Ch-ch-ch-changes

  
  I totally skipped November.

  The leaves changed, the weather changed, my life changed.

  My father, bless his heart, passed away. The last thing he ever said to me was, "Where are you living now?" because he couldn't remember and quite possibly, couldn't remember me. It's a very strange thing, losing a parent. You think about it occasionally but until it becomes a reality, you never really know how you will react.

  Some days you will be fine--other days you will be a wreck. Some days I can think of my dad and smile, others I will think about him in his garden, picking string beans with my son, and I will fall apart. I was Christmas shopping the other day and thought, "What am I going to get Dad?" It was always my yearly dilemma, what to buy my father, an Archie Bunker-ish sort who was never overly excited about gifts unless you really got lucky and hit the nail on the head. One year I bought him a large, hardbound copy of a World War II book and he was truly touched, more so than I'd ever seen him Christmas morning. I felt pangs of guilt, as I had seen the book marked down, knew my dad liked war movies, and thought, "I can't think of anything else. Maybe he'll like this."

  As I looked at the racks of merchandise in the stores the other day, decorations and holiday music all around me, I thought how lucky I was to even have a dad, much less a dad for 44 years. Some people don't get to have a dad for even 1 day. Some people live their lives thinking their dads are out there but don't care about them and they never see them. This Christmas will be the first Christmas of my life that I don't have my big, strong dad out there in the world, sitting in his favorite recliner, watching college football and complaining about how commercial and expensive Christmas is.

  The world--and my life--is emptier without him.

Country Mouse & City Mouse

 So I have a thing for the city, any city, probably because I don't live there. I used to live in a city and was less than impressed, maybe because I was a young mother with no money, no family nearby, and few friends. I was too busy working a crappy job for $7 an hour, paying for gas with dimes and nickels, and shuttling my baby back and forth to daycare, to enjoy anything about the city. Back then, it was just scary.

 I live in the country now, a move which was probably a knee-jerk reaction to being fed up with the city way back when. I was so sick of the traffic, the endless circling around the parking lot just looking for a spot so I could run in for a gallon of milk, and the lack of human connection. After several years (8 to be exact) of being out here in the middle of nowhere though, I have realized that the whole "lack of connection" isn't a city thing, it's just a ME thing. I suck at making friends and honestly, I just don't like many people. Now dogs...I have plenty of dog friends. I am very popular with the doggie set.

 The pendulum has swung the other way and I miss the city again. I miss delivery and food options, concerts and independent films. I miss the excitement of being somewhere with a collective energy. I escape to the city whenever I can convince my long-suffering husband to take me and then I fantasize about moving there to some fantastic city-view apartment (which never has cockroaches), eating at famous restaurants (with some magical money that spits out of the corner ATM) and commuting to my dream job, where I help thousands of people each day live spectacular lives (never mind that I can't even get an interview with my non-profit of choice.) The realities of living there never really enter the picture.

 Maybe I'm not just bad at making friends, I'm just bad at reality. Huh. There's a theory.

A Day in the Plush Life

7 a.m.: Hubby leaves for work after rattling the dog leashes, rustling his lunch bag I left for him in the fridge and clomping around in the noisiest Sketcher shoes known to mankind. They have rubber soles! How can they be so loud?

8 a.m.: The phone rings and I stumble out of bed, rousing the sleeping dogs. James' tail wags so hard he knocks over my nighttime glass of water, sending a wave onto the floor. In my haze, I think, "Answer the phone? Clean the water off the floor?" and manage to make it to the phone in time to hear the caller slam the phone down in my ear. I grab paper towels and head for the carpet.

8:12 a.m.: The dogs whine at me as I attempt to put my sneakers on the correct feet and follow me around as I pull on a dirty polo shirt and finger comb my hair back into a ponytail. Huge sunglasses are my savior in the morning.

8:45 a.m.: James sees his archenemy, a 12 pound Toto-looking terrier named Mutt, on our walk and attempts to "retrieve" him for me. I neither want nor need a limp, crushed terrier at my feet, so I do my one-arm workout which I call "The James Maneuver"--pull like hell and hope the collar doesn't break.

9 a.m.: Back at home to feed and water all animals (dogs, lizard, and wild critters...presumably birds, but the fattest chipmunks in the county eat everything I put out, leaving the birds to starve and/or point out what fatasses the chipmunks are.)

9:15 a.m.: Coffee and Facebook time, which reminds me how unexciting my life is compared to everyone elses.

10 a.m.: Clean the house. Periodic time outs for email and wallowing in self pity.

Noon: Make lentil soup in pathetic attempt to erase the memory of the 3 doughnuts I ate yesterday and the pile of pizza I scarfed down during "The Walking Dead" premiere.

1 p.m.: Taste soup. Needs something. More doughnuts, maybe.

2 p.m:. James is again whining to go out. His sister, Jessie, gives him the stink eye because she is comfortable on her giant green pillow which resembles a lily pad. She reluctantly gets up and stands by the door.

2:08 p.m.: James sees several chipmunks dart across the road in front of him and contemplates taking them out with one chomp. He sees how fat they are and reconsiders, obviously not wanting to take advantage of the situation. That would just be showing off.

3 p.m.: I make cookies to surprise my boys. I check them at the 8 minute mark--raw. I check them at the 10 minute mark--barely beige. I check them at the 12 minute mark--incinerated. Pinche oven!

4 p.m.: Call Mom. We talk about the family, the weather, and how she only has 1 Oreo left in the package. I convince her to try Halloween Oreos (the best) and then silently wonder, "How can anyone leave just 1 Oreo in the package? Wouldn't you plow through the bag, see there was only 1 left and then just eat it?" Clearly my mother's sense of self control did not get passed down to me.

5 p.m.: James again flips out, whining like I am a negligent mother who has NEVER taken him out before. I can't decide if he has the bladder the size of a nickel or is just a crotchety old dog who enjoys dragging me around the block for sport.

6 p.m.: Dinnertime. God, lentils are boring.

7:30 p.m.:  "Wheel of Fortune"! Time to feel smart again after feeling like the dumbest pile of crap during "Jeopardy".

8 p.m.: The dogs are asleep after jockeying for position on the couch. James claimed shotgun and velcroed himself to my side. After Jessie gave him sad puppy eyes for about 5 minutes and made this weird whining/growl hybrid noise which I took to mean, "You dragged me outside 3 times today when I was comfortable," James moved to the other side of the couch and Jessie stole my blanket and curled up next to my very warm hip.

Tomorrow will surely be more of the same.

My Bar

 I have always thought that a home should have a proper bar.

 I am a gin girl. I love it. A gin and tonic is probably the most perfect drink ever created. Whenever I go out and someone offers me a glass of wine, I always think to myself that wine is for people who don't know how to make a proper cocktail.

 I have everything here that I need, including my beloved vintage bar ware--the crazy tray, my 1930's swizzle sticks, my husband's old embarrassing drunk hound dog lamp....it gives me immense pleasure to open my little bar doors.

Swiffer? I hardly know her!

 Okay. I am obsessed with my Swiffer Wet Jet.

 I don't know what happened but this former non-mopper is now a hardcore Swiffering fool (and yes, I just made a verb: to swiffer.) I admit, I had an uneasy set-up introduction to this no-assembly-required item. I mean, "no assembly required" pretty much suggests that you can just take this puppy out of the box, slap a disposable cleaning pad on the end of it, and get mopping. I guess I'm at the lower end of the gene pool, because I was surprised that there was a compartment for batteries (4 AA), a compartment for Swiffer cleaner fluid that was like some weird Land of the Lost crystal matrix table, and a telescoping handle. Once I let my nightly cocktail wear off and scraped up enough IQ points to assemble everything correctly (i.e. insert the batteries correctly behind the fluid compartment and latching its door so that they didn't fly out and take out an eye), I got to work.

 The Swiffer Wet Jet is like my favorite new toy. It zips around corners with its swivel head, has a little scrubber pad to get rid of stubborn goop, and never needs to go near a bucket. It just sprays the cleaner on your floor and you mop. Throw out the dirty pad. Voila! I feel a little guilty about those disposable mop pads, so sometimes I use a washable chamois-type cloth and then throw that in the laundry. This would be a good cost-cutting measure as well as an eco-friendly one, since these disposables are an expense (about $7 for 12.) I'm also not 100% in love with all the scents of the Swiffer Wet Jet fluid, one of which was "Open Window"--open window where? at the Coty eau de toilette factory?--but they are mostly pleasant and are available for wood floors or in multi purpose formula for other flooring.

 I can't even tell you how addictive this thing is, though. You will crave the meditative pleasures of spraying and cleaning your floor and seeing all the junk that gets stuck to the pad. It's lightweight, not drippy or messy and gets the job done. It has changed my cleaning routine, which isn't saying much, since I didn't really have a cleaning routine, but hey...everyone needs that new backpack to get excited about school...or a new haircut to help feel great about a new job...or in my case, a new nifty mop that makes me excited about turning over a new leaf in a new home.

The Half-Assed Housekeeper

 It's possible that I'm the worst housekeeper in the country, except maybe those people on Hoarders. My family kept things neat and somewhat tidy, but no one was frantically scrubbing floors or bleaching every surface. In fact, when we'd walk home from school and find my mom vacuuming or dusting the living room, we'd ask, "Are we having company?" She'd give us all a dirty look and shoo us away while she finished her cleaning.

 When I first lived on my own, I had a bad habit of letting dishes pile up and I'd vacuum every new moon or so when I wasn't busy living my working single girl life. When I was older and got married, my housekeeping skills never really improved. Sure, I owned a mop by then, but I still wasn't obsessing about whether or not I could see my own reflection in the linoleum or whether my glasses had water spots. It wasn't until I had moved on to Husband #2 that I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. My husband went to visit his mother and she said he needed his shirt ironed. He said I had already done it and she called me--called me!--and told me in so many words that I had done a crappy job and that I didn't know what I was doing. After that, I noticed I didn't measure up in many ways: my laundry didn't smell as good as hers, my floors weren't as clean as hers, my kitchen wasn't spotless like hers.

 Still, the cleanest my subsequent homes got were when I was moving out and needed my security deposit back. It wasn't until very recently, when we moved out of our old house and into this one, that I realized I had a condition my family calls House Blindness--we just don't see mess. We're so used to seeing the ignored stack of mail on the dining table that it seems normal. We only look around at eye level, so we don't notice the colony of spiderwebs in the corner. I just don't care that my fitted sheets are sort of wadded up into blobs in the linen closet instead of folded like American flags.

 So I am trying something new in this house: I am actually trying to keep it as clean as possible...well, at least for me. It's sort of my dirty little secret that I'm a dirty little housekeeper. Now I try to make sure I run the dishwasher while I Swiffer the floor each night and I try to actually pick things up to clean under them. I throw out the mail instead of thinking I'm actually going to read it some day. I still have a problem with ironing, but really, who irons nowadays? I'll also never have Martha Stewart-esque folded sheets in my linen closet, but as long as my mother-in-law doesn't look in there, I think I'm okay.

Homemade Stromboli

 Honestly, I can't think of anything that isn't improved by wrapping it in some sort of dough--I mean, pot pies, calzones, turnovers? Come on! Heaven!

 So I was baking a chocolate oatmeal cake the other day, enjoying the breath of cool Fall air, and I thought, "The oven is on anyway....what else can I bake?" I looked in the fridge and had a few leftovers lurking about: a quarter of a package of veggie meat crumbles, a half can of diced tomatoes, an end of mozzarella, a handful of sweet peppers that were on their way out. Seemed like dinner had made itself.

 Stromboli really couldn't be easier, as it just requires a batch of pizza dough (pre-made or homemade) and whatever you want to use as your filling. Everyone I know buys their dough (I hear Trader Joe's makes a fine dough) but I'm cheap and make my own. I use whole wheat flour and follow the recipe from The Tightwad Gazette (recipe found below), which uses a food processor instead of kneading. I don't have a food processor and I quite enjoy the meditative process of kneading dough, so I just do it by hand and call it a day. After the dough has risen, I divide the dough into pieces (4-6, depending of how many teenage boys you have coming to dinner), roll into balls and pat them out into circles. Put in your cooked filling of choice on one side of the dough, fold over and crimp the edges, then bake for 15-20 min. in a 425 degree oven until golden brown.

 Accept the inevitable compliments graciously.

Easy Pizza Dough:
1 T. yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 c. warm water
 Dissolve yeast and sugar in the water water and let sit for 5 minutes until bubbly.

 Mix 2 c. of flour, a 1/2 tsp. of salt, and a T. of oil in large bowl or food processor. Add yeast mixture and mix, adding enough warm water (up to about a 1/2 c.) to form a dough. In the food processor, turn the dough about 25 times--by hand, knead for 2-3 minutes. Put in greased bowl, cover and set in a warm place to let rise for at least 10 minutes before using in your recipe.

I Drank My Millions

  My sister always tells me that she firmly believes that if my husband and I stopped going out for coffee, we'd be millionaires. We do tend to drink a lot of coffee, and I will confess that we used to spend gobs of money at Starbucks (a.k.a. FiveBucks) and Coffee Bean, but a few months ago we started hitting the corner 7-11 for an afternoon brew...and occasionally an evening one, too.

 I rationalized that a coffee there only cost a buck (we have a local promotional card) so really, we were only spending $2 each time we went, and heck! one Starbucks coffee was at least $4. By the time we got our lattes (and usually a nosh to accompany them) we spent about $12-15. At 7-11, which surprisingly has decent coffee and not the useless warm brown water I remember from my experience there years ago, we'd spend much less. I told my sister to leave me alone (not really) and continued my coffee habit, which eventually made its way into my husband's text lingo: "Need a 711! Pick you up in 5." I figured that was a coffee emergency.

 I think I realized the depth of my addiction when I walked into the store one time and the girl at the counter said, "There you are! I made fresh decaf for you!" Maybe my sister was right. Maybe I needed to reevaluate my need to constantly run out of the house and buy something, even if it was just a dollar. Maybe it wasn't the coffee, maybe I just didn't want to be home. Huh. Now we were getting somewhere. However, "somewhere" is not usually a place I want to be, as that requires thought and introspection and soul-searching. No thanks. I prefer fluff and fun. Thinking too much hurts my brain.

 So now I'm in a new place, a place I'm quite happy in, and I'm not desperate to leave all the time. Now I just brew my Cuban coffee in the morning and take it out to the deck and listen to the birds and feed the pair of chipmunks that live under the house. (I've named them Klump 1 and Klump 2, because these guys will eat everything that's not nailed down!) I'll make my coffee at home, my sister will be happy that I will be a millionaire, and 7-11 will make less money.

The New 'Hood

 I thought you might want to see where we landed!

 This is the view in our new neighborhood, as I walked the dogs on a clear day. "Walked the dogs" is purely a technical term here, as my Labs have 2 speeds: drag and dead-stop. There are plenty of new and exciting smells for them to explore here, one of which we discovered early one morning as I stumbled up to the street in my sweatpants to walk them and I stepped in a gigantic pile of bear poop. Yup, you read that right. Bear poop.

 We traded meth-head neighbors for bears, but hey...at least the bears take care of their kids, don't steal my neighbor's tools, and don't have the cops visiting them every other day. Granted, they both go through my trash, but I'll still take the bears any day.

Quick Meal: Whole Wheat Penne with Red Pepper Vodka Sauce

 We finally had the refrigerator delivered, which means I could shop for real food, the kind of food that wouldn't be found in a bomb shelter. Oh perishables, how I missed you! It's going to be a very long time before I want to bring home any type of pre-made meal again that is wrapped in paper, has a handle or comes with its own drink.

 For our inaugural homemade meal in the new house, I made this pasta and served it with crusty bread and a simple romaine salad with homemade ranch dressing....and you know when I say "homemade" I mean I mixed up a package of Hidden Valley Farms ranch dressing mix. Yes, I know Martha Stewart would say I should mix my own with my supply of buttermilk (which I have never bought, ever) and herbs growing on the windowsill, but seriously? The only thing I've ever successfully grown is a sunflower, and that was completely by accident because I swept all the excess sunflower seeds the squirrels knocked over off the deck. The rain and sun did the rest.

Whole Wheat Penne with Red Pepper Vodka Sauce
 Boil pasta according to package directions. While that boils, saute 1/2 diced onion and 3 cloves of minced garlic in 1 tsp. oil and 1 T. butter. Once translucent, turn heat to medium and add 1 can (about 14 ounces) of crushed tomatoes and 1/2 tsp. of crushed red pepper flakes (use 1/4 tsp. if you're wimpy, 1 tsp. if you're daring), sea salt to taste and a few dashes of fresh black pepper. Add a 1/4 c. of vodka and 1/2 c. of half and half and simmer for a few minutes before adding the crowning glory--a few heaping T. of fresh Parmesan. Serve over drained pasta and get comfortable for the happy carb coma which follows.

Product Review...Eureka "The Boss" Power Plus Vacuum

 Whew. That's a long title, not just for a blog post but for a vacuum cleaner.

  A few years ago, before Dyson-mania took over the world and introduced "cyclonic action" into everyone's lexicon, I splurged and bought some fancy-pants Hoover vacuum with 3(count them, 3!) reusable filters and a supposedly awesome pet brush feature that was designed to eliminate all evidence of the pair of Black Labs that run my household, and whose sole purposes in life are to shed and steal my bed covers. The pet brush sucker-upper attachment never really impressed me but dang, that thing picked up everything in its path and then some! So it was a truly mournful day when my Hoover decided that it's molded plastic casing really didn't need to stay in one piece and just sort of fell apart, roller brush over there, wheels over here. After many layers of duct tape and a few years later, it finally just sort of sighed and decided that its vacuuming days were over.

 I didn't want to get rid of my Hoover, but it went to the curb and I went to Wal-Mart to find its successor. Considering I now lived in a place with mostly hardwood floors and a few area rugs, I figured I could get by with a cheaper, less hearty vacuum. I found a few under $100 and being an intelligent, Consumer Reports kind of girl, I immediately ignored all the information on the signs and went for the one that had the cutest color combination. Tah dah! The Eureka "The Boss" Power Plus vacuum! I bought it, brought it home and assembled it (I lie....my kid helped me assemble it because I stink at following instructions) and went to attack the blobs of Black Lab fur stuck to my red area rug.

 The pros: this vacuum makes an impressive amount of noise, enough to make one of your dogs run for their life and hide under the one piece of furniture that will provide her the least amount of protection: in this case, the coffee table. This may just be my experience though and your dog may have more intelligence than my less-than-genius Lab.

  The cons: this vacuum couldn't pick up a hooker in Amsterdam, never mind a dust bunny. Pet fur will congregate and laugh at you as you try to run over it, again and again, in hopes that maybe you just aimed wrong the first time. Dirt scurries under the roller brush and sprays onto your shoes. Any wayward pebble, piece of Lego, or God forbid, something metal like a paperclip will clang around in your Eureka and sound like a grenade in a foxhole. The power cord is woefully short and the plug will invariably get tugged out of the electrical outlet, whip around the corner and lay at your feet next to the fur blobs. Oh, and in case you're still trying to get this thing to perform, don't bother leaning it back to get under a chair or sofa, because once you lean it back, the canister pushes down on the power button, shutting the damn thing off.

 I can't for the life of me figure out why this vacuum is called The Boss, let alone why Eureka tacked on the clearly misleading "Power Plus" moniker. The best use of this machine is as a dog deterrent to my bedroom, where I park it in the doorway to scare off Miss Genius. Lesson learned: cheap vacuums suck. Or don't, as the case may be.

No fridge, no shirt, no service

 We have moved into the new house. There is a mountain of cardboard boxes behind me as I type and I still haven't found my comb. You can imagine what my hair looks like.

 When we arrived on Thursday in the U-Haul, we jumped out of the truck with the new house keys and excitedly unlocked the door. Everything was clean, spacious, lovely!--then we looked at the kitchen and realized there was no refrigerator. Say what? Now, we have a fridge at our old place and technically could have shrugged and said, "Oh well. Let's go get our old one," but here's the real story:

 When we moved into that house, it came furnished. At first we were thrilled, not having much furniture and not having money for new appliances. Months later, we realized the fridge was making a sound a little like a garbage truck and was leaking enough water to support a small family of ducks. Still, we limped along until we had the money to buy a new one. Armed with a limited amount of cash, we set out for the Big 3 (Sears, Lowe's and Home Depot) and found a modest unit on sale and set up delivery. We went home, measured, and realized it wouldn't even fit through the front door. We measured again. It wouldn't even fit through the front door even if we removed the door as well as the doors of the refrigerator! So back to the store we went, to buy a smaller utilitarian unit that boasted the following bells and whistles: a shelf, a lightbulb, and enough cubic feet to properly store and chill a gallon of milk, a week's worth of yogurt and enough produce to rot by the end of the week, reminding me that I'm a terrible household manager who doesn't feed her family enough salad.

 Not wanting to go through the whole removal of house and appliance doors again, plus navigating up and down a set of stairs to get the fridge out of the old house and into the new, we now have to wait a week for the landlord to deliver his old fridge (which he didn't think we'd need) to this house. In the meantime, I have a cooler which holds a head of lettuce for my bearded dragon, 3 Coke Zero's, a fistful of cheese slices, and a tub of Earth Balance butter. I can say with a new-found authority that no, you cannot feed your family without a fridge. Don't even try to convince me that pasta and canned soup is adequate or that plenty of people in the world live without refrigeration. I miss Greek yogurt, chilled almond milk and Morningstar Farms veggie sausage! 5 days and counting...

8/28: Hey, we're moving on up!

 I guess if you put things out into the Universe, the Universe will then reward you! Or in my case, if you complain long enough, your family gets sick of listening to you and they decide that yes indeed, it's time to move!

 This week, I get to load all of my crap into a U-Haul and navigate the wonky, crooked steps down into my new home. It's twice as big as this house, with actual closets (I have learned that when you buy a house that was built during the Great Depression, you should be prepared for all the charm of a house with absolutely no conveniences.) I am hoping that this new adventure will transform me into the person I should be: a master chef! Homemaker extraordinaire! Mother and wife of the year! :::snort:::

 Pictures on Thursday of the new abode.