Biscuit Brains and Bloody Lotion

Sometimes my brain decides that life is too boring and tries to invent excitement.

You ever hear the urban legend of the lady who thought she was shot in the grocery store parking lot? The story goes that a nice old lady loads her groceries into the backseat of her car on a sunny day. She takes her time putting the cart back in the corral and making sure she has her purse and, I don’t know, looking for a piece of hard candy in her purse. While she toodles along, her groceries are getting the ‘closed car on a hot day’ oven treatment and by the time she gets behind the wheel things have reached a boiling point. Or, to be exact, an exploding point. She hears a pop, a rush of air and next thing she knows there is warm gooey mass dripping down the back of her head. 1 + 1 = 4 and noise + gooey = gunshot wound. She scrambles for her cell phone, calls 911 and reports that she’s been shot and is currently holding her own brains in her skull. The police and paramedics arrive to find her holding a can’s worth of uncooked biscuits to her head after the can had exploded in the heat of her car. I’m sure they held their snickers to a minimum.

I’ve always enjoyed that particular urban legend…that is until it happened to me tonight.

No one has ever described me as particularly neat and I admit that is not a virtue that I posses, which is easily evidenced by my bedroom. Or to be specific, the library bag next to my bed. You see, it was a brilliant idea on my part to keep my library books all in one place and easily reachable. I can grab them whenever I want and I always know where to find them. The problem is that other things just keep slipping into that bag. A pair of socks, a bottle of ibuprofen, a bag of dried pineapple, and tonight’s culprit, a bottle of lotion.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

The hour was late, the movie was GI Joe and I was idly watching the inexplicable Brendan Fraser cameo when a spider crawled up my wall. I, a person who fears all things creepy crawly, yelped and leaped away from the wall. While scrambling off my bed, I got my foot stuck in a laundry basket and then tripped over my library bag, falling over my desk chair. (It’s a small bedroom and like I said, not so neat) As I lay there wondering where the spider went, I realized that there was something poking my leg inside the library bag. I untangled my other foot and used it to nudge away whatever was poking me only to find my trapped leg covered in liquid. I froze, my feet shoved into a library bag, my head under a desk chair, my eyes gazing at a spider slowing crawling towards the ceiling and questions running through my head. Just what had poked me in that bag? Had it punctured the skin? Was it still in my leg? Was I bleeding everywhere? If that spider got to the ceiling would I ever be able to kill it? Was the blood getting on my library books?

I lay there for several moments, trying to figure out my next step. I could feel the liquid dripping down my leg now and I felt queasy at the idea of pulling it out so I could assess the damage. Not only did I not really want to see a gaping hole in my limb, I wasn’t sure if yanking it around would make it worse. My brain kept coming up with stupid clichés like “don’t move if you get lost” or “never swim right after eating” which goes to show that my brain is mush in crisis. Finally, I decided that with the rate of drippage, I was going to need to stem the flow or start looking for a donor soon and since I lack blood typing skills, I decide to carefully easy my foot from the bag. As it came closer and closer to the top I steeled myself for the worst case scenario. A gushing wound with metal shrapnel glistening against the bright white bone where it was impaled. (okay, I guess my brain is preoccupied with drama in crisis) Finally my leg cleared the bag and I stared in shock at the carnage.

There was a wound on my leg. An angry pink scratch where a piece of plastic from the lotion bottle I had stepped on had scratched as it exploded. I watched, dumbfounded, as the sweet smelling liquid dripped down my leg and off my foot and I even noticed that it really didn’t resemble blood at all. In fact, now that I could see my leg, it didn’t even feel that much like blood. It felt more like, well, lotion, runny and a little colder than body temp. As I sat there on the floor I remembered the story about the little old lady and her brain biscuits and it made me grateful. No, not because I too thought I was grievously injured and then found out all was well.

It’s because, despite visions of blood and limb loss in my head, at least I didn’t dial 911.

Bird watching

An early morning drive with my mom and sister netted a bucketload of photos. We were on a mission to find deer but instead we got snapshots of cats, donkeys, horses and birds. Lots of pictures of birds. Or at least two birds in particular. This lovely little gold finch led us on a merry chase all down a dirt road. I would sneak up close enough to snap a picture and then he would be off again. He wasn’t alone in his early morning jaunt, he had brought along his much less brightly colored mate. She was less skittish when it came to getting her picture taken. They were even nice enough to pose on the same bunch of wildflowers for my shot.

I love these little guys, they are so cute! I hadn’t seen a gold finch up close before this but after these shots we saw them everywhere. It seems like all the birds wanted their pictures taken this morning. Which I was more than happy to do!

New favorite photo

Movie time!

Saturday was a day full of movies. Went over early to Gina’s and when a trip to the library didn’t provide anything enticing we decide to head to the theaters to see The Sorcerer's Apprentice.  It was a movie that I had wanted to see but my enthusiasm had been dampened by bad reviews. Just before the movie started Gina told me that a review had said this movie was basically National Treasure, another Nicholas Cage movie. Personally, I love that movie (the sequel, not so much) so I was happy. Unfortunately, that made it hard to get into the movie. It was incredibly similar; the music, the images, the camera work, even the opening scene as a historical flashback with voiceover. Because of that it was hard for me not to look at the main characters as historian Ben Gates and his geeky sidekick Riley Poole instead of sorcerer Balthazar and his geeky apprentice Dave. I kept having ‘wow, that was out of character’ moments as I struggled to connect to these characters. One of the main problems was the writing. It was a good story but the dialogue was weak, especially when it came to the main character Dave. It relied too much on his social awkwardness and all of his conversations were so peppered with stutters and ‘ums’ that it crossed over the line from endearing to annoying. Other than those issues, it was a good movie. I liked the special effects, the relationship between Balthazar and Dave and even the setup for a sequel at the end. It was a funny, uncomplicated movie with some very pretty scenes (confetti dragon!) that was a good time.

In the afternoon, Lindsay tracked down Revenge of the Bridesmaids for us online. This is my second time watching this and it’s just as funny. It’s seriously my new favorite flick. The premise, two girls go undercover as bridesmaids to break up a wedding, was cheesy and implausible at times…but it was a fun movie.  Raven Symone and Joanna Garcia were hilarious and their comedic timing with the witty writing totally made this movie. There were lovely secondary characters, the best of which was Mrs. Olivia played by Beth Broderick, who managed to wrap desperation and disdain in a lovely Old South package and all her scenes were amazing. On a shallow note, I loved the outfits; everything Rachel wore was adorable. It wasn’t heavy drama so all the characters (save the bad bride) ended up with happy but sometimes you just need happy endings.

I ended my day of movies with The Losers, a movie based on the Vertigo comic book series. A lot of reviews compare this movie to The A-Team. I am a girl who really appreciates The A-Team. So it’s no surprise that I enjoyed this movie. There were explosions, humor, Jeffery Dean Morgan, helicopter-jacking, humor, snark, guns, more explosions, bad guys, justice-seeking good guys, humor, and Jeffery Dean Morgan. Now, granted, this wasn’t as good as The A-Team but that’s okay. All action movies involving a special forces team betrayed by their government and working under the radar to get justice and make the world a bit safer from the bad guys can’t be perfect, ya know?

All the way across the sky…

Well, alright, it’s not quite a double rainbow…but the sunset tonight was lovely.

EXTREME!

I’m watching Extreme Poodles on TLC right now and it’s insane. It’s a documentary about competitive poodle grooming.

Yeah, that’s right. Competitive. Poodle. Grooming.

It’s as if the pageant moms got together with graffiti artists and had babies that they sent to a magnet school that focused only on color blind fashion design and bad dancing.

Oh, did I forget to mention that there was dancing? Painted dogs and dancing.

I love late night TV.

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

This hymn was in our bible study this week and I thought it was very pretty. I love the third verse.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain,
that morn shall tearless be.

I love the visual of tracing the rainbow through the rain, placing your hope that not only with the current sadness end…but it will end with hope. A promise of a better tomorrow. A promise of something good coming out of sadness. A promise given to us by One who loves us and is always with us.

It’s the poor planning BBQ!

My family loves to BBQ and when we do it, we do it right. There is always twice the amount of food that we need for the guests, lots of sauces and spices, fresh vegetables and usually some weird concoction that we are doing as an ‘experiment’. If it’s one of my creations it usually involves trying to grill some sort of cheese…if it’s Edgar’s experiment then it is either Filipino or involves grilling tropical fruit. We all have our niches.

We had decided earlier today to BBQ but we wanted to wait until it got cooler. Which, lately, seems like close to midnight, but we thought maybe closer to seven. Unfortunately I got off to a very late start and didn’t end up going to the grocery store till then. And though I got an incredible deal on steak…I completely forgot to check on the essential item for grilling – charcoal. So that meant another trip out to another store. While I was there I thought about calling home and checking to see if we had lighter fluid but since my phone broke yesterday that wasn’t really an option.

You can see where this is heading, right? Yup, yet another trip to the store for lighter fluid. Then, finally, we could start up the grill. At…8pm. Which, despite the encroaching darkness, was much cooler so that was pleasant. I quickly prepped the corn and potatoes and got those on the grill along with fresh green peppers straight from the garden. Then it was back inside to oil and spice the steaks and get a huge glass of water.

My experiment for the night was grilled feta cheese with slices of tomatoes (also from my garden)  doused with olive oil and pepper. It was good but great on the grilled garlic bread. Yummy! And unlike the green peppers, I didn’t burn them. Of course, we ended up using a flashlight for the last part of grilling since the sun had long set. Not the best prepared of BBQ’s…but it was fun and yummy.

One of those days

I dropped my phone in the parking lot today and didn’t realize. It either got stepped on or run over and broke. Then these guys took it and drove away. I snagged another phone and called mine and they brought it back to me…probably because it was broken. It can accept phone calls and make them but the screen is just dead.

I…just about cried in the Walmart parking lot. There is a limit to what I think I can handle and apparently I have hit it this week. Thankfully, God thinks that with His help, I can handle more. Which is good, because this is a week that he keeps piling it on. I’m going to focus on praising God and let God work on taking care of my mess of a life.

Praise for today – God’s abundance is amazing. After the phone debacle we went to Horrocks and I’m constantly in awe when I walk into this market. They have every fruit and vegetable you could think of and all the ones you can’t to boot. It was delightful to walk around and look at the different items, talking with other people as we try to figure out just how you eat something that has spines or fur or looks like a basketball. It’s just amazing to see all that God has created, the wide world He made and how diverse it is.

It’s also pretty awesome that He made cranberries that taste so yummy when dried.

I write like…

There’s a new tool on the internet called “I Write Like…” wherein you paste in a sample of your writing and through the magic of the internets, they tell you which famous author your writing resembles. I’m sure it’s not terribly scientific but it sure is a lot of fun!

My story that I wrote when I was six is like Rudyard Kipling.

A poem I wrote earlier this year is like Ernest Hemingway.

My bible study blog reads like Chuck Palahniuk…which makes me laugh.

An angry post on my blog apparently reads like Kurt Vonnegut.

Introspective posts are more like Margaret Atwood and happy posts are James Joyce.

Depending on the amount of dialog in a story I alternate between Stephen King(more) and Dan Brown (less).

I’m impressed and surprised at my comparisons. Go ahead, go enter your own writing at the site and find out just what author you write like.

I know what happy is…

I’m really digging this song right now. It’s got such a cute summery sound and the lyrics, while being simple, make me smile.

The jerkiness of strangers and the fear of change

Earlier this month I got a twin bed from my cousin when she moved. It was a bed I had slept on whenever I visited so I already knew it was comfortable and I had been thinking about switching out my full for a twin in order to get more space in my bedroom. The plan was to Craigslist my old bed and put this new one up in its place.

A great plan in theory but the execution has left something to be desired. I’m sitting on the new twin bed which is on the floor. It’s draped in my old full bed sheets because I don’t have proper sheets to fit. My old bed is propped up in the corner of the kitchen because the people who responded to my Craigslist post never showed. Twice.

Earlier I wanted to just lie down and cry but I literally had no bed in my room at the time so I couldn’t. There’s a lot of reasons why this is so frustrating for me.  There are times when I struggle with change. Times when I’m afraid that I won’t like the new thing/place/person and despite the adventurous streak in me…a lot of times I would be perfectly content to have my corner of the world stay the same. Apparently furniture is one of those ‘fear change’ aspects of my life and it took me a while before I was cool giving up my old bed. (and I still might not be!)

I also hate it when a plan doesn’t work out. I planned to get a frame and headboard for the new bed in time for the switch. I planned to get twin sheet sets. I planned to have the Craigslist responder show up on time. So many plans of mine that didn’t work out at all and it’s very disheartening. Then when my plans fall apart I get upset and would like people around me to understand and empathize with me…which doesn’t always happen. Apparently the world doesn’t revolve around me or something.

On top of all this…PEOPLE WHO SAY THEY ARE GOING TO COME PICK UP STUFF FROM CRAIGSLIST SHOULD SHOW UP OR AT LEAST CALL! Geeze Louise, people, how hard is it to call or email and say “hey, I don’t want your stupid beds anymore so don’t bother waiting up”? I waited till one in the morning for these people to come. ONE IN THE MORNING! I feel like Stephanie on Full House, stomping around and folding my arms; “How rude!”

Sleep holds no appeal tonight because I’m dissatisfied with where I’m sleeping. But as it’s a necessary thing for life…I might as well try and get my 40 winks. They’ll be a much-closer-to-the-floor and on-a-overlarge-sheet 40 winks…but I will just have to deal.

Meatloaf at Midnight

Pictures and recipe-ish like I promised!                          

First I started with chopping up an onion and two green peppers from our garden. I sautéed the onions in butter first because, a) onions take longer to cook and b) they make the kitchen smell AWESOME.

 

After the onions were smooshy, I tossed in the green peppers. Then I decided that I need to make fajita’s more often because peppers and onions are my new favorite smell.

Cook these until the green peppers are mushy as well but be careful not to burn them. Keep the heat on medium.

Now it’s time for mixing! When I started making meatloaf I was so worried about mixing thing together and whether I had the right amounts. Now I don’t even measure. I just toss stuff into the bowl. This night I was making two loafs, one with a box mix from the store and one with my pseudo-recipe. The box called for a pound of meat, an egg and 1/3 cup of water; then I just added some of the sautéed  veggies on top. Easy peasy.

My recipe is equally as easy and 3 times as fun. Add one egg, two handfuls of oatmeal, spoonful of minced garlic, pepper, salt, a few squirts of ketchup, some BBQ sauce and of course Louisiana Hot Sauce. Not too much, but it really helps the flavor stand out. And of course, it has to be this brand. Yum.

Store brand is on the left, Jen’s recipe is on the right. Mine is covered in BBQ sauce. Besides adding to the tastiness, I think it helps keep the meatloaf moist.

Now you stick the loafs in the oven 350° for 1 1/2 hours. I spent this time surfing Youtube videos and playing spider solitaire. You can feel free to do other things.

Finally…there is meatloaf!

The box mix meatloaf looks…ill. It also has a weird smell to it. I tossed the box last night but it makes me wonder if it’s got soup mix or something added to it. The smell reminds me of soup somehow. It’s also rather dry, so if I use it again (which I probably won’t) I’d add maybe a can of tomato sauce to make it juicer. On the other hand, my meatloaf looks tasty and the BBQ sauce is nice and brown in places. It’s moist on the inside and the sautéed green peppers and onions are delicious. Now I just need to slice them up and freeze them for meals later!

Midnight Meatloaf

Doesn’t that sound like something way cooler than it is? I’m not sure if it’s like a book title or a song or just a weird phrase. “Up too late making the midnight meatloaf, eh?”

Apparently the voice in my head is Canadian tonight. Whatever.

My use of midnight meatloaf is because midnight was the only time of the day that I could justify turning the oven on. The heat wave may have ended according to the meteorologists but it’s plenty hot here. Hot enough that having the oven turned on for 1 1/2 hours seemed stupid during the day. So I waited till the dead of night to do my cooking. Like the cool chefs do, you know.

Now it’s 2 AM and my meatloaf is done. It took a trip to the store, green peppers from my garden, a 911 call, a bag of frozen grapes and twice the amount of eggs I needed. I took pics, so I’ll get them up later.

Now…sleep for tomorrow we dine!

How does your garden grow?

 

 

Mine grows very peppery!

Peace I leave with you

Cars, bars and shower stars

Another thing to love about hotels…they never run out of hot water. I just took a 45 minute shower and it was so completely relaxing. I’m pooled on the couch like a bowl full of jello. Stress-free jello.

My mini-vacation is on its last night and while I’m sad to be leaving the hotel (and it’s cool air), I feel revived. The heat wave that is supposed to continue this week will no doubt try and melt me into grumpiness, but I’m not going to let it. I may not be able to bottle the coolness and bring it home, but I’m certainly going to back up my much more relaxed and cheerful attitude to take with me.

I tried to reason out just why I’m feeling so happy and while it does have to do a lot with feeling comfortable temp-wise…it also has to do with feeling like I don’t have to do anything to make people happier. I’m a huge people pleaser and it stresses me out when no matter what I try, I can’t fix everything. My big moving project, which ended up going great, involved a lot of stress as I tried to please everyone who was involved. I feel like I spent a lot of hours on the phone making and changing plans and I constantly felt like I was always making someone unhappy.

I seem to be in a certain time in my life where there are a lot of situations like that…situations where no matter how hard I work, I can’t fix everything. I know that life is just like that…not everybody can be happy all the time, not every situation has a fix that works universally. Despite the fact that I know these facts, I usually have been able to make things work out. Just, you know, not lately. Maybe I need to get used to not making people happy. Or maybe I just need to stop making plans.

Watched  Gran Torino tonight and while the language and racist comments mean I shouldn’t recommend this to just anyone, it is an amazing movie. I was initially interested in the film because of it’s ties to Michigan. It was filmed here (near Detroit) and Sue, one of the main characters, is Lansing’s own Ahney Her. But as I watched the movie I was impressed with the writing, the acting and the story. It was fairly predictable, but engaging. I hate the cliché of ‘I laughed, I cried’ but it’s very true in this movie. I was surprised how uplifting the end of the movie felt, it would have been easy to overdo the message and be preachy but they managed to make a statement that flowed comfortably with the narrative.

I drove to 6 different restaurants to get dinner including a Hawaiian buffet, a deli/fitness center and a Chinese restaurant that had the shiniest bar I’ve ever seen. I really wanted to feel it to see if it was steel or something but I thought that would look strange. And you know me, I love maintaining an illusion of normalcy.

Happiness is…

…eating fresh fruit salad while sitting in a chilly hotel room and watching  the sun rise.

I’d like to say that I’m a simple girl who loves simple things but then I find myself curled up on feather pillows eating room service and drinking orange juice from a champagne glass and think that maybe I love some of the not-so-simple things as well.

Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool

Goodbye 90° house and hello air conditioned hotel room!

I’d do the dance of joy except I’m mostly just a lump of happy!Jen in front of the a/c.

Oh summer, how do I hate thee?

It's 91° outside and 88° inside my house.

I think I'm going to move to Antarctica.

Bright lights in the city

This is the view out of my bedroom window this week. My neighbor has recently installed a new porch light that has roughly the same wattage as the sun. It’s not even a motion sensor light so it stays on all night long.

All. Night. Long.

It shines through my window. It shines through my room darkening blinds. It shines through the beach towel I tacked to the wall over my blinds one morning at 3 AM when I was frustrated at the brightness of my room. It shines…well, you get the drift.

At one point this morning (while I was awake for other reasons) I debated whether I could shimmy over the fence, climb through the bushes and then beat the light to death with a baseball bat. I decided that wouldn’t work.

I don’t own a baseball bat.

Garage Sale Goodies

Went out with my sister and brother-in-law to search for garage sales and found very few. It’s a beautiful day, a holiday weekend and very few sales. But we did find some cool things.

My favorite items were also the items we haggled on. I’m a horrible haggler (which now sounds like a super villain name) but I got Becca’s set of Pyrex bowls down to $8 and my lovely new lemonade pitcher down to $3. Isn’t it gorgeous? I also got a set of candy striped curtains that I’ll probably use for fabric bags, a plastic pitcher and a set of circular knitting needles.