Welcome, Jessie John!

A baby, a baby! Dee had preeclampsia, so they induced labor yesterday at around 11, and 7 hours later, a new nephew for me. Congratulations to my brother & family! I hope we will get to see them this weekend; from what I understand, everyone is doing well. I've nearly finished the baby outfit, just need to complete the crotch flap & add buttons, though it's far too big for a newborn anyway. He's only 5 lbs 6oz, apparently, which is 6 oz bigger than I was at birth. Wow.

We've been surprisingly social this week, which is part of why it took me so long to finish my knitting. Last night we had dinner at Wendy's house (I nannied for her kids one winter & occasionally babysit) to hang out with her & the kids & her new husband. The night before Kris came over and we made fritatta and watched the 3rd (new) Star Wars movie, which neither of us had yet seen, being disappointed by the 2nd. Both nights I made fresh bread (it's a good recipe, if anyone is interested, very easy) and salad from the garden.

I've got a lot to do today though, need to finish painting the shed walls so it can be put back up soon. We managed to move the pieces enough yesterday to put up the screen door, so finally we will be fly-free on nice afternoons!

R got called to work on a wildfire in Cali a few days ago, but reluctantly turned it down, this being our last weekend to do anything this summer. As usual we have far too much to do in not enough time in Portland, and so many people we want to see. I need to talk to people tonight!

Picture post!

First of all- I got my phone back. I was really worried because the battery was low, and the guy didn't call back that evening. I even called the phone just so I knew it hadn't gone dead. Then the guy called (at 7:30) the next morning, and we had our phone by noon! The first thing he said (after introducing himself) was "Don't leave your phone laying around, people will do things to it!" Sure enough! He found the gem just before he spotted my phone, so figured it was fate & glued it on. Then he added some leather around the antenna (because the dogs had chewed it). It's Pimp my Phone, I suppose. But it was very awesome of him to pick it up and get it back to me. So send good thoughts to Bruce!

Next up, we have Stitch & Lilo, before and after the haircuts which were the cause of the whole lost phone debacle. We love it when they are so fluffy and furry, but they probably appreciate having shorter hair in the summer, especially since they hate being brushed, and their hair tends to mat when it's so long.
So now they have quite short hair, but they are so soft!

Now, gardeny goodness! This is a shot of all 3 beds, and in the background you can see the hops on the garage. The green water walls hold peppers, eggplants & basil, the red ones are all tomatoes. The mini-bed holds tomatoes, a pepper, a zucchini, and 2 hills of pumpkins, which I just planted. The big bed adjacent to it is mostly still small sprouts and salad greens as well as zucchinis, and peas & tomatoes on either end, carrots interspersed w/ the tomatoes. The big bed further on still needs to be pulled, bolting celery, onions & parsley from last year. It also has a lot of salad-type sprouts, broccoli, some baby cucumbers, and just-planted beans & spinach & beets. I also planted some potatoes today in trash bags, we'll see how they do. Dinner last night was a salad made of garden lettuce & arugula & strawberries (and non-garden pecans, blue cheese, & vinagrette), yum!

And last, and certainly least, we have my latest craft project- The "It's 11pm and I Suck at Sewing, So Let's Make a Skirt" Skirt! I patterned this after another drawstring skirt I have that fits very well (on the loose side) but I must not have allowed enough for the seaming, because the end result is fairly tight. Unfortunately, I also forgot the "wash the material before you use it" rule, and it is flannel, so likely to shrink even more. Perhaps this should be my inspiration to get back in shape- exercise every day until the skirt fits better!

Lousy morning!

I am having a bad morning. I took the dogs to the groomers at 8:15, which I had scheduled so I could take R to work. This turned out to be unnecessary, since he didn't need a ride to work this morning, so I could have slept in a little. But that doesn't make the morning bad. Just wait. When I got there, I told them I would be doing errands, so to call me on the cell phone when the dogs were ready. I even checked to ensure that they had the correct number.

I left the car by the groomers & started walking to the Co-op for some groceries. On the way, I was nearly run over. I arrived at the intersection before the car did & knew the driver saw me, plus we were parallel and he didn't have a blinker on, so I turned, verified that no cars were coming the other way, and started across the street, only to hear an engine rev and then stop suddenly as the guy breaks a couple feet shy of ramming me (turning with no signal, THANKS). And here's the worst part- he's a parking inspector driving a city vehicle! He doesn't even apologize or anything, just gives me a look like, "What are you doing in the intersection, little girl? cars drive here! Damn kids these days!" and drives off around me.

I shake my head and continue on the next few blocks to the food store, only to find it closed. So I keep going around the block to the local coffee house- also closed. Apparently even though they open at 7 every other day, we are all supposed to sleep in on Fridays & Saturdays, so no breakfast for me. Everything is closed for at least another 45 minutes! Completely frustrated at this point, and realizing I had left my package to mail back at home, I gave up & drove home.

I had some tea, grabbed the package & my sewing machine, and headed back to the other side of town yet again. I finally did my shopping (though I forgot spinach) and mailed my package and was waiting & waiting for a call. I killed time in a bookstore, though I was too cheap to buy the book I wanted (no used copies). Finally I check the phone one more time, and head back to the groomers, figuring they MUST be done, it's been over 2.5 hours! Sure enough, they had called my home phone, so I was wandering around North Bend wasting time for no reason.

The puppies are so soft now, but their hair is short, and they look like completely different animals. It always makes us sad when they have to get a haircut. Also the lady suggested we bring them in every month or so- "You don't have to get them cut, we can trim their toenails & wash them..." as though we don't give our dogs baths regularly? Arms full of bags & dragged by dogs, I make my way back to the car, finally. On the way home I stopped at the electric hospital with my sewing machine, where they tell me "We can't work on this, it's a Pfaff computerized, you have to go to a dealer and there aren't any in this area."

Finally, the bitter cherry on top of this stupid morning- just after I get home I receive a phone call, "Yeah, I picked up this cell phone by the Fire Station in North Bend & called the number marked 'home,' so I guess I have your cell phone if you want to come get it." Sigh. Thank goodness the guy picked it up though, too bad he lives way on the other side of the bay.

I hope this afternoon turns out better than the morning.

books & missing mornings

Book club was last night; I always really enjoy reading the books (often ones I wouldn't have found on my own) and the group discussions are great. (Emilie, you really should start coming!) We do a good job of discussing the book, but it also always leads to discussing our lives and other things. It's just really great to have a fun & interesting group of women to talk to, even if it's only once a month, and I don't really know them all that well. I guess I need more of that in my life, and I miss it, so I really appreciate book club & craft night.

Today kind of disappeared- I got back late last night(construction slowed my return trip quite a bit, I got home after 10:30) and wasn't feeling well (I need to remember to bring lactaid wherever I go, or learn to turn down ice cream, even if it does have fresh strawberries on top), so I slept in this morning. The rest of the day has just vanished. I need to get started painting the shed walls so they can be put back up this weekend (there goes our lovely sun deck in the back corner), but I have fuzzy, clean dogs at my feet here, so I'm comfy. At least I already did the laundry & started the sponge to (attempt to) make fresh Pugliese bread tonight. We have fresh spinach pasta left over from the rotolo, so I'm going to make a simple sauce with butter & wine & garlic & things to toss with crab & the noodles.

Here's Eli's birthday hat: I hope it fits; I'll give it to him in a little over a week. I need to write back to Brandy & call Tina & talk to Mindy so we can try to see everyone when we're up in Portland in a couple weeks. We never have enough time! We just need to take a full week up there, but it won't happen soon. We already have a whole list of things we need to do in the 3 days we'll be there, which doesn't yet include all the people we want to hang out with!

Maybe little pinch?

R & R caught a bunch of crabs Sunday morning, so I spend part of today cracking some tasty Dungeness. It's a pretty gross job, all things considered, but I'm happier to pull the guts out of a crab than handle raw meat. It does take forever though, I only got through 2 before I gave up. Your hands are constantly wet, so you have to stop before your skin becomes too soft to deal with the hard shells. But tonight we'll have sushi, yum! I invented a tasty form of ceviche sushi- crab, avocado, salsa, & lime juice, highly recommended!

I've been reading a book of travel essays on Tuscany & Steinbeck's "Travels with Charlie", so I've got traveling on the brain. I've wasted a bit of time today researching Tuscany trips. You might not know this, but I'm obsessed with researching vacations. We aren't even planning to go to Italy for another 2 years, and only then if the Euro/dollar exchange isn't abysmal, but I want to go so badly it's like a hunger. I've been thinking about a bike trip, though certainly we'd have to train for it, the Chianti hills would be murder on our lazy butts. I read trip reports and see TV shows where people spend a lazy week or month staying in gorgeous towns & traveling around sampling countless wines, cheeses, meats, and meals- a gastronomic paradise. Visit ancient oak barrels full of fermenting grapes, watch olives be pressed to oil, taste the terroir in everything, and learn how to cook, speak, and live Italian. I wish I could afford it. Maybe it sounds selfish, since I've already spent 2 weeks in Tuscany, but we didn't have a vehicle, so we couldn't ever travel to the hilltowns or small farms or vineyards; go taste unique local foods. I saw amazing art in Florence & got hay fever in the wheat fields south of Siena, but I didn't get to explore rural Tuscany in all its splendor. I hope I get to in the future.

This may sound morbid, but hear me out: when I die, I want my wake to be held somewhere really cool so that my loved ones get to experience someplace new and wonderful. They can remember me while seeing new things & they can be joyful about my life instead of depressed about my death. Yeah, travel!

I learned that the temporary Spanish position at the HS has been filled, so I guess I'll just be doing regular subbing next fall, which is ok. I don't think I was ready for it anyway.
Must go work on my stupid Brother's baby gift #2 now, I am determined to finish it before I can start my new sweater for myself.

** Dog cookies:
4 Cups spent grain (after brewing)
4 cups flour
1 cup peanut butter
1 egg
mix well. Spread on cookie sheet with sides and roll out to approx 1/4 in thick.
Bake @ 350F for 30 minutes
Score into sizable cookies
bake at 225F for the next 6-12 hours until they are completely dried out.
(feel free to experiment, use bullion powder, gravy, tomato paste, etc. You might need to adjust ingredients slightly depending on how wet your grain is.)

For those without a garden, I apologize in advance for the jealousy-inducing photo....

Today was gorgeous, though windy, which meant R's crabbing expedition didn't happen. So instead we went for a nice walk through the neighborhood and then down on the marsh trail along the dike, with lovely views over the bay. The dogs were very happy, until afterwards when we had to spend 30 min puling burrs out of their fur.

Since then, I made the grapefruit/lemon sorbet, set up a pea trellis, planted some basil & cosmos & puttered around. OH, and picked strawberries! Both our June-bearing & ever-bearing varieties are fruiting like crazy lately. Those pictured here are just from today's picking, with tomatoes for reference (tomatoes not from the garden- yet!).

Anyway, found out 2 new bits of information today:
1) The baby shower was today. I wasn't even notified out of courtesy. Granted I wouldn't have been able to go, but they didn't even invite my MOM! I guess my brother has always been attracted to dysfunction, and now that he finally has it, he doesn't need us 'normies' around anymore.
2) I'm starting at the park July 1, scheduled to work Tu-Sat 9-5:30, crappy hours, since we only have one car, but it's amazing I got Sunday off. I strongly suspect I won't be doing much naturalist work at all though, likely all cleaning bathrooms/fee booth/pulling weeds type stuff. Hooray, glad I have 2 bachelor's degrees.

Hyooge hats & endless scarves, or Knitted Gifts

Heh, I finished Eli's apple hat the other day, except for the leaves, but I'm worried it's too big. I actually accosted 2 of Ryan's friends when they came over for beer last night & made them try it on. One of them is the same hat size as E-ster, and it actually appeared a bit big, damn. I will try shrinking it in the dryer, it's mostly cotton.

Other than the hat & the baby onesie, I haven't been doing too much knitting, though I FINALLY finished the fringe on the Gryffindor scarf tonight at an excellent Crafty Night. I gave up on organizing those a while back because sometimes it felt like twisting arms to get people to agree to a date & actually show up, but I enjoy them so much, I might have to work harder now to make them happen. It was so fun! I brought coconut bar cookies, an improvised recipe with a shortbread crust, toasted-coconut carmel middle, and chocolate coating. They were delicious, but quite sweet. It's funny how some people bring the same things over and over again, and some of us choose a different recipe each time. And it was so cute to see Doris pregnant!

School is officially out now, so I'm done with subbing for the year. I still don't know exactly when I'm starting at the Parks, nor do I know if I'll be long-term subbing next fall. Oh well, not as though I have plans that would be ruined either way! Sometimes being flexible is very nice. I'm actually glad we are starting late this summer anyway, because we are going up to Portland the last weekend of the month. Eli is having a birthday party using a murder-mystery game I got for Christmas, and we're going to the Organic Brewer's Festival, and my Mom should be moving into her new house that weekend, and my brother might have a son by then! Very exciting stuff!

I don't have much else to say, except I keep getting these weird dizzy spells. It happened for the first time about a year ago, and it's been happening more and more frequently lately. It literally feels like someone smacks me upside the head, my brain does that slow-motion swirl thing, it's pretty weird. I asked my Dr about it and she wasn't concerned (and I've since had an MRI of my brain for other reasons which didn't show anything other than a tiny benign growth which makes me basically infertile without meds [not that I was trying], but probably isn't making me dizzy). But she's kind of a crappy doctor, and I know it's not normal to occasionally feel like someone flushed your brain down the toilet. Maybe it's an inner ear thing? Ugh.

Hey, June.

I'd like to take a moment to thank my peeps and homies, all you fabulous people who read this blog & even leave comments, I love you! And I love that I can keep connected to my friends through here, that you take the time to read even though my life can be boooring, and I don't do myspace or facebook. ;) HUGS TO YOU! I talked to my buddy Lee on the phone the other night for the first time in probably 2 years, which is ridiculous. I don't mean to loose contact, I'm sorry you guys!

I finished knitting Victoria's hat and the baby apple hat. I'll take pictures of the pompom hat later; here's a basically identical apple hat that I knitted a year ago. I've started doing a similar apple hat for Eli's birthday, but adult-sized and green with ribbing rather than a rolled brim. I bought yarn to make the Global Warming sweater, a wool-cotton blend from a brand that uses Peruvian fibers & donates money back to their community. I also started a baby onesie, based roughly on a Lion Brand pattern, but in ribbing and in some old hand-me-down acrylic I need to get rid of. It's the same blue variegated stuff I made the cabled coffee sleeve out of, so it should be good for a baby boy. (It's so weird that my bro is having a baby, and that he's got 3 stepsons! One or 2 of them might come visit me this summer for a bit while the household is adjusting to the new member).

I worked 4 days last week, (2 of the days were teaching Spanish, and 2 more this week) but still managed to get stuff done besides knitting and reading another 2 books. We planted more tomatoes (we have 19 plants now, insanity!) and did some other things around the yard. Now if only the weather can stop being schizophrenic and decide to be summer for real....
R peeled lemons to make limoncello (we threw in 2 grapefruits for fun) and I used the juice to make a pie, key-lime style. We also have the ice cream maker ready for some citrus sorbet/gelato, but it's too cold out for ice cream! I felted a sweater I bought years ago that has always been too big, it turned out really well. I also finally made my candied grapefruit peel (it took ridiculously excessive amounts of sugar), which will be great for making panforte and lebkuchen/ pfefferkuchen (I should get Vicky's recipe). We made a Thai-style roast chicken, which was really tasty, but the flavor didn't penetrate much into the meat, which was sad. Oh and we washed the car, woo.

We went out to dinner for our anniversary to the best restaurant in the area, Porta in N. Bend. It is authentically Italian (meaning not Olive-Garden-ey Italian, the chef used to work at Genoa in Portland) which inspired R to make up some fresh pasta later in the week. We had a butter-pepper-garlic sauce with pecorino, fresh basil, and prosciutto, YUM. Last night I made a bacon-shallot-cream sauce with peas, also YUM, and I made a loaf of French bread to go with it. This week we are going to try to reproduce the dish I had at Porta, a spinach & ricotta rotolo, one of the best things I've ever eaten. I was looking for inspiration for our fresh pasta and found the recipe for rotolo in my pasta book, it was meant to be!!

R brewed an Oktoberfest last night, he's only done pseudo-Oktoberfests before, because the beer is a lager & needs to be at a certain temperature, but I think he's going to put this one in the keg fridge to make a real lager. I need to go make some dog cookies with the spent grain now and get the kitchen cleaned up. The fun never stops here! And honestly, I think I sound a lot more productive than I really am!

Productivity

I feel like I've been lazy lately, but it turns out I've actually gotten a lot done. I finished Victoria's beanie (except for the pompom, which I am still waiting to hear back from her on poof size) and started an apple hat for my bro's soon-to-be-born baby (and a blanket too, but it might be a Christmas present instead, since it's very warm and fuzzy). I made mango chutney, canned a couple jars of it, and then made chicken curry samosa things to eat with it, super-yum! I also worked a few days, found out more about both my summer job at the parks (only July & Aug this year, unfortunately) and the potential Spanish teaching gig (looking quite possible).

I went through my closet and pulled out a bunch of clothes I don't wear anymore to give to Goodwill. I planted chives and cosmos in the front, and we put some new peppers & eggplants in wall-o-waters in the back. One cool thing was making my own knitting needles from a pair of chopsticks, and a double pointed set made from a dowel. Both sets size 7s, made using several gauges of sandpaper to create tips and smooth the wood/bamboo, and then rubbed with mineral oil (while I was at it, I also oiled all the bamboo cutting boards and cooking utensils). There were more useful things (besides the everyday stuff) but I can't remember them now.

I also finished reading the book club book for June, Three Cups of Tea, which was very good and inspiring. Though it's very disheartening that a man so brave, doing so much good in the world by trying to educate poor children in rural areas of Pakistan & Afghanistan gets hate mail from ignorant jingoistic bastards in the US. Bah.
I love reading; I don't know if I've mentioned it before. I tend to go through book voraciously, often finishing in a day or 2. Between reading and knitting, I guess I spend a lot of time sitting- but at least I'm not watching stupid things on tv. I guess I should be sure to go to yoga tomorrow and take the dogs out more often, I'm sure they would appreciate that.

I still have a lot to do though, I wanted to make grapefruit sorbet with the grapefruits our friend gave us (grown on his family's property in California) and make candied peels from the ones we've already eaten. We need to buy some everclear to mix with vodka & make limoncello. I also need to get big Eli's apple hat started (birthday present) and find yarn to make myself another sweater.

So hooray for getting things done!