The Miscellanea Emporium

A change in direction

2012-10-25T14:56:21Z

No, I don't post. Very few of you post anymore, either.

But after AoIR, I find myself drawn to more long-form writing again. I think, though, that it's time for me to move on from doing that writing in this space. Any writing that needs screening is happening the old-fashioned pen-and-paper way anyway.

And so I present "at the fulcrum".

I'll still read, of course, but probably only a couple of times a week, which is about the pace that I've been at to be honest - there's hardly ever a full screen's worth of new material in a day, anyway.

It's July so it must be spring in Buffalo

2012-07-24T15:45:07Z

We have an explosion of baby animals!

Yesterday morning I spied a fledgling robin hopping around between our house and the neighbor's.
Yesterday afternoon I heard a very suspicious peeping racket coming from the cherry tree. And I had seen a male cardinal around a lot lately, hectoring the cat through the living room window. About 30 seconds of looking and I found the nest. I have since seen (and been yelled at by) both papa and mama cardinal but the nest is up too high and too wedged into the branches to see the babies.
This morning I saw a baby bunny, probably about two-hands-ful sized, hopping around between the houses. I should really say that VIOLET saw the bunny and alerted me to its presence. I was pretty sure there was a rabbit warren around somewhere because I knew we had a mated pair of bunnies around and where there's a boy bunny and a girl bunny, I feel pretty confident that there will be baby bunnies.

You are smarter than I am at rhymes, I'm sure of it.

2012-06-26T15:18:42Z

So here's the deal. I'm buying laundry baskets as baby/big sibling presents. These baskets are explicitly NOT TO BE USED FOR LAUNDRY. They are for all the OTHER things that kids do with laundry baskets. To that end, I plan to pen a little poem inside each basket. Here's what I have so far, and I'd love suggestions. Stanzas are unlimited, I suppose, because I can mix and match them depending on the kid.

Read in it, sneeze in it,
Sail the wild blue seas in it.

Laugh in it, cry in it,
Maybe bake a pie in it.

Animals in it, friends in it,
The fun, it never ends in it.

Nap in it, flip in it,
Take a crazy trip in it.

What you do is up to you,
But, no matter what,
DON'T LET YOUR PARENTS PUT YOUR LAUNDRY IN IT!

Here, have some bullet points.

2012-06-25T18:03:07Z

I went and got sucked into Pinterest.
TRex is now officially a third grader.
And a crazy toothless softball player.
- The time elapsed between those two pictures was approximately 12 hours. The giant hole in her mouth was not there in the first picture. That's right, she marked the last day of 2nd grade by finally losing that last front tooth.
We have a new niece who we'll get to go see in a couple of weeks.
The X-Files are kind of hilariously dated nearly 20 years later.
Someone please explain to me how it got to be 2 pm already?

[FBxPost] And cooler heads prevailed. Thankfully.

2012-06-08T16:38:59Z

I gotta say... I'm happy that I am generally surrounded by sensible people. Two examples, both from the kiddo's softball game Wednesday evening.

Example The First: Boneheaded Child Does Not Scare The Entire Park Or Get Himself Arrested
Kid. Toy gun. Not just any toy gun. Black toy gun with tiny orange tip so maybe from close up you can't tell it's real. But from far away? Black gun. That he was stuffing down the back of his pants. Good call, bozo.
Nobody freaked. Really. The peanut gallery, I mean, the row of softball moms who always sit together during games, discussed how stupid he was being and J commented that she was kind of sorry that she didn't have her badge on her so she couldn't scare the crap out of him. And that was the end of it.

Example The Second: Older Siblings Misplace Younger Sibling, Younger Sibling Safely Returned to Parents
In the fourth inning or so, a toddler wandered onto the field. All of our team's younger siblings (we have 3 of the approximate same age as the wandering toddler) were accounted for. Matthew collected up said wandering toddler and walked him back towards the playground. Eventually he was claimed by his older sisters (roughly 9 and 6) who then walked him over to the t-ball field where the parent was. I got a nine-year-old dissertation on this family from A (whose sister E is on the Rebels and sister I is on the t-ball team).
Again. Nobody freaked.

in which I prove that I am alive

2012-05-13T22:51:44Z

Mothers' Day. Went out last night with 8 other gals while M took TRex out to dinner. Kiddo had religious school this morning, then we went out to lunch and then to the nursery to get our plants. And then... many hours in the garden.

In the veggie patch: sugar snaps, brussels spouts, cherry tomatoes, butternut squash, zucchini, cucumbers, dill, rosemary, sage, oregano, and thyme (all the herbs but the dill are holdovers from last year). (ETA: And the garlic. I forget about the garlic.)
In TRex's garden: petunias, marigolds, lobelia. She has sandwort and a dianthus in there, too.
In "my" garden: petunias, marigolds, lobelia, and a purple blooming perennial that I can't remember the name of.
In the rest of the backyard: a bleeding heart, some flowering groundcover that I can't remember the name of. (ETA: and some basil near the mint; trying to prove my theory that the problem I have with basil is just that it gets scorched in the really-extra-full-sun of the veggie patch,)
In the ~~weed patch~~ garden behind the garage: some periwinkle.
In the front yard we took out the sad-looking holly bush and put in morning glories.

And now we're all tired. The kiddo was a BIG help - there's no way we could have gotten all of that planting done this afternoon without three sets of hands working on it.

Other things. Softball is back! They've had 3 practices and the league parade was yesterday.

It looks like we're going to get really lucky and they're not going to have any games until after dance recital is over (next weekend is crazy... Canisius graduation and tap recital at the same time; Religious School service day Sunday morning and then ballet recital Sunday afternoon).

Oh, and I'm not an aunt again. Yet. We are bordering on full-on babywatch mode (J is due in a week; Miss C was 3 days early.)

Theory: If I pester you less, you will give the March of Dimes more money.

2012-04-25T13:55:02Z

For the very few of you who either didn't get my email yesterday or who aren't friends with me on Facebook... it's March for Babies time again!

Remember this little chicken creature?

Well now she's an obnoxious, swim-team-joining, electrical engineering second grader.

You can donate here.

Purple army guys defeat heavily-accented bee! Film at 11...

2012-03-23T14:32:46Z

Have I posted about the ongoing saga of do I actually have allergies/asthma? Last year my PCP (the one I loved... who has moved... SIGH) referred me to an allergist. He has concluded that I don't have asthma and that the random airway constrictions that I experience are reflux-related (though I have no other signs of reflux unless I eat like crap/too much, and the constrictions have no discernible correlation to my diet) and that I'm not allergic to a damn thing. HOWEVER. He has been seeing a lot of patients and reading about people who present with clear allergy symptoms (like I do) who still test negative on skin tests, and he treats those people as if they do have environmental allergies.

So he gave me Nasonex. And I used it, and it definitely made a difference in the waking-up-and-spending-five-minutes-blowing-my-nose-then-coughing-a-lot department. But the headaches. Like no other headaches in the world. I could set my clock by them - 20 minutes after taking the stuff, huge throbbing frontal headache. Way worse than the stuffy and coughing in the morning. I tried to remember to take it right before bed but that didn't happen, naturally, so I just gave up and returned to the status quo.

When I saw him last week, I mentioned this. He seemed skeptical of the headache thing at first but I said that there was a clear, strong correlation and that the headaches were qualitatively different than any other headache I ever get. He was like, "Well don't DO that!" (have I mentioned that I quite like my allergist, in all his weird socially awkward ways?) and he handed me a sample bottle of Omnaris as well as a card for $11 copays. AND IT WORKS! I don't love the taste/nosefeel of the stuff but I'm soooo much clearer in the morning (no giant coughing fits to clear postnasal drip! Minimal nose-blowing!) and M claims that I'm snoring less, too.

Thus, purple army guys defeat accented bumble bee.

Apparently this is now the "Sarah is Vain" blog

2012-02-24T15:16:48Z

So, signs are pointing to body-chemistry change in the hair thing. Because the following things happened at the same time:
1) I have lost a lot of my curl. Like, a LOT. 20 years ago I would have KILLED for this to happen, not I'm not happy about it.
2) The greys are multiplying at an alarming rate. I don't mind this, actually. They seem to be a pretty good shade of grey. Oddly, though, they are asymmetrical (many more on the left than on the right).

Getting old is weird, yo.

Oh, how the Curly have fallen...

2011-12-11T03:37:21Z

Longtime readers may remember that I stopped using shampoo on my hair, after reading this book, about the time that I started this blog. My regime of lots of conditioner and the occasional lemon juice wash or baking soda/conditioner paste scalp scrub worked for eight year. Lately, though, things started going downhill. I was having to scrub more and more often, and my hair was dull and clumpy within a couple of days. And then on Thursday, even after a scrub, it was just gross. That was when I did something I hadn't done in eight years.

I reached for a bottle of shampoo.

Yes, you heard me right. I shampooed my hair. As I told M afterwards, I felt kinda dirty.

I don't know if it's that my body chemistry has changed, or something changed in our water, or what, but it was definitely a necessary step.

I don't love the way my hair has looked the past couple of days - frizzy and flyaway. I will definitely be going back to conditioner-only as much as possible. But I can't be opposed to the odd encounter with the sudsy stuff, either.

From the colossal failure files...

2011-12-04T04:06:52Z

A couple of weeks ago our living room ceiling began to look a little bit like this, only less dramatically so. There's no plumbing in that part of the house (it's right by the front door) so I knew it had to be coming from outside. A quick look in the bedroom crawlspace revealed that yes, in fact, the floor there was wet, as was the insulation. So I called the folks who replaced our roof 4 1/2 years ago. After a couple more phone calls, a major scheduling screw-up, and me using the "magic words"*, the owner of the company was at my house at 7:40 Friday morning. When I went to turn on the living room lamp so he could see the stain, it didn't come on. I checked the plug, then went to pull the lamp towards me to check the bulb, when the (plastic) shade literally crumbled in my hands. When I went to clean it up, I had to just bring the trash can to it because every piece disintegrated as soon as I touched it. So I changed out the bulb and figured we would get a new shade for the lamp this weekend.

This morning when I went to look closely at the lamp to see if we would be able to get another fitted-in shade or if we were going to have to find something that would fit onto the bulb, I tilted the lamp to look at it and at the bottom of it there appeared a strange pile of grey powder. I moved it some more, and more grey stuff appeared. Picked it up and the whole concrete base fell out. It, too, was crumbling. Cue another trip of the kitchen trash can into the living room, this time with its friend the dustbuster. And cue us buying a whole new lamp.

The roofers, by the way, spent the afternoon re-tarring all of the seams of our roof (under warranty coverage), and to make up for the miscommunication, also cleaned and tightened up our gutters.

*You know, "Better Business Bureau" and "Attorney General's Office".

in bullet-list form

2011-11-30T14:53:42Z

Thanksgiving was Thanksgivingy. We saw the Muppets; jury's still out on whether M or TRex liked it better.
Finally finished reading the Baroque Cycle. OOF. I enjoyed it but it felt like a test of endurance.
I got a new camera. It's little. Little enough to carry with me everywhere. So now I can take pictures of the things that catch my eye and put them on the internet. Like here. Is it an accident that the first 2 pictures involved the purchase of beverages? Not really...
Parent-teacher conference(s) today. Can't wait to hear what Mrs. R. has to say about our girl.
It's the end of the semester and I've lost my oomph. I am contemplating switching up the order of topics next semester so that the ones that have historically come at the end don't get short shrift. Then in the long run I will have a greater stash of good material for those and even if they are at the end it won't feel as tired.
Holiday gifts are annoying. Annoying to figure out what to buy for people, annoying to figure out what to ask for.
There is a phantom event in my calendars that WON'T GO AWAY. I just deleted it from all 3 (gcal, ical, ipad calendar) and hopefully have killed it for good; if it comes back again I might lose my mind.
And now it's time for class. We're going to talk about transracial adoption, whee!

Writer's Block: It's payday!

2011-11-15T16:51:03Z

Pay for the house & car.
Do all the pipe-dream stuff to the house that I want to do (new kitchen, skylights in the sewing room, living roof on the garage, solar panels on the south-facing slope of the roof) as well as all the repairs that need to be done or will need to be done sometime in the next couple of years (new driveway, new sewer line, etc.).
Dump lots into TRex's college savings.
Give lots to various charities.

You Wish You Were Eating At My House

2011-11-11T16:58:53Z

A recipe from earlier in the week: Turkey Tenderloin with Herb Pesto*. It's not revolutionary or anything but it was tasty. And it keeps well. We had it with roast veggies and stuffing.

One package (3 pcs) turkey tenderloins
fresh sage
fresh thyme
fresh rosemary
garlic cloves
olive oil

Using a blender or food processor, make a paste with the herbs, garlic, and olive oil. Put the turkey in an oven-safe dish, spread the pesto over it, cover, and bake at 350 until it's done (about half an hour in my oven).

I put the veggies (brussels sprouts, in this case) in just a little bit after the turkey went in and they were just right, too.
*But I didn't call it pesto because after I made Roasted Salmon with Caramelized Apple Pesto - which was AMAZING, btw - the kiddo has declared that she doesn't like pesto. I don't understand.

Stay tuned... assuming I can locate the necessary tools, the kiddo and I are going to can applesauce on Sunday. Wish me luck.

Apparently we decided it's officially autumn...

2011-10-30T01:18:54Z

Today we:

Purchased a replacement pumpkin (the one we got a month ago melted.... ewww)
Made apple butter
Winterized the garden
Carved the replacement pumpkin (easiest scooping & carving pumpkin EVER)
Roasted the (many) pumpkin seeds - half with cinnamon sugar, half with Old Bay

Now I'm chilly for no good reason and am contemplating hot chocolate. Because I can.

Hope those in the MidAtlantic and New England are hanging in there!

Oh yeah, it was Monday, wasn't it?

2011-10-25T12:47:00Z

Yesterday morning. The alarm goes off like it always does. M hits snooze. 9 minutes later it goes off again. I drag myself out of bed and go to wake up TRex and get her morning meds into her.* She grumbled and sat up and then said, "But Mommy, it's 5:11." I looked at her clock and that was indeed what it said.
I called to M. "What time is it? The clock in here says 5:11!" He said it was 6. I asked him to check some other clock. He said, "It's only 5, go back to sleep."
So we all did (thankfully... often if TRex wakes up after 5 she doesn't... that's why the cat is no longer allowed in her room at night). But both M and I were plagued by the types of dreams that you have when you're worried about oversleeping. Just for good measure, mine involved the house flooding as well.
Despite the disrupted sleep, TRex was in very good spirits yesterday morning that continued through bedtime.

*It should be noted that her grandparents were here over the weekend and she was good and tired (brunch out and then tap class Saturday followed by a trip to the corn maze that ended up being a trip to the bouncy palace because the maze was 6" deep in mud; we left there around 9 and she fell asleep in the car; Hebrew school and then a picnic at the Falls on Sunday) so her still being asleep when the second alarm went off wasn't that surprising.

[FBxPost] TRex Funny

2011-10-16T01:03:32Z

We went to the wedding of one of M's colleagues this afternoon. The happy couple have been together a very long time - for fun between the ceremony and the reception we had TRex figure out that they have been a couple since I was TRex's own age. She also pointed out that when she was born they had been together for 20 years.

But that's not the funny. Here's the funny. About halfway through the ceremony she turned to me and said in wonder, "They're both men!" I said, yes, they were, and that she had known that. She said, "Why are they marrying each other?" I told her, "Because that's who they fell in love with. And now it's legal in New York for them to get married." Her response?

"Oh yeah! And before they could have just gone to Canada!"

Adventures in Homeownership, part infinity

2011-09-25T00:31:07Z

Kitchen had a foul & mysterious odor. All sources investigated and turned up nothing. And then I realized... it was coming from inside the house.

I mean, the dishwasher. Or at least I thought it was.

So we took it apart. And, can I just say, EWWWW? That filter had never been cleaned.

But it has now. We are mighty.

Oh Shit Chicken, the Revenge

2011-09-20T02:24:53Z

I had dinner all mixed up in the crock pot. And we forgot to put it on this morning.

I thought I had red sauce in the fridge. I was wrong.

Here's what I did have that was of interest:
1 small japanese eggplant from our garden
tons of fresh sage
a rotisserie chicken

And here is what I made:

Emergency Eggplant Chicken Pasta

Ingredients

~6 oz whole wheat pasta

1 T olive oil
1 small eggplant, sliced thin
1 large bunch fresh sage
5 cloves crushed garlic
1 small onion, sliced thin

1 T olive oil
1.5 c rotisserie chicken, pulled apart
1.5 c frozen peas
.5 c grated parmesan

Nutritional Info

	Fat: 9.2g
	Carbohydrates: 32.7g
	Calories:286.7
	Protein: 20.2g

Cook pasta (I prefer chunky pasta for this sort of dish) according to box directions. Drain and keep warm.

Combine eggplant, sage, garlic, and onion in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil.

Saute veggies in additional oil until the eggplant softens. While you're doing this, pull apart the chicken. Add it to the veggies, then put in the peas. Add about 1/4 c water and cover tightly. Simmer until the peas are done.

Mix in the cooked pasta and then toss in the parmesan cheese. Salt & pepper to taste.

Serving Size: makes about 6 servings

Number of Servings: 6

Recipe submitted by SparkPeople user SARAHMICHELEF.

Birthday Dress Progress

2011-09-20T01:22:07Z

Definitely going to take more than just one more evening to finish, which might be a problem since her birthday is Sunday. I finished up the bodice last week... two layers of gathering, of fabrics with two different levels of stretch, was a major PITA.

Left to do: gather three layers of skirt to the bodice. Good times.

Note to self:

2011-09-14T17:06:53Z

DVF was totally on to something when it came to wrap dresses. They always look good.

So, um. Make more of them. That one pattern (which is really pseudo-wrap, but who's keeping score?) is really great and easy.

Also, find a good wrap shirt pattern.

[LJxPost] Gumbo!

2011-09-08T14:53:39Z

A couple of weeks ago M went down the wikipedia rabbit hole starting from Tabasco sauce, which got us thinking about my slight Cajun roots and that we don't make enough Cajun food. In particular, we all love gumbo but had never actually MADE gumbo. So I started hunting for a not-too-complicated gumbo recipe and found this one on epicurious.

It was delicious. As always, there were a couple of modificaitons. We didn't find turkey sausage (I really would like to find poultry andouille but that may be asking a bit too much, even of Wegmans) so we got chicken with roasted garlic and herbs. I couldn't get the meat to crumble so it was just chopped up. And we had tilapia in the freezer instead of catfish. Everyone liked it - I put in more seasoning than it called for and it was just on the edge of what the kiddo could handle - I'll dial that back next time. But it's definitely a "will make again". It's listed as "serves 4" but we all had hearty bowls of it at dinner, M had it as a snack a couple of times, and I had it for lunch later on (it reheated very nicely), so that's a very generous 4 servings.

[FBxPost] Oh look. It's an Internet.

2011-09-02T17:44:38Z

It's September. As many of you know, that means that I'm working on my one guaranteed modern sewing project of the year: TRex's birthday dress. She had requested a retread of her 5th birthday dress but the pattern's not available anymore that I could find. But then I found a pattern that has the same wrap-style bodice and actually recreates the look of one of her favorite dresses of all time.

We had a whole discussion of fabrics. I found some really cute fabric with peace signs and flowers that she loved but 1) it was $10/yard and 2) it's VERY busy. So instead I talked her into just doing the sleeves in the peace sign fabric and a plain color (bright aqua) for the rest of it. Of course, she's TRex, so she couldn't have just the plain skirt, she needed the tiered one; I'm combining the contrasting sleeve/small ruffle bodice (bottom right) with the tiered skirt (big photo).

Progress: Last night I cut out the sleeves and bodice. (I love sewing while watching Project Runway. Also, how annoying is Jonathan? SO ANNOYING!) And scavenged up a pattern for shorts, too, so I can make her some boxers to go underneath it becaus she's having a rollerskating birthday party and something underneath will be necessary. Eventually I'm also going to make her a cami out of the peace sign fabric, but that's at the bottom of the priority list because she has camis she could wear with it until I get that one done.

thank heavens for youtube.

2011-07-07T16:24:35Z

This one is for mermaidlady. Shockingly it didn't make me want to hurl.

Bullet Points

2011-07-05T18:28:38Z

I am apparently still 5 years old. I got really excited when a cement mixer seemed to be setting up shop on our street (and sad when it didn't).
Much as I don't love our pachysandra ground cover it does have a couple of distinct advantages: I can stand in it to trim hedges and rake the trimmings out of it and it pops back to its usual status within 20 minutes.
TRex is over her firework-o-phobia. She looooved them last night.
My kitty is obsessed with a little neon soccer ball. Yay, something she'll play with by herself. Not yay: her favorite thing to do is knock it down the stairs to the basement and then come cry to me to go get it for her.
My arms hurt. Telescoping-handle hedge clippers are awesome, but using them is a bit of a strenuous forearm workout. Don't ask me to grip anything tightly for the next, oh, ever again.