This is how it starts.

Now that I own my house (along with my stupid mortgage company, that is) and my roommate has moved out, I have started the process(es) that need to happen before Mom moves in. Definitely the carpet in the living room needs to be replaced. Not only is it likely the original carpet in the house (built in the 70s) but former roommate's dog not so completely house trained. Originally I was thinking we'd just do that and new floor in the kitchen/dining room (original vinyl, avocado green and fake wood grain) but it occurred to me that it won't cost so much more to do the rest of the house at the same time. That thought meant I packed up everything I own in the other three rooms of the house (roommate had all the living room furniture) and stuck it in the garage. (I'm using the bedroom that will be Mom's, it's not getting new carpet as she doesn't want carpet. It has a concrete floor that will be getting refurbished and painted. Yes, I think it's going to be really cold in the winter. She says that's what throw rugs are for.)

The next thing that thought meant was considering scraping the popcorn ceilings while there is no furniture in the rooms, and flooring that is going away. THAT lasted as long as it took for me to try a spot, discover that the ceilings must have been painted at some point, so the whole getting them damp to scrape thing wasn't working. Which lead to Plan B, repainting the ceilings.

Which lasted long enough to paint the living room ceiling. After two passes and 1.5 gallons of paint, I looked at the ceilings in the other rooms and decided they weren't so bad as all that.

What happened next? I bought a new coffee maker and toaster. They're stainless steel and lime green. What could THAT possibly lead to, you might ask? Well, the lime green just doesn't go so well with the vintage mint green currently on the walls. And since I decided that means I need to paint and also change the back splash ... then I might as well finally do something about the cabinets. Which aren't totally hideous but the wood is kind of dry and also very grubby from former roommate whose personal hygiene was about on par with dog's house training. BTW, every woman I've told this story to nods immediately and understands why I have to paint. Every man but one has looked at me like I'm crazy.

I Googled for some vintage color inspiration and came up with this.

While I wish I could get me some lime/apple green counters, that won't be happening anytime soon. Also I think this is too much white, so I am going to go with white for the main part of the cupboards, turquoise for the doors. Lime green for the top part of the wall along two edges of the room, turquoise on the rest. I know Mom thinks this is too much color, but I LIKE color.

Now you would think this is enough for anyone, right? Of course not! The next thing is the bathroom that will be Mom's bathroom. We had planned to paint (it's yellow, she wants light green). I wanted to change the fixtures (light switch, etc.) and had decide on white porcelain. Simple but pretty. While shopping on eBay, I came across towel bars that are brushed nickel with white porcelain accents.

Which led me to look at the current light fixture and decide it's hideous. Which led me to buy a brushed nickel light fixture at Home Depot because my guy says he can easily install it.

White Rabbit

It's March 1st, so that's White Rabbit. 

I used to work with a lady (Kay) who had this thing with her mom. On the first day of each month, they would try to be the first one to call the other and say "White Rabbit." My other co-worker, Hipty, and I added our own twist: on the last day of the month, you want to be the first one to say Black Rabbit. On Halloween, it's Black Skeletal Rabbit. We further added that if you aren't the person who said it first, you tell the other person that they suck. I'm pretty sure it was me that added that, he beats me to the punch a lot. Even though we haven't worked together for a long time, we stay in touch and still do this frequently. I think I should call him later and see if I can win this month.

If Kay ever explained to me how this got started, I can't remember. I should Google it.

I'm back on the blog because my sister is considering starting a blog for Haven in the Hollow. Her yard is an officially sanctioned bird and wildlife refuge, and she gardens prolifically. I'm very envious of her as she lives in northern Iowa, where wonderful brightly-colored birds are native to the area and/or live there a good part of the year. She gets birds such as the indigo bunting, Baltimore orioles, humming birds and CARDINALS! We see plenty of hummingbirds when we camp in the mountains but most of the those other birds never come out here. I have heard a few reports of random cardinals in Colorado, so maybe someday... We have lots of brown birds here, such as the bazillion sparrows that visit my bird feeder.
In any case, while I was messaging with her about Blogspot, I came to my blog and realized I haven't written in almost a year. I get these bugs about it and have good intentions of blogging more regularly, then life and Facebook and Pinterest get in the way.Now I'm back and having intentions again!

A lot has happened in the past year. I managed (by the skin of my teeth - and where does THAT expression come from, anyway?) to refinance the mortgage by myself. That means that after August, my roommate will be moving out and my mom will be moving in. We're all full of plans to put in new carpet (a MUST) and paint the outside of the house as well as a couple of rooms inside. I have to get a baseboard heater installed in the room that Mom will be using, as it currently has no heat. Can I just mention that heating a house with electric baseboard heaters is perhaps the stupidest idea ever? There is no forced air and the heaters are all under windows, so guess where most of your heat goes? Unless I won the lottery, there is no way to convert to having a furnace, as there is NO duct work in the house at all.

The even bigger change for me is that the company I had worked at for 28 (holy crap!) years closed in August of last year. The accounts were sold to another print company in Boulder, and as I tease my old boss, I was sold as well. I'm of course happy to still have a job (printing is not exactly a booming industry) but it has been and continues to be a huge adjustment for me. I had been almost fully in charge of my old company for the past few years. Now I'm just doing customer service and I'm in charge of NOTHING. Apparently I have control issues. Who knew? 

Forward Motion

I finally managed to get up early enough to go for a walk this morning before I had to get ready for work. It wasn't a very long walk, but I'm inordinately proud of myself nonetheless. There are a lot of birds in the neighborhood and they were up and chatting. Loudly. I cut through on the path through the open space behind my house. There is a pond back there with quite a few ducks, who madly raced from one side to the other too get away from me as I walked around it, muttering. (The ducks, not me). There was also a heron.
Funny aside: last summer a house which backs up to the other side of the open space was for sale. The real estate sign said Lakefront Property. Seriously, it's a POND. Kids fish there and catch little sunfish, ducks swim on it and muskrats swim in it. It's a pond. I can only imagine some prospective buyer not familiar with the area getting all excited until they got into the back yard.

And sometimes you stretch.

I've been taking this yoga class for a couple of months now. It's about the only physical thing I'm doing these days. I really like the teacher, and the focus of the class, which is Wellness Yoga. I looked at a lot of different classes before I started, and I learned some things: 1) Most yoga studios (in Boulder, at least) cater to people who don't work or who don't work an 8-5 job. 2) Hot yoga sounds like exercising in Hell. 3) Most yoga classes cost way more than I want to spend.

My teacher, Heidi, doesn't spend a lot of time maneuvering us through a bunch of poses with weird names. Well, maybe she does, but she rarely mentions the names. We stretch, a lot. We do things that make muscles I've forgotten I even had hurt for two days afterward. She's Danish and has a really cute accent. She talks about activating the belly and makes it sound like "belleee."

She was gone last week and her substitute teaches in a very different way. I'm sure she's a great yoga teacher, but she assumed that we knew all those weird names, and not just in English, but Hindu, maybe? I don't know the language for sure. We didn't stretch at the beginning of the class. She didn't take time to offer alternatives for a position for people in the class with certain physical issues, like shoulder problems, because she doesn't know the people in the class. I think if she subs again, I will skip that class.

I started taking yoga because, well, I'm almost 50, I'm WAY out of shape, I like to eat food and I hate to exercise, there's heart problems in my family on both sides and diabetes on one side. I thought I'd better do SOMETHING. I'm not having any great epiphany like in Eat - Pray - Love. While I appreciate the spiritual aspect of yoga, I'm not looking to make it a religion. Which is good, because according to my daughter's older sister, if you meditate, you empty your mind and the Devil can get in. It's our standing joke: "What are you doing?" "I'm on my way to worship the Devil."

Greek-ish chicken soup and Strawberry Shortcake Cake

The other day, I had Greek chicken soup at the Sun Rose Cafe. It was really good and I thought, "I should find a recipe like this." I started a search in my go-to for all things food, footnetwork.com. I only found three recipes and none of them really had the ingredients I was looking for. I decided to try and invent my own. I have this all-purpose Greek seasoning so I figured I'd start there. During the process of trying to achieve the flavor I was looking for (which of course I can't really describe), I turned to a Google search of Greek spices. As I ran down the list of spices typically used in Greek cooking, a few things caught my eye: coriander, cumin, cinnamon. I added those and I think I'm closer to where I'm trying to be.

The Greek seasoning mix, Cavender's (I know, that doesn't sound like a Greek name to me either), is not so helpful as the label states An Ancient Greek Formula and at the end of the list of ingredients is "five other spices." Presumably the spices that make it anciently Greek.

Here's what I ended up with:

Greek-ish Chicken Soup

Ingredients
2.5 pounds boneless chicken thighs (because Bobby Flay has taught me that's where all the flavor is)
32 oz chicken stock (I started out with an extra can besides but the pot got too full)
16 oz carrot chips (because I didn't feel like chopping carrots)
3 small zucchini, sliced 
2 bell peppers (I used a green and a red for color)
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup Cavender's Greek Seasoning
1 T dried oregano
2 T cumin
1 t ground coriander
1/2 t ground cinnamon
2-3 T minced garlic (I didn't measure, kind of dumped... I like garlic)
2 T ground black pepper
salt to taste

Rinse chicken thighs, put in a crockpot with the chicken broth. Cook on low for about four hours.
Add the vegetables and the spices. Cook for an additional 2-3 hours. Add lemon juice at the end and stir.






I think it turned out really well. Of course, I'm going to have to go have that soup again at the cafe to see if I can figure out what flavor I may be missing.

I've been following thecountrycook.net because of a recipe my sister-in-law posted on FB one day. Brandie has some great recipes for comfort food, and her specialty is taking cake mixes and transforming them into these really yummy desserts. I follow her page on FB as well, and one of the things she posted this week was the recipe for Strawberry Shortcake Cake. I decided I had to make it. Strawberry shortcake always makes me think of summer, so I'm jumping the gun a little (we just had 6 inches of snow last week). Brian asked me if we were celebrating something. I replied, "No, I just want to eat this cake."

http://www.thecountrycook.net/2012/03/strawberry-shortcake-cake.html 

 

And on a completely random note, my desktop background today is Sam and Dean Winchester. Good choice, Webshots!

Still wasting time on FaceBook (really, who isn't?) but meandered my way back here by way of my cousin's blog

One Caleb a Day

Now, I may be partial since we're related but I think Caleb is possibly the cutest baby on the planet currently. Opinion subject to change if my daughter has another baby, because, you know, there's that whole grandchild thing.

Well, after a foray into Yahoo 360, which I kind of liked (except that whole thing where Yahell isn't supporting it anymore) and a brief venture onto Multiply (which I don't like so much) I decided to come back to my original blog.
I've been spending a lot of (relatively useless) time on Facebook lately ... joined because my niece is on there, discovered that a lot of the people from the theatre are on there, plus family, and keep finding more. The many, many applications are kind of a waste of time, but a lot of fun. My sister has beat me two out three of our Scrabble games, and has a high score that is nearly double mine on Word Challenge (dammit!)

Bumper stickers I saw today:

Driver carries no cash .... he's married

Leave No Billionaire Behind
Billionaires for Bush

Some things just never change. Last week I was talking to Amanda, and she told me that Patti had the day off work, so they took Kaelin to the zoo. The first thing that ran through my mind was, "Dammit, she had ALL the firsts with my daughter, now she's going to get them with my granddaughter, too?"
On the other hand, Kaelin probably won't remember this zoo trip, so there are always other times. Plus, there's just not a damn thing I can do about it anyway.
And on the plus side, Amanda referred to me as Grandma Lauri when she passed me the baby to hold. I wasn't totally sure how she was going to do that. I did take the opportuity to mention it the other day ... can't remember how I worked it into the conversation, but I told her how Sean and Nick have all their grandmas ... Grandma Jane and Grandma Gwen and Grandma Peg. Plus if we start NOW, it'll just be that way her whole life. So it must had made some sort of impression.

' "We all got a place inside us, feels like a prison," he tells her. "It's darker in some people than others, that's all. Thing is, you got to balance what's there with what's around you or you'll find yourself on a road that's got no end. Got no beginning and goes nowhere. It's just always this same thing, never grows, never changes, only gets darker and darker, like that candle blowing int eh wind. Looks real nice till the wind blows it out -- you hear what I'm saying?" ' - Charles deLint, Moonlight and Vines: Heartfires
Here's the thing ... I started a blog because I want to journal and I don't seem to be able to do it on paper. Then I got all caught up with the creation of the blog and how to get pictures into it, and it was fun. But I'm still not using it the way I wanted to, to try and get some of this stuff inside me OUT. Kinda like I want to paint, but I always have something I need to do first. I want to write poetry, but there's always something I need to do first.