Happy Canvent, everyone! I hope you all enjoying celebrating this special time of year.
...
What, you don't know what Canvent is? I'm shocked. This holiday deserves a place in history along with Ludachristmas and Festivus.
Let me tell you a story of the origin of Canvent: Once upon a time, there was a coworker with a very odd mother-in-law. This mother-in-law thought it would be funny to bring a box of canned goods to her future daughter's bridal shower. Yes, a box of canned goods. With the labels ripped off. No other gift. No explanations or game to go along with it---the mother-in-law just laughed and said that it was a common practice.
Nothing says "welcome to the family" like a box of a cans without labels.
So what's a girl to do with a large box of unlabeled canned goods? You can't donate them. You don't really want to eat them...so they sat in her garage until she made a mistake of telling her coworkers about it.
And thus Canvent was created. Every day from now until Christmas, our office will open up one can. Bets will be placed on what it contains. If it's not something too disgusting, we may even eat it.
The winner of Canvent gets absolutely nothing (except the warm, fuzzy feeling of being right when everyone else is wrong--and really, who doesn't love that?) And the winner of the first day of Canvent is....
It's a gift. And a curse.
Insert pun about manwich and my knowledge of it here.
Happy Canvent, y'all. Maybe Canvent is an elaborate metaphor for how each of us, stripped of our labels, contain wildly different things on the inside. Or maybe it's just a good excuse to be thankful that no matter what, your mother-in-law has never given you the gift of unlabeled cans.
This is my fishing game, inspired from this blog I found through Pinterest. I used a thin rope rather than twine or leather for the fishing line, but other than that I followed those instructions pretty closely.
Mo-mo the toddler approves. Fat Mar-mar the cat approves. (See the paw?)
After watching Mar-mar eat the fish, Mo-mo wondered how they tasted. She was disappointed that they didn't taste like Goldfish crackers.
I love Barbara Kingsolver's novels. I really enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer. I picked up her memoir about eating local, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, expecting to love it. Instead I learned that while Ms. Kingsolver can write beautiful and lyrical descriptions of her garden, she's a bit of a sanctimonious prig when it comes to food. Who knew?
The one upside of this book is that it got me interested in making my own cheese from scratch. I love cheese. I also love making things from scratch. Seems like a perfect fit! Ms. Kingsolver claimed that cheese-making was easy, the directions online I found claimed that it was easy--but when I sat down to try and figure out how to actually do it, I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Never one to give up, I found that there is someone local who teaches classes on how to make cheese. I somehow conned my father, Evil Dr. Porkchop, into taking it the class with me. Lo and behold, we learned to make cheese. It simply requires a) milk b) some random stuff like bacteria cultures and rennet c) time. While not exactly rocket science, I don't think I would classify it as easy.
During the four hour class we learned how to make chevre, ricotta, feta, yogurt and a basic hard cheese. More importantly, we got to eat cheese. We were also given a nice booklet with instructions. As soon as I can get my hands on some raw goat or cow's milk, I'm ready to make the easier cheeses--feta and chevre. Fancy!
I didn't take any photos of the process because I was too busy paying attention and the booklet had great pictures. However, here are some photos of the goats. Do you think Batman would be mad if I adopted a couple? They could keep the lawn in the backyard trimmed and our dogs could herd them.
Fresh cheese or not, I don't think Batman would be okay with that plan.
My friend Shortstuff recently confessed to me that way back when Mo-mo was first born, she misunderstood something that I said. And she was way too polite and grossed out to ask me to clarify.
We were talking on the phone, and Batman called to me from the other room. Hold on, I said, Batman is calling me. I listened to what he had to say. I have to go, I told her. Batman needs my help. There's a poop emergency.
Being that Mo-mo was fairly small, what I thought I conveyed was that Mo-mo had managed (as young babies do) to poop through the side of her diaper and Batman needed a hand getting her gross onesie off and giving her a quick bath.
What Shortstuff thought I meant was that Batman was having a poop emergency. And she was rather alarmed and confused, having no idea 1) how a grown man could have a poop emergency and 2) what sort of help I could lend my husband during said poop emergency.
I am actually impressed that she was able to look him in the eye after that.
This is by far one of the coolest things I have ever made.
Mo-mo is going to be a train engineer for Halloween--complete with a little red wagon made to look like a train.
Materials
cardboard. Lots of cardboard
exacto knife
sharp scissors
glue gun
duct tape
PVC pipe (I used 1/2 inch)
PVC pipe cutters
spray paint- red, black and yellow matte
empty corn meal can, but almost any can would work
I started out with two large flat pieces of cardboard, both divided in thirds. I cut out half of the middle portion on each. I added windows to one piece (see above). Then I nestled them together like this:
I hot-glued and duct-taped the two pieces together. I even trimmed the windows with duct tape because my exact-o knife skills are not too hot.
Next, I had to figure out a way to get it to mount on the wagon. That's where the PVC pipe comes in handy. I cut small X's in the cardboard and fed a PVC pipe through the bottom, so that it would have a way to sit on the wagon. I reinforced it with duct-tape.
Cutting PVC pipe is incredibly easy with one of these gizmos. $10 from Lowe's. Is it weird that I'm looking forward to using it for future projects?
Next, I reinforced the corners of the window unit with PVC pipe. Unfortunately, I don't have a very good picture of it. I simply measured it, cut it, then duct-taped and hot-glued it in place.
Notice that the roof and front of the train is missing? I used those pieces that I cut out (to make them fit together) and both duct taped and hot glued it all together.
This is what it looked like before the painting/final touches were put on. I let Mo-mo give it a spin to make sure it worked.
Then I spray painted it red (two coats letting it dry at least 3 hours between)
I drew and cut out the wheels, spokes, wheel attach-thingies (no idea what they are actually called), a bit larger of a roof, a cattle-guard, and a light for the front. I then spray painted them along with the corn meal can for a smoke stack (again, two coats), let them dry. Lastly I hot-glued it all together.
I know it's not going to last forever--I'm not even going to show the finished product to Mo-mo until Halloween. But I think it will last at least for that evening and she may even get to play with it inside for awhile.
It's not really a craft, it's more of a fixer-upper. I bought this faded little car for $5 from a yard sale. New, they cost something like $50-$60. I bought Krylon spray paint for plastic, took it apart and painted it.
It doesn't look perfect but looks a lot better than it did! Ellie loves it. I let her pick out the colors. Now I'm tempted to buy a john deere sticker for the back. I admit, I didn't think of this renovation on my own--Ellie's babysitter painted one for her son and it looked great.
2. Jewelry organizer
Usually, I throw all of my necklaces and dangle-y earring into a big basket on my dresser. I can never find what I want to wear and they get all tangled. This is a $1 mirror frame from a garage sale (I popped the mirror off of the frame--it was incredibly ugly), spray painted it, and used a staple gun to line the back with chicken wire.
2 1/2. Cross-stitch project
I haven't finished this project yet, but I wanted to brag and show off how far I've gotten. This is how far I was in March of 2010.
This is what it looks like now. I've been working on it at least three nights a week for the last five months.
Just to give you an idea of how small the stitching is:
Oh, and this is what it will hopefully look like when it's done.
As I said before, this isn't a craft project, it's a commitment. I don't even want to think of how old Mo-mo will be when I finally finish.
I've finished 3 out of the 9 blocks for my first quilt. I only have 2 more to do of this particular star pattern, then I switch to doing ones with a bunch of squares and rectangles.
See my progress? The first block I made turned out wonky. By the third one, it's almost pretty.
I'm enjoying it so far. Strangely enough, I thought I'd be doing it with my sewing machine, but I wanted to be able to do something when I "watch" TV (I use that word very loosely as I tend to just listen to it). So this small quilt is going to be entirely hand-pieced.
As I've mentioned, I'm learning this from a book. I'm good up until the point where all of the pieces are put together and somehow, magically, it gets batting and backing...yeah, I have no idea how to do that. The book wasn't quite clear enough for me. I'm going to have to track down an expert or go to a quilt store and try and find a kindly person to help me out.
I also love my daughter. And my husband. And spending time with both of them. And reading, and playing World of Warcraft (have I mentioned this before? Yes, I am one of those people), and I love doing crafts...you get the picture. With my new job, writing has been pushed to the end of the line.
It's not going to be like this forever. This is something that I enjoy, so I'm going to do my darnedest to keep up with writing in it twice a week. And I'm going to look for more opportunities to use the word "darnedest" because it's a great word, dagnabbit.
Forgive me, recently my vocabulary has been kidnapped by the early 1900's. I used the phrase "nosy parker" earlier this week and my coworker convinced me that I must have made it up.
I love my job. I believe in keeping a buffer between my work life and the internet so I'm not going to go into much detail, but I'm working with a nonprofit organization as an event planner and individual giving portfolio manager. It's challenging, interesting, and I'm given both responsibility and resources to do the job right. I adore it so far.
Batman passed the bar and is now officially a lawyer. I'm so proud, I knew he could do it! Of course, now he has to get a job...
We're still living with my folks. We were planning on moving out right away until we took a close look at our finances and realized that we could either a) move out right away, and live paycheck to paycheck when our student loans kicked in or b) wait to move until Batman gets a job, save up a ton of money and pay off some of our debts in the meantime.
So we've decided to be fiscally responsible. I know that my parents are ready to have their space back and we're definitely ready to have ours, but I think we made the right choice.
I've started quilting. I seem to have craft ADD. I've abandoned my knitting mid-scarf, the light is too bad in my parent's house to cross-stitch, and my mood/the weather have not aligned so that I can paint the toy box...so I'm attempting to make a baby quilt instead. My aunt runs a big yearly quilt show in Louisiana. She collects quilts to donate to babies in the neonatal unit so I thought that this may be good first quilt project. I would love for someone like her to actually teach me how to quilt, but I'm making do for now learning from a book.
That's about it. I love my family. I love my work. I love my friends.
This year Mo-mo is big enough to actually trick or treat for maybe a half of a block. Of course, I've started obsessing about what she should be.
There shall be no cutesy-pie ladybug dresses for my girl, nor any (shudders) Disney princesses. There will be plenty of time for all that stuff when she's old enough to pick out her costume herself. Here are the costumes I like:
1) A Garden Gnome
Pros: Adorable. Hilarious.
Cons: Would she actually keep the hat on? Probably not.
2) Unicorn Pegasus
Pros: It's a UNICORN-PEGASUS! Not just one or the other but an unholy hybrid of horse mythology. Plus it's cute. And warm. Cons: I could see her getting frustrated with the hoof-gloves.
3. Monarch Butterfly
Pros: Flippin' adorable. Cons: Kind of bulky and may be hard to manuever. Plus it's a bit expensive.
That's right, I am awesome--so awesome that someone decided to hire me. But not as a starship captain. Which is unfortunate. Who cares that I never went to the Academy, I would rock at that job.
I will now have a lot less time to write mildly amusing blog posts about nothing. Don't cry, I know how upsetting that will be for my devoted fan base of approximately four people (and one of them isn't even related to me! Boo-yah!)
On the plus side, I will be able to feed and clothe my family. And buy books, which is always important. Oh, and the job is actually very neat.
This leads to an awkward segueway....of a list update!
3. Get a professional job. I have a job. I'm using both my degree and professional experience, which is great. I'm working with an education non-profit organization to plan events and raise money through individual giving. Tons of work but I'm loving it.
54. Go scuba diving
Cozumel. Family scuba diving. Evil Dr. Porkchop, stepmother, Batman, Meat, and ....stepbrother who needs a faux name all scuba-dive. I hadn't been in over five years, back when I was in Fiji. It was AMAZING! I saw sea turtles, sharks, lobsters, mantarays, and lots and lots of little brightly colored fish.
Batman managed to brush up against some coral and come home with a nasty rash that spread and oozed and blistered for a couple of days. He ended up scrubbing it out, pouring vinegar and rubbing alcohol on it, and it finally stopped spreading. It's semi-healed now.
I bet you're so happy that I have a blog, so that I can share such marvelous stories about rashes with you.
Things from the list I did but didn't blog about because I'm lazy and so feel guilty about not mentioning before now
1. Graduate with my master's degree with a 4.0 GPA
7. Become proficient in GIS mapping software.
11. Bring Mo-mo to the zoo
22. Plan and execute a successful 1st birthday party for Mo-mo
62. Have a garage sale
78. Update blog at least two times a week for four months
There is one good thing about breaking my iPod: I started rooting around my old CDs for something to listen to while in the car.
I rediscovered this:
And I'm not talking about the horrible, horrible movie version. No, I'm referring to the Broadway soundtrack. I think I may have blocked out my love of this musical because of that awful movie.
Yes, it's cheesy. Everybody has AIDS (haha Team America) and everyone does drugs. The bad guy is named "Coffin" for godssake, they might as well just named him Hitler.
But it's still fun. And I still know every single freakin' line.
"December 24th, nine p.m. Eastern standard time, from here on in I shoot without a script...."
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. I have decided to create the awesomest of awesome costumes: I am going to be David Bowie's character from the movie the Labyrinth. As an androgynous popstar, I'd like to think that he'd approve of the cross-gender costume.
That means Mo-mo will be baby Toby.
I may also have to learn every single word to the song "Dance, magic, dance".
Poor Batman. There are four things in the world he despises: 1) Nascar 2) Pugs 3) Muppets 4) David Bowie
Somehow he will survive. But perhaps I should put off buying a pug for awhile.
I'm like a 15 year old girl when it comes to music. I get obsessed with one song/album/artist and I play them on repeat, over and over and over and over again. Hey, stop judging me. It could be worse. At least I've outgrown angsty poetry and writing boys' initials over and over again.
I'm kind of surprised that my listening habits haven't made Batman stab me with a fork in an attempt to get something new playing on iTunes. Although my iPod recently stopped working. Maybe he arranged for it to have an "accident" with a full cup of water and a chainsaw. (If he were sabotaging my electronic devices, I'd like to think he wouldn't do a half-assed job of it.)
Anyway, I've decided to share my obsessive love of these songs with the world in a feeble attempt to move on.
note: Samson is the only video with an actual video, the rest are just the music.
1. The acoustic version of Fine by Alkaline Trio, from the album This Addiction.
Why I love this: I've loved Alkaline Trio since high school. I must have listened to the song Radio a couple hundred times. I haven't been overly impressed with their more recent albums with the exception of "Remains", and I've always loved their acoustic stuff. The lyrics of this song are amazing too. "If I'm the captain of this boat then all my shipmates are fools/ and all the stars in the world couldn't help me steer my way out of this kiddie pool."
2. The album The Hazards of Love by the Decemberists
Why I love this: It's an entire album that tells a unified story. Think of it like a rock opera with different characters and scenes. Pretty damn cool. I love The Decemberists and I love this album.
3. Johnny Horton
Why I love this: My dad must have played his "Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits" tape EVERY SINGLE TIME WE WERE IN THE CAR. The only other artist I remember listening to just as frequently is Marty Robbins. I recently bought the album on iTunes and have been dancing around the living room with Mo-mo to it. His songs are frequently about history/tell a story, and I'm just dorky enough to think that is awesome.
4. Do Better by Say Anything, from their self-titled album
Why I love this: I'm actually a bit ashamed of this one. I like Say Anything but I admit that they're not...."good" in the strict musical sense. This song is goofy and poppy and catchy. I think I have this song playing in the back of my mind whenever I think I'm being lazy about something and not trying hard enough.
5. Samson by Regina Spektor
Why I love this: It's pretty. And sad. Some of the lyrics make me think of when I was in Australia. One of my friends gave me this CD and I've enjoyed it, it's not my usual type of music.
6. Once More With Feeling from the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Why I love this: Because it's geeky. Because I've spent the last year watching every single episode of Buffy and Angel. Because I'm obsessed with Joss Wheadon. Because I like musicals. Because I have a gargantuan crush on the character Spike. Take your pick, these are all valid reasons.
Ingredients: 3 cups chicken broth- I'd make sure it was low sodium 8 oz clam juice 14.5 oz stewed tomatoes and juice 8 oz sliced mushrooms 1 onion, diced 1 large leek, diced (just the white part!) 1 T dried parsley 2 tsp Old Bay seasoning mix1 tsp dill 1 cup heavy cream (to add later)Same as heavy whipping cream 2 lobster tails (to add later) lemon slices as garnish also need a large crock pot and an immersible mixer
How to make:
Combine broth, clam juice, tomatoes, onion, chopped mushrooms, leek, parsley, dill and Old Bay. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or on high for 4-5 hours. Use the immersible mixer to blend everything together into a broth. Add lobster tails, cook on high for 30-45 minutes or until the tail has turned pink and meat is fork-tender. Remove lobster tails from crockpot, add in heavy cream.
Take the meat out of the the lobster tails with a fork, add to the soup. Serve with a lemon slice for garnish!
My personal notes:
Use low sodium chicken broth. It could also stand for a bit more cream. Heavy cream is the same as heavy whipping cream, which confused me when I was in the store.
After the first step, you're going to look into the crockpot and say, "Wow, that's a lot of mushrooms." Don't worry, they blend up nicely.
Also, here is what a leek looks like- I had to ask two kindly older ladies to help me find one in the grocery store (they weren't labeled). I asked two because the first didn't know what one looked like either.
I suppose I should begin at the beginning, right? I have an awesome husband.
We've been married for three years.
We decided to start our family--but we had only three ovulation cycles to get it right, otherwise we'd have to wait another year. We're both in professional/grad school right now and we wanted our baby to be born in the summer.Everything worked out perfectly. After a fairly uneventful pregnancy, we had this pumpkin:
Mo-mo was born on Thursday June 25, 2009 at 3:23 pm.She weighed 7 pounds 14 ounces and was 21 inches long at birth.I gave birth to her when I was 40 weeks, 3 days.
Wednesday night I was having some contractions—about four an hour and they weren’t increasing in intensity yet.I tried to go to sleep around 2 a.m. and woke up to use the bathroom and maybe relax with a shower. In the bathroom I saw a bit of red spotting and the next thing I knew I was leaking, and it wasn’t stopping.I was fairly sure that my water had broken, but the bright red color kind of scared me.I woke my husband and we were checked into the hospital by 3 a.m.
I was taken into an exam room to be checked.The nurses didn’t seem to think it was very urgent—they thought that because I was a first time mother, I must be overreacting. They ushered me into a bathroom and told me to put on a gown. I told them that there was no way I could leave that bathroom unless they wanted me to drip amniotic fluid and blood all over their floor.
That made the nurses decide that yes, perhaps I was ready to be escorted to a birthing room.
This was not the labor I had in mind.I was envisioning a slow progression of contractions. I wanted to wait for the epidural and see how necessary it truly was. My husband armed with massage tools, positions to suggest, and ready to be supportive.
Sounds lovely, right? Yeah...none of that happened.Because my water had broken, I had to have an IV for the first hour. That meant no moving out of bed, no trying different positions.By 4:30 a.m., my contractions were 1-3 minutes apart, very painful, and I was only dilated to a one centimeter.
I had an amazing first nurse. The invisible doctor on call did not want to give me drugs. I call him invisible because I never saw him--the nurse just talked to him over the phone. This lovely lady convinced him because the contractions were coming SO fast that I didn’t have time to rest between them and thus rightly needed the drugs. I got the first round at 6 a.m.
The Stadol made me loopy.I could still feel the pain but it was then easy to ignore it.Between contractions I was very relaxed, almost to the point of falling asleep.The Stadol also made my mind jump from one thing to the next very fast, but I kept most of my thoughts to myself.
At one point I did apologize to my husband for waking him up. He very kindly told me not to worry about it--I did have a rather good reason to do so.
I got a second dose of Stadol after an hour and then the nurses switched.The next nurse was not very nice.I was told that the anesthesiologist would be able to see me until 7:30 a.m.This was about a half hour after the Stadol would be wearing off—not a big deal, I thought, because the second dose had almost come too fast and made me a little too out of it.Well, 7:30 came and went.When I gave in and asked for Stadol and I was told I couldn’t have it because the epidural was coming soon.
This was the WORST time of my entire labor—I kept saying “I can’t do this” and almost crying with each contraction--they were one minute apart.
After refusing to give me Stadol for awhile, I told the nurse twice that I didn’t care if the epidural was delayed, it had been delayed so long that I needed SOMETHING.She finally gave me the Stadol—and the epidural arrived five minutes later (8:30 a.m).The anesthesiologist didn’t care whatsoever that I had just received Stadol—so I have no idea why the nurse kept telling me no. I suspect secret sadism on her part. At this point I was 4 centimeters dilated.
The epidural = heaven.The numbing shot pricked a bit but I was so full of Stadol it didn’t matter, especially compared to my contractions.I had some feeling in my legs but was in no pain at all.I was able to nap for an hour, visit with the family who had come, and generally feel okay.
This was taken after the epidural. You can tell because I'm smiling, and not ripping the arm off the person who is taking the picture and using it to beat them because they are not getting me drugs.
My crappy nurse had to assist with a c-section, and my new one was AMAZING!She checked on me regularly and talked to me like I was a human.My baby had passed her meconium so the nurse hooked something into me to flush out the water and keep it moving, along with a catheter and an internal contraction monitor.It wasn’t comfortable to get any of those, but it wasn't too bad.
Around noon, I mentioned to my nurse that I was a bit uncomfortable—not bad, just had some feeling on one side of my body.The on-call doctor came in and ordered some Pitocin for me, because according to the internal contraction monitor, my contractions were not very strong.She then did an internal exam and to everyone’s surprise, I was dilated 9.5 centimeters!I’d be ready to have the baby by one!My epidural was so strong that I didn’t even feel it coming.
One o'clock came and went and the doctor was busy with another patient.The nurses were a bit worried because my baby’s heartbeat was dropping every third contraction when I was on my side.They were considering a c-section but it turned out not be necessary.The doctor came in and told me I could start pushing at 2:30.I felt kind of dumb—I didn’t have the pressure and it was difficult for me to tell when to push, but Mo-mo was out within an hour!She had a bit of help via an episiotomy and a vacuum extractor.Labor itself was surprisingly not very painful, I couldn’t feel the episiotomy or the stitches afterward.Mo-mo had to be cleaned up for a half hour after birth because of the meconium and because her umbilical cord was wrapped (very loosely) around her neck. It was so hard to wait those 30 minutes to hold her.
Mo-mo and I checked out of the hospital 23 hours later. And our lives were never again the same...
