef stew with mushrooms which was gooood, we made some kind of chicken and noodle and white wine stew that turned out a little too "eh" to bother linking to, and we made Stephanie O'Dea's nice pot roast recipe. (I love her book Make it Fast, Cook it Slow.
She's my crock pot hero!) The beef stew disappeared in a day. The chicken "stuff" is probably on its way out into the trash (sorry, starving African orphans or whoever), and the pot roast is on its way to becoming taco/enchilada/southwestern something for tomorrow night's leftover dinner extravaganza.On Friday, after we were gifted with the magic of natural gas in the kitchen, we made plain old white bread to christen the oven. I know that's a totally lame/unadventurous recipe to use for bread, but it's served me well in the past. This time? Either my shiny new oven runs hot or the yeast really does die when the package says it expires, because it was a little flat/sad, but still pretty good. A friend suggested trying this recipe for No-Fuss Focaccia but I went with the tried & true recipe this time (because I'm boring?) but that one is going on the to-try list! My assistant helped me knead. With her nose. With a cold. Oy.
A few vitamin C pills and a good night's sleep later, we turned that bread into Overnight Blueberry Stuffed French Toast! Oh, goodness. I'm watching calories these days, but -- this is worth it. We made a few mods (mostly scaling back the recipe for a family of 2.5, and using slightly lighter ingredients when possible), but -- yep, definitely worth it. Especially on a snowy Sunday morning. I don't mean to be all gushy about my newly found domestic bliss, but -- Sunday morning family breakfasts are awesome. We had coffee. We had snuggling. (Later we also had more football than---- anyway.) We had glorious high-fat breakfasts with whipped cream. I don't care how many lunges I'll have to do or how many grilled skinless chicken breasts the next few days will bring. This morning was lovely :-)
Let's see, what else? Before the oven got hooked up, Bob had a rotten day at work and I wanted to surprise him in an "I'm a pseudo-SAHM-with-a-toddler-and, uh,-a-job-and-no-working-oven" way and K and I made a batch of no-bake bourbon cookies, as follows:
2 cups crushed vanilla wafers (because I like making cookies from other cookies)
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
...2+ish tablespoons honey (I don't know how much I ended up using -- it didn't seem sticky enough with what the original recipe called for)
1/4 cup bourbon
(Some recipes call for chopped pecans too, but we've got a toddler with nut allergies so we skipped that. Uh, not that we should be feeding the toddler bourbon to begin with...)
Mix cookie crumbs, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder together. Pour in the bourbon & honey, and dig those hands in! (I started trying to mix with a spoon but it was just -- hands were easier.) It should be kind of a clay-like consistency. Roll into balls, then roll in more powdered sugar. Refrigerate (they're supposed to be better cold & aged a couple of days, but they were pretty good fresh, too!) and enjoy!
At any rate: hello, new week. Why are you waving all those carrot sticks at me?
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Babies, Boxes, Blissful Sleep
K is a tough little kid. (I first typed "baby" here, but that's not really accurate anymore, beyond the "she'll always be my baby" sense.)
When we run together (not when I push her in the stroller while *I* run -- she wants to run *with* me) she almost always takes a spill or two along the way, usually because she gets distracted or starts laughing so hard over who-knows-what that she just kind of forgets to think about her feet. Do you know what she does after she falls?
She stands up, brushes off her hands, and starts running again.
This started when I (playfully!) modeled the hand-brushing for her and tried telling her to "walk it off, baby!" as a way to distract her from the instant exaggerated tears any time any sort of tumble happened (like on soft carpet.) But it worked. (Telling an injured baby to walk it off? Whoa, publishers, don't all come knocking at my door at once trying to sign me for that book on parenting you'd love to have me write.) And now, 95% of the time, even when she falls full-force from a run onto cold asphalt, she really does it. She brushes her hands and (runs) it off.
She's had a broken bone. She survived an assassination attempt via peanut butter. (That's when we found out the fun way that she's allergic. Sorry, K!) She spent her first year of life withtwo parents one parent and one additional adult in the house, then took it all in stride when one disappeared. After having never been apart from me for more than an hour, ever, she adjusted to going to daycare starting at 18 months. (*Well, she's still a bit of a crankpants about the daycare thing.) She's had three different addresses. Three.
Last night was our first official night in what is hopefully going to be her last address for quite a while. (Unless we win the lottery. Then I might be willing to put her through one more move . . . ) She'd been helping me move a little at a time for a few weeks now, and she understood, as well as a toddler can, what was going on. (She could differentiate between/discuss "our house," "Bob's house," and "new house" a single conversation.) When we got done dropping off a load of boxes and pulled out of the driveway, lately she'd been waving and saying, "Bye new house!"
Yesterday Bob's sister took K off our hands so that we could move the Big Stuff. (And by "we," I mean a team of strong friends ;-) By the time we got K back, the house was looking more like an actual home, complete with furniture! I didn't know what she'd think, but -- she just kind of looked around a little, settled in on the couch with me and Bob and a bag of popcorn, and watched How to Train Your Dragon. After that? She went to bed in her own room, in her own bed. She stayed asleep for the entire night. No bed crashing. No crying. No 4am parties. It was glorious. I climbed (quietly!) up the stairs around 9:30 this morning to peek in her bedroom, to make sure she was still, you know, breathing.
Tomorrow I might be tempted to put her out in the barn, but for now? I'm just a little in awe of her resilience and all around awesomeness. She really is a trooper.
When we run together (not when I push her in the stroller while *I* run -- she wants to run *with* me) she almost always takes a spill or two along the way, usually because she gets distracted or starts laughing so hard over who-knows-what that she just kind of forgets to think about her feet. Do you know what she does after she falls?
She stands up, brushes off her hands, and starts running again.
This started when I (playfully!) modeled the hand-brushing for her and tried telling her to "walk it off, baby!" as a way to distract her from the instant exaggerated tears any time any sort of tumble happened (like on soft carpet.) But it worked. (Telling an injured baby to walk it off? Whoa, publishers, don't all come knocking at my door at once trying to sign me for that book on parenting you'd love to have me write.) And now, 95% of the time, even when she falls full-force from a run onto cold asphalt, she really does it. She brushes her hands and (runs) it off.
She's had a broken bone. She survived an assassination attempt via peanut butter. (That's when we found out the fun way that she's allergic. Sorry, K!) She spent her first year of life with
Last night was our first official night in what is hopefully going to be her last address for quite a while. (Unless we win the lottery. Then I might be willing to put her through one more move . . . ) She'd been helping me move a little at a time for a few weeks now, and she understood, as well as a toddler can, what was going on. (She could differentiate between/discuss "our house," "Bob's house," and "new house" a single conversation.) When we got done dropping off a load of boxes and pulled out of the driveway, lately she'd been waving and saying, "Bye new house!"
Yesterday Bob's sister took K off our hands so that we could move the Big Stuff. (And by "we," I mean a team of strong friends ;-) By the time we got K back, the house was looking more like an actual home, complete with furniture! I didn't know what she'd think, but -- she just kind of looked around a little, settled in on the couch with me and Bob and a bag of popcorn, and watched How to Train Your Dragon. After that? She went to bed in her own room, in her own bed. She stayed asleep for the entire night. No bed crashing. No crying. No 4am parties. It was glorious. I climbed (quietly!) up the stairs around 9:30 this morning to peek in her bedroom, to make sure she was still, you know, breathing.
Tomorrow I might be tempted to put her out in the barn, but for now? I'm just a little in awe of her resilience and all around awesomeness. She really is a trooper.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Arms, Don't Fail Me Now
You know that point in the moving process where you shift from neat, organized, labeled boxes packed in a logical, relaxed manner to OhForTheLoveOfGodJustThrowTheCrapInABoxAndGo? We're so there.
We've been moving a little at a time for a couple of weeks now. A pickup load here and there when the schedule/weather/toddler allow. (The toddler, actually, has two almost entirely furnished rooms already at the new house -- a bedroom and a playroom. The adults? We don't even have a mattress there yet. Or dishes that are not made of paper.)
This weekend we're cranking Operation Cohabitation up to eleven. (Relatedly, are you guys on the make Nigel Tufnel Day happen bandwagon for next year? You probably should be.) Child care has been arranged. Friends have made promises to show up (in the morning on a Saturday!) to carry heavy things. If all goes well, by Sunday evening we should be living less like nomads (good lord, we're currently splitting our time between three houses) and more like a Real Official Family with a single address.
Wish us luck, ya'll. We're going to need it.
We've been moving a little at a time for a couple of weeks now. A pickup load here and there when the schedule/weather/toddler allow. (The toddler, actually, has two almost entirely furnished rooms already at the new house -- a bedroom and a playroom. The adults? We don't even have a mattress there yet. Or dishes that are not made of paper.)
This weekend we're cranking Operation Cohabitation up to eleven. (Relatedly, are you guys on the make Nigel Tufnel Day happen bandwagon for next year? You probably should be.) Child care has been arranged. Friends have made promises to show up (in the morning on a Saturday!) to carry heavy things. If all goes well, by Sunday evening we should be living less like nomads (good lord, we're currently splitting our time between three houses) and more like a Real Official Family with a single address.
Wish us luck, ya'll. We're going to need it.
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