Around this house we celebrate the unconventional holidays. I don’t care for holidays like New Years (unless you count this new years) or 4th of July (another stay up late for no reason holiday). I do like Christmas and mah birthday (for the presents). The best holidays in this house are the not so normal ones.
The first day of the hockey season is called Hockey Day (we couldn’t come up with a better name). The boy and I make a cake.
February 1st is Elle survived January so we can cut back on our booze bill Day (I don’t think that name will catch on either). We don’t really do anything special except celebrate with a shot of Vodka… what was that about cutting back on the booze bill?
The beginning of Daylight Savings Time is also a holiday around here. We call it the end of SAD season. Most people bitch about the time change. Me? I lurve it. It might be dark when I wake up, but last night… I walked the dog in the daylight. For the first time (ok that’s not true, but it was my first evening walk with her in daylight). We celebrated that day with a steak dinner.
Later up this week is St. Patrick’s Day. I’m telling you this is the best week ever. We are having a few friends over, doing an informal whiskey tasting and the dog is getting fixed the day before so she’ll be nice and doped up with all of the people here. I’m starting to feel semi normal.
Not to self: don’t post poignant stuff on Fridays. I should also add to that post, among the sobbing that the child said, “I just really wanted a mom and a dad.” Doesn’t that just break your heart? I’m still slightly disturbed by the whole incident.
Moving on.
After 2 years of seeing my acupuncturist I think we’ve finally gotten a groove going on. The groove gets disrupted by shiny objects on occasion, but that is my problem. A few months ago I mentioned some issues I had with concentration and a few other personal matters. So Lisa* whipped up an herbal formula to help with such matters. It just so happens that this particular formula has turtle shell in it. She assures me that it is humanely “harvested” turtle shell, but shell nonetheless. Like usual she gave me the herbal formula in a way that I had to make tea out of it. This particular tea wasn’t that pleasant tasting (are they ever?) and of course I got distracted by something shiny. However, when I remembered to make (and actually drink the tea) it worked.
I had this brilliant idea to ask if she would take my remaining herbs and grind them into a powder and encapsulate them. They do this for a not so small fee. So now I take 8 of these big capsules a day and get shit done. As in getting it done with a smile on my face. It’s amazing.
There’s no real point here. I just thought I would share.
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*oddly, my acupuncturist is also named Lisa. (um… that’s my name for the noobs)
Believe it or not I’m taking this one literally. Or maybe it is just that I don’t want to be like the masses and work every theme into a photo of my child. Not that he isn’t sweet. That was my original plan, to take a photo of him, but I couldn’t come up with anything good. Instead you get a photo of a sweet and a story to go with it.
One of the worst things about having SAD* (or any kind of depression) is that effects your relationship with your friends and family. No matter how you fight it the people around you know. This is most apparent with my child. Doesn’t that make you cry. It does me. He regularly asks me if I’m having a smiley day. Hearing that from your 4 year old is enough to break your heart when it is certainly not a smiley day. In addition to the SAD I can get pretty bad PMS symptoms. Combine the two and you have the perfect storm of cranky. Around here, when mommy is cranky so is the boy thus causing a horrible cycle of whining. I’m am getting better at identifying when this is going to happen and am trying to prevent it. Sometimes it works and sometimes, not so much. I got lucky this week and found a little respite for both of us. Cooking.
My child loves to cook and we just haven’t done enough of it together lately. I recalled a post that Suz did a while back that looked like a good plan. It was for world’s most dangerous chocolate cake. Think about this… a child that loves to cook and a mommy with PMS. Take that crabby! An activity and chocolate cake in 5 minutes. Of course we had to take photos.
The photo doesn’t make it look terribly appetizing, but trust me… it was pretty good for a cake you can make in the microwave in 3 minutes. It was more like a cross between a cake and a brownie, with a touch of Wacky Cake (only not as good). I would have cooked a little less. I know you’ll email me for the recipe so here it is:
4T Flour
4T Sugar
2T Cocoa
1 egg
3T Milk
3T Oil
splash of vanilla
Supposedly you can mix this all in a coffee cup, but I opted for a bowl since I was working with an exuberant 4 year old. Then dump the batter into a coffee cup. I selected my giant Starbucks mugs, but a regular cup would work too. Microwave on high 3 minutes (a little less if you have a powerful microwave). It will rise up over the top of the mug, but that’s ok. It settles back down once it’s done cooking. Let cool a little bit and use a rubber spatula to scoop it out onto a plate. It would be really good with ice cream (but since I can’t really eat that… I had it plain).
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*Seasonal Affective Disorder
I have come to realize that my life it very dependent on the multitude of vitamins I take each day. and the sun. Oh yes, the sun. We haven’t seen the sun around these parts in more than 30 minute increments in months. I also haven’t taken my vitamins in about the same amount of time. I am now beginning to remember why I went to the acupuncturist for the first time back in June 2007.
At this moment I very much dislike myself and much of everything around me. So much so that I am really trying to figure out if the $15 in my wallet is enough to refinish my kitchen cabinets.
You see, when I get super depressed my first thought is to change something. In reality I should change something about myself. Get away from my computer, go for a walk, work in the yard. Anything. In my mind I want instant gratification so I want to do physically change something. Why do you think we paint a room every January?
I’ve run out of rooms to paint so the next possible solution is to work on the kitchen. I was going to replace the cabinets. I did the math and figured I didn’t have enough money to do that. Refinishing the cabinets would be cheaper. However, somewhere deep down inside I know that this will be more work than I’m willing to put forth. So there is still a little spark of logical left in me. Of course, that spark is what drives me to shower every day.
Here is how kitchen redo would play out:
Day 1: Elle goes to mega home improvement store to purchase paint and lacquer stripping materials (our cabinet doors have 1 layer of paint on them and the bases have 1 layer of lacquer and 2 layers of paint). She then removes all of the dishes from the cabinets, the cabinet doors and tapes up the walls. *Then it’s dinner time and she’s too exhausted to make dinner. We either a) go out for dinner, which will cost more money or b) the trusty husband makes dinner and I eat chicken and rice for the second night in a row.
Day 2: Elle opens the garage door only to remember that the garage is packed full of crap and she can’t move. She then spends the rest of the day cleaning out the garage. Return to *.
Day 3: At some point during the previous day Elle got distracted by something in the garage and decided to start a new project. The kitchen cabinets have no doors, there are dishes on every vertical surface and an untouched bag from mega home improvement store with refinishing supplies. Day 3 will repeat infinitely.
Now part of me wants to say “oh that won’t happen this time.” And then my husband reaches through the computer screen and bitch slaps me.
Oh right! I have a blog. I forgot about that old chestnut. Actually, unlike 3 million Americans I have actual work. The kind where I perform a service and people give me money. The bonus is that I get to keep my clothes on… but I still do it in front of a computer. Want to see what I’ve been up to? Check this out.
Liza contacted me weeks months ago wanting a redesign on a blog she wanted to make into a business. I like Liza. She lets me do fun things. Of course I said yes. Besides, someday I’ll visit Maui and maybe she’ll let me crash on her living room floor. (so kidding… um, maybe not)
Then, as I was finishing up Liza’s stuff Amy asked me for more stuff. After that Rebecca asked for a site* too. And then I was contacted by a friend who works for Microsoft wanting Power Point slides. And despite Power Point being the most horriblest** program in the world I said yes because, Microsoft = Money!
In between all of that I’ve been working on a project of my own, that no, is not doing a new header for February. You’ll be lucky if you get that. The header that is. The new project is very exciting, but I’m not quite ready to launch it yet so you’ll have to wait on that one.
Now consider that I’ve had all of that work in the month that my SAD is the worst. January was a little rough. I went in for my monthly sticking last week and my acupuncturist demanded that I come back in a week. So I go back this afternoon. I’m fairly certain that February is going to be much better and still with TONS of work.
The bottom line is that this little blog is waaay down on my list of priorities at the moment. It isn’t that I don’t like you anymore. It’s not you it’s me. Oh wait, we aren’t breaking up. So just go about reading blogs that update a little more frequently and put mine on a feed reader so you don’t waste your time clicking over here for a whole lot of nothing. But still leave me comments. I like comments.
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*Of which I’m not even started with so please don’t judge on the basis of what you see there.
** I am fully aware that is not a word.
