Monday, December 07, 2009
Since you have been such loyal readers
Tiger and I have been dating for a while. Oh, and sexting. Sorry everyone. Now I would like some privacy, except for paid interviews.
PS I turned in my last paper late last night. When I woke up this morning I was confused- I had NO idea what to do today! Then I remembered that there is giant pile of laundry downstairs and I think we might be running out of toilet paper and things like that. But... yay! I am done! Whew! Time to go play with Lauren, I think she remembers me!
PPS I heard a rumor that Christmas is coming up soon. Is there still time to order stuff online? Hope so!
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
10 minute Banana Cream Pie!
1 graham cracker crust
1 c. water with 1 tbsp. lemon juice
3 bananas
1 box instant vanilla pudding mix
1 1/2 c. milk
1/2 c. sour cream
4 oz (1/2 a package) cream cheese
1 sm. pkg. Cool Whip
Slice bananas into lemon water - be sure bananas are coated with lemon water; drain well. Mix together milk, sour cream and pudding mix. Gently fold bananas into pudding mixture. Put bananas and pudding in crumb crust.
Beat cream cheese until smooth; mix into Cool Whip and put over pudding mix. Chill.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Done and done
*This is new to me, in my limited scholarly experience usually the research paper is the only product of the research project. For all of my classes now, we write the paper and then we write another paper reflecting on how we feel about the project, what we learned and how we will apply that to future projects. And the reflective paper is worth MORE points than the research paper so you can't just screw around!
I had to invent a lot for my reflective essay because mainly I am feeling like I am relieved the stupid thing is over and I learned that I still hate group projects after all these years and in the future I will try to avoid them. Don't tell!
The hardest thing about wrapping all this up was avoiding playing with Lauren all day today. She was SO funny. This morning she did this:
Lauren: Good morning! Am I going to school today?
Me: Nope! Today is Monday! So you get to stay with Mommy!
Lauren: What are we going to do?
Me: Well, I have a lot of work today, so you get to watch some TV!
Lauren: (so excited) I DO?!?
Me: Yes!
Lauren: Can I watch Dora?
Me: (mistake) You can watch whatever you want!
Lauren: (2 second pause) Can I watch SPONGEBOB?! (cracking herself up, so pleased)
Me: You got me! NO! Not Spongebob! Remember? Not until you are 10! (laughing too)
Lauren: How about when I am FOUR?
Me: Well, maybe, but today you are only THREE.
Lauren: OH yeah! I'm three! (still cracking herself up)
I don't really have consistent TV rules. She normally gets to watch 1 hour a day, so either Sesame Street or 2 little shows. (Unless I have homework and then it is a free for all!) We DVR a lot of shows and she likes me to read her the episode description so she can decide if it is worthy or not. I also like DVRing stuff because I can fast forward if there are commercials. She gets hysterical over wanting different toys and unless it is on PBS every show is half commercials now! I also arbitrarily disallow shows if I decide don't like them. Spongebob is obviously not OK, for many reasons but the main one is that I hate it. I also don't let her watch Curious George which seems harmless enough but I get so mad every time I watch it (Goddamn it will someone just put George in his crate already!)
Another funny thing she said today was this: "Mommy! My little toes smell YUCKY! Smell them! They need a bath! With bubbles!" Her little toes did not stink at all, she had an objective- she wanted a bubble bath in the middle of the day! To which I say, why not?
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving!
First Thanksgiving

Second

Third

Fourth

We have so much to be thankful for this year, and lots to look forward to next year. Hope everyone has safe travels and a very good meal with loved ones!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Flooring update
Here are the final contenders on the flooring project:

So when this is over, we will have the tile in the upstairs hallway, bathroom, and office. The bamboo (dark brown) will be in the kitchen and dining room, and the carpet will be in the downstairs bedroom, living rooms and on the stairs. The upstairs bedrooms will be that old oak that we will refinish in a natural finish.
Here is all the bullshit we are replacing. Look how every single room has a different floor! I will be so glad when it is all gone.
vinyl, linoleum
three kinds of carpet and some vinyl
laminate
Mike is doing everything himself except laying the carpet. (I hear that is for pros!) We are also hiring a company to build our fence- we are getting a privacy fence outside so Lauren can play outside without 1) running away 2) getting mauled by the stray dogs that roam around here. Oh! I almost forgot the rest! We are getting new blinds downstairs and putting up some crown moulding in the kitchen. And repainting most of the walls a creamy off-white with bright white woodwork (suck it colorsplash, I am so sick of these wild walls!) And... that should just about take care of every bit of my savings account! I held onto it for a year in case of an emergency, but now I am starting to get paranoid that we actually will have one and I won't ever get to spend my money on something fun! So, here goes!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Writers block.
Part of the problem is that I cherry picked the easy topics to do first, and the other problem is that I used up all my good ideas already. But I HAVE to get this done by tonight, so I need to get something written down. Even something terrible will get partial credit.
There is a pregnant girl in my classes. She is due a couple of months ahead of me and she is ADORABLE. Shiny hair, peaches and cream skin, cute little basketball under her shirt, excited, eating apples and cheese all day in class. I love her and I am a little jealous of her! We were chatting in the bathroom the other day and I looked at us in the mirror. Man, what a contrast. There she was looking like pretty pregnancy calendar girl and there I was looking like I just escaped from somewhere. Somewhere haggard! My skin is bad, my hair is dry and obviously patchy (on top of everything else my hair is falling out in handfuls every day) and my eyes look like they have been removed and replaced by new versions slightly too small for their sockets. I was about to start singing "One of these things is not like the other...."
I feel guilty sometimes about how much I really don't like being pregnant. I mean, that isn't my fault, is it? I feel how I feel and most of the negativity comes directly from how sick I am physically. If this was a peaches and cream pregnancy like my classmate's I would totally be writing poetry about the experience instead of counting down the days until it's over! (177) Before Lauren, it always shocked me to hear people complain about pregnancy and half the time I wanted to slap them, (especially during the years that I would have sold my grandma to be in their shoes.) So I am trying to keep the bitching to a minimum in real life. Some bitching might happen on my blog but only by accident but you will just have to forgive me for that. You will also need to forgive me if I let it slip that I would do just about anything for an Advil right now and please... just pretend not to hear me if I accidentally say out loud sometime how much beer I plan to drink next summer.
Enough about pregnancy- let's talk about babies. Cause, if things keep going how they are going, I am going to have one in the spring! It breaks my heart a little just thinking about it! I am starting to get really excited about little feet and little diapers. Mike taught Lauren to climb on my lap and hug me and say, "It's ALL worth it Mommy!" She doesn't know why but she knows it makes me happy so she does that once a day or so!
I just decided to write one of my papers about Harry Potter. There was a recent copyright case that was on our list involving JK Rowling so I am switching to that topic. Might as well bullshit about something I know and love! K, writers block over for now. Thanks for the break.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Sneaky little update!
My laptop is gone forever I fear, so I am still using this borrowed one and the touchpad on it is so goddamn sensitive that if my hand ventures NEAR it the cursor jumps all over the screen, switches documents, selects all and then erases, and other mischief. I would throw it if I hadn't already played out that move. And yes, I do know that there are ways to adjust the touchpad sensitivity but I am a very busy person, see. I don't have time for that nonsense. Plus I prefer to bitch about something for days rather than spend 5 minutes learning how to fix it.
In other news, we have finally come up with the plan for how to deal with our flooring problem. If I didn't mention this before, we have nine different types of flooring in this house and it all flows together OK but definitely gives off the feeling that whoever remodeled the house just slapped down whatever was on sale the week they did each room. So we have a weird mixture of linoleum, nice pergo, plastic laminate, 3 kinds of carpet, old oak, and several types of tile. I just recounted and it is actually ten types of flooring. How exciting, we are in the double digits! It drives me crazy.
We have had multiple floor guys over and everyone is flummoxed on how to deal with the problem. The only floor we really want to keep is the old oak in the bedrooms, which is impossible to match and will not be able to be level with the hallway in any case without major demolitions and replacing things like subfloors that should probably stay put. We have several bids on the job and I honestly think people hate this job so much that they are bidding it way high. Like, they don't want to do it too bad, but if I paid ridiculous they would consider it. So, after a year of batting this back and forth I think we finally agreed on a plan and even settled on the flooring. It's going to be a pretty combination, very warm! Bamboo, carpet, and tile, and we are refinishing the oak in bedrooms. And when we are done there will be only four main types of floor in the house. Much better!
See, this is what happens when I can't think about food. I need to focus on things other than schoolwork while I study and normally I fixate on bad food and drink choices. Since I am too sick to think about food and drinking is off the menu too I am all of a sudden really productive on deciding about the house projects.
Speaking of- I had a Dr. appointment this week and all seems to be well. They didn't scan me this month because he said he could tell by feeling that the big tumor isn't growing. Ok by me! We will check on it again during the big ultrasound in 6 weeks. And I am still losing weight so they gave me a new anti-nausea drug and I have to drink weightlifter shakes three times a day. The new anti-nausea doesn't work on my barfing but it makes me tired so I have been sleeping great! And the shakes are disgusting but I am being a good girl and drinking them. Hooray for chocolate barf!
This was longer than I intended it to be- sorry about that!
