Oh my HOLY HECK!

We have a breakfast potluck at work once a month.  We all take turns hosting it so no one has to bring anything more than once during the school year.  I think it's a pretty fun thing even though I usually don't eat anything --most of the time the food is heavy on carbs and low on...well, everything else except maybe fat. 

A couple months, ago, though, someone brought in a big ol' pot of Shrimp Etouffe, which is sort of like a Cajun shrimp stew.  Sort of.   It's more of a lunch or dinner thing than breakfast and I *think* it was meant to be eaten over grits or brioche or something but since those are both pretty carby, I tried it straight up...and OH MY HOLY HECK!  It was AWESOME! 

I've been meaning to try the recipe at home ever since then but I'm the only one who eats shrimp (unless it's fried...then Jess will eat it) so I've been putting it off. But today was one of the last overcast days I think we'll have before summer so I decided to go ahead and make it.

You have to use a big stock pot to fit all the ingredients and my version was sans flour for thickening (I used a tiny bit of guar gum powder instead but it was still a little more soupy than the one I tried at work)...but it is still SUPER YUMMY!  Try it!  You'll like it!  =)

Here's the link for the recipe:
http://www.grouprecipes.com/38661/shrimp-etouffee-from-emerils-real-and-rustic-cookbook.html

Yeah, I'm serving it as a stew...sooooo goooooood! 

Spring Break 2013

 

We started Spring Break with a flukey hail storm on Friday afternoon right before dismissal at school --we opened our door to watch and the hail blew right in (and right down the back of my shirt and pants.  Brrrrrr!) Our preschoolers screamed and screeched.  As you can imagine, most of them haven't ever seen anything like hail before!  It was pretty cool!

 

 

Hail storm--some of these pellets were as large as marbles!

 

 

Saturday: Jess and I went to see Oliver, a production that a friend of hers was in.  Then another friend came over to spend the night. 

 

Sunday:  I took the girls to the Renaissance Festival. They both did this trampoline thing in the picture below --Jessica thought it was a blast but her friend turned a little green.  Given the fact that Jess isn't much of an adventurer, I attribute her enjoyment of this to her gymnastics background.  She's just used to flying through the air, although I did it once a year or so ago myself and I have to admit, it IS pretty fun even though it made my stomach do flips.

 

 

 The girls got matching henna tattoos.

 

 I got one, too.  It's still wet here, though.

On Monday I ran up to my parents house to do some will stuff with them.  Nothing super exciting.  Jessica hung out at home for a while.  She started watching a marathon of Saved by the Bell on Netflix, you know.  It's hard to compete with acid-washed, pleated jeans and big hair, after all.

Tuesday was a crazy busy day of errands and doctor appointments for both Jessica and I. Gotta love those mammograms!  NOT!

On Wednesday, Jess and I went to the Desert Botanical Gardens with my sister and my nephew and Jess had gymnastics later in the day, too.

a random, but cool looking cactus.

 

 A display by artist Philip Hass.  He had 4 big sculptures (one for each season) at the Garden. This one was Winter.  Unbeknownst to me, my camera had a smudge on the lens...hence the "cloud" right dab in the center of each and every picture.  Niiiice.

One of the others.  Pretty cool, eh?

A close up of an agave --we have lots of them here in Arizona.  I always think they look so cool...the lines in the middle of leaf are an embossed image of the spines of the outer leaves.  When the plant opens, the embossed lines remain. I know I'm a dork, but I think these plants are pretty awesome looking.

One of the butterflies from the butterfly garden.

The bottom of a saguaro --not sure what happened to it, but you can see its ribs through the thick scar tissue at the base.  

 

Thursday, Jess had her first orthodontist appointment after getting her braces on.  She changed the colors of her bands from blue and purple to pink and green.  Then a friend came over and I took the girls to As You Wish where they painted some pottery.  Here's Jessie's new colors on her braces.

Friday:  A couple more friends of Jessica's came over to hang out...and then there was gymnastics again.

Saturday:  I snuck out for a quick pedicure before my sister and her daughter came over to paint their nails.  I get pedicures only about once or twice a year and really didn't feel like doing my own toes this time since I knew I'd be doing everyone else's first.  Gary got back from his trip to Vegas with some friends, too, so there was the usual mad dash cleaning marathon so he wouldn't come home to a pig sty 'cos that sucks.

Other things that happened this week:  a bit of yard work:  I took these planters that were left behind by the old owners and spray painted them, then planted some petunias and lavender in them.  This is the before shot, of course.

 

 

 ...and after.  Hopefully I will remember to water them so they don't die after all that work!

 

 ...and let's not forget the torturous job of painting our two new door and the accompanying trim and some spare baseboards, as well.  That job took something like eight hours all together and it turns out there is a very good reason why I'm not a professional painter.  I suck.  That's why.  Plus, I got more paint on me than I did on the stuff I was supposed to be painting anyway.

 

Hmmm...anything else?  Dog got a bath. Scrubbed the kitchen floor. Got in a couple 30 minute workouts on the elliptical machine.  Did lots of laundry. Caught another rat. Cleaned out the pool. Scored $60 worth of pork loin for free in an awesome trip to the grocery store.  Read a book...and I think that pretty much sums up the whole fairly mundane but super productive week! 

 

 I'm kinda glad to be going to back to work tomorrow, to be honest! I need a little break!  lol

 

 

 

Remodeling. Again.

  We moved not long after we finished the last of the remodeling projects in the old house so it's only fitting that we're back at it at the "new" one.  We did some basic stuff I posted a long time ago when we first moved in: new carpets and wood laminate, a paint job, and fairly recently, new windows and shutters. 

Now we're starting the dirty stuff... things that require dry walling and cause lots of dust.  We just replaced the back sliding glass door with a more secure regular door and we've begun the fun of re-doing the backyard (at least in part), too. 

We just had a giant pine tree cut down that was next to the house. Not only was it allowing roof rats to get into the attic, but it was also moving the block wall between our house and the neighbor's.  Unfortunately, once the tree came down, the orange trees at the other end of the yard were no longer shaded so heavily.

And here's the thing.   You can't just go exposing your citrus trees to too much sun. If you do, the tree trunk might get sunburned and that could kill your tree. So do you know what you have to do?  You have to PAINT your trees.  No, I'm not kidding.  And I have say, it's a pretty tedious job, that tree painting.  There are a whole lotta nooks and crannies on a tree trunk that make it kind of a pain to paint.  On the other hand, I can now say that I've painted a tree and I suppose the number of people in the world who can make that claim is somewhat limited.

 

We get piles and piles of oranges from our trees.  The smaller tangerines (?) are always ready right around Thanksgiving and I pick the last of the oranges around the end of February.  By this time of year, I'm pretty much begging people to please, please, please take some fruit.  Please!

 A freshly painted tree trunk.  Who knew? I was seriously considering adding swirls or something --maybe in hot pink or bright blue but I didn't know how that would affect the reflective qualities of the white paint so I held myself in check.

Two pruned and painted trees.  Ah, the joys of a (somewhat) spruced up yard.

 

 

The only other new thing happening around here is that Jessica and I started a new blog at the beginning of the year.  We're always finding projects on Pinterest to try but some of them don't turn out so great so we decided to write about the things we do.  Our goal is to try something new every week...so far we're more-or-less on track.  We try something, then write about our experience and decide whether the pin is a win or a fail in hopes of saving someone else the bother of trying something that's not really all it appears to be.  It's been pretty fun. Check it out sometime (or every week!):  http://failedpin.blogspot.com/

Cruisin'

Yes, that's right.  We went on a cruise.  It was a quickie --we drove to California to catch the ship, had one "fun day at sea" and one day in Encinada, and then returned.  Here are some of the highlights:

Our first day.  If you ever go on a cruise, find out how early you can board...we got on at 1 pm instead of 5 so there weren't many people aboard and we got a few extra hours to explore before everyone else boarded.

 Jessica on our first day.  She was excited to finally be on her first cruise! (This was our second cruise --Gary and I went on one when Jessica was three or so.)

Gary and Jess playing miniature golf.  They each got a hole in one!  I, of course, did not! I did, however, succeed in smacking the ball out of our hole entirely.  Luckily I didn't hit anyone.  Whew.  The only thing worse than my golfing skills is my bowling skills!  Sigh.

 

Gary and I while we were waiting for our tour to start.

 

...and Jessica and I doing the same!

 

The shops near the Blowhole we visited.  Apparently Encinada has one of three in the whole world.  Funnily enough, we saw one of the other ones when we went to Hawaii a while back.  Who knew?

Totally random, but Jess and I both thought this looked cool:  it's an agave (I think) that people have carved letters/names into.  The carvings scarred over leaving weird looking symbols all over the plant.

 

 

The actual blowhole. 

 

 

Jess and I messing around and taking self-portraits.  She's such a cutie with her blue and purple braces!

 

 

 

Daddy chillin' while Jess and I sat in the hot tub.

Jess and I went to a silly little class where we learned how to make towel animals.  This was Jessica's dog and (below) my elephant. 

If you ever come to our house and need a shower we'll do our best to make a towel animal for you.  You know, so you feel riiiiight at home during your visit!  lol

 

Jessica enjoying her fru-fru drink --a virgin strawberry pina colada. 

 

...and me enjoying mine.  Yes, I actually had a "real" drink.  Okay, okay. I admit it.  I asked for my usual "half the alcohol" please. 

 

 

The ice sculpture in progress. It was fun to watch and try to guess what he was carving.

 

Jessica says that one of her favorite parts of the cruise was trying every single dessert they had at dinner --and we pretty much did...there were usually 5 or 6 different kinds and the three of us tried the lot of them.  Fortunately, while they all LOOKED scrumptious (I mean really scrumptious) most of them were just so-so --pretty bland or dry or whatever.  So what would have been the equivalent to 2 dessert apiece was really less than 1 dessert each since none of us liked anything enough to have more than a bite or two!

Almost home!  We stopped to pick up Chloe on our way home --she was having a great time playing with the other dogs at the boarding place when we got her --but man she was happy to see us!  Check out that loooong tongue of hers!  I had to sit in the backseat for the rest of the ride because we couldn't coax her out of the passenger seat!  Dang dog!  =)

 



It's been a while, hasn't it?!

Well, it's been a very long while since I've posted anything, mostly thanks to my computer which wouldn't really EVER (even when brand-spankin' new) let me post pictures.  Rather than try and catch up on the stuff I've missed posting now that I CAN post again, I'm just gonna pick up with the most recent stuff.  Besides, my life is, quite frankly, pretty mundane and it would probably be pretty boring to post all the old stuff you missed!  (Not to mention the fact that (assuming you're a friend) you already know it all already.)

I don't want to spend too much time writing or trying to upload pictures in case I STILL can't upload them, so (hopefully) here is just a bit of our Christmas:

 Chloe with her favorite new toy.  It is pure awesome squeakiness! 

Jess opening up goodies from her stocking on Christmas morning.

 

A cool stocking stuffer --it's called a Cyclone something-or-other...you spin it around and the lights create cool spirograph type designs. 

Happy New Year, everyone! 

Vein Surgery

So, check out my amazing, purple leg! I had surgery on it about a month ago.  It is now perfectly normal and skin-colored again.   It wasn't "big deal" surgery --I just had a couple of veins that had failed in my right leg and they were starting to hurt pretty much every day so I finally bucked up and got them taken care of.

Here's what my leg looked like before surgery.  It's hard to get the full effect on camera, so imagine that blue vein looking even more bulgy and gnarly and you have a better idea of what it REALLY looked like! 

Two hours before the procedure I had to cover my leg in lidocaine cream and wrap it in Saran wrap. Yes, those were the actual instructions. "Wrap your leg is plastic wrap." Who knew?!

An hour before the surgery, I took a Xanex.  I was told it would probably put me to sleep during the procedure.  Unfortunately it did no such thing so I was quite awake during the whole thing. NOT HAPPY. Gary drove me to surgery (because the Xanex was SUPPOSED to make me sleepy, you know). Once there, I got all laid out on the table and prepped and everything...and then the work began.  The doctor shot me up with a numbing agent and then ran a wire into my saphenous vein from my knee to my groin, then a catheter followed that and a laser burned the vein as the doctor withdrew it..  (There were lots more numbing injections as he went along.)  Also, a very strange vibrating sort of sensation while the laser was on, too.  Oh, and let's not forget the lovely aroma of burning vein, too.  GROSS.

Then, the doctor went to work on the gnarly veins on my calf --he plucked them out like wayward eyebrow hairs.  Funnily enough, I always called that vein my "pet guinea worm" because that's what it sort of looked like to me.  So imagine my surprise when the doctor showed me the veins as he pulled them out and they really DID look like guinea worms!  Obviously, under normal circumstances the veins would be thick and blue and full of blood --when he pulled them out they were empty, having been affected by the burning procedure he had just done, so they just looked like long, skinny, white, twisted worms, which is pretty much what empty veins AND guinea worms look like anyway.

...And that was it!  They bandaged me up with some steri-strips, then gauze over that for my calf.  The dreaded thigh high support hose were next and more pressure bandages on top of that for my calf.  I had to wear the hose for 48 hours straight and when I got to take it off (at night only --I had to wear it during the day for the next 2 weeks), it looked like the first picture I posted.  Not so bad, all things considered.

This skinny thing is the support hose I had to stuff my leg into every morning for two weeks.  As you can see, it's not much bigger than my ARM.  So squeezing my leg into it was quite a feat.  Also, when we went up to Washington recently I had to wear BOTH stockings on the plane to reduce my risk of Deep Vein Thrombosis since the surgery had taken place just a few weeks prior.  Let me tell you, those plane rides were the most miserable I've endured in a long time.  Not only did the stockings make my pants too tight, but being thigh-high, they pretty much just squished everything "extra" out the top so I had a veeeerrrry interesting looking booty as I walked around the airport.  Good thing I had a big winter coat and a sweater on 'cos let me tell you --I had some seriously strange junk goin' on  in the trunk!

Oh, and by the way, the Xanex DID eventually hit. But it wasn't until nearly two hours AFTER it was supposed to that it finally stuck...and not until I was taking a walk after getting home from surgery and lunch. If you would have driven by, you would have seen me staggering down the sidewalk two blocks from home, fighting to keep my eyes open. There was a point when I seriously considered laying down on the sidewalk  but I was afraid someone might stop to try and help me rather than let me sleep, so I bravey (if a little drunkenly) soldiered on. Interestingly, by the time I made it the rest of the way around the block I had another few minutes of loopiness...and then it was out of my system and I felt completely fine.

Which leads me to wonder why on earth people take stuff like that for fun. 'Cos that was not fun.  Just sayin'.

Anyway, here’s a link to a  picture of a REAL guinea worm, just because.  Really, there's no comparison to my varicosity. A guinea worm infection is a horrible and painful thing and I hope they really do manage to eradicate it as they claim they are about to do, 'cos varicose veins are gnarly...but guinea worms?  NASTY!     http://www.healthmasters.com/sites/all/themes/hm/parasites/guinea3.jpg

 

One last thing: if you have varicose veins, I TOTALLY recommend this surgery.  But be prepared to be pretty uncomfortable for a solid two weeks afterwards.  Not miserable.  Just uncomfortable and very sore.

 

That is all. 

Miscellaneous Halloween-y PIctures

Some random Halloween-y pictures.  Two more days and we can (finally) un-decorate the house.  I am pretty tired of spiders and centipedes on my windows, to be honest.  And the dog keeps stealing the fake tarantulas, which means I keep finding little rubber legs all over the place.  And I really don't enjoy the clutter of all the small decorations, either.  I don't mean to be all bah-humbug-y but I could definitely do without this particular kind of decorating!!  Okay, enough complaining.  Here are the random pictures I promised: 

Jessica's book report --the assignment was to read a mystery book, then make a haunted house.  The doors and windows had to contain information about the characters, conclusion, and so forth, from the book.  I LOVE that her teachers make book reports fun and creative. 

Jessica and Daddy at the Corn Maze/Halloween event we went to with her Confirmation group.  Poor Daddy could barely walk due to his horrible gout, though.  We all went through the scary "haunted house" where people tried to grab you and jumped out at you.  It was a little scary but pretty fun. 

Pre-made gingerbread house kits are the way to go, but they're still a pain in the patootie to assemble.  So here's a tip that only took us, oh, a decade or more to figure out.  Assemble it with a glue gun, THEN frost.  The whole "use the frosting to assemble the house" thing is a waste of time, super messy and completely unnecessary!  No one EATS the stale candy you've used, so for crying out loud, just hot glue the thing together! If you want the effect of the frosting, fill the cracks and trace around the edges with it.  BUT FIRST USE A HOT GLUE GUN TO PUT IT TOGETHER, PEOPLE!