Monthly Archives: July 2010

Jul30

It will be cleaner than when I found it. (I hope.)

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It will be cleaner than when I found it. (I hope.)

Hello, Internet.

I’m in Iowa.  I’m in Iowa because last week Joey decided I needed to.  And then my Great-Grandmother (who lived to be 99 1/2!!) passed away last week so we wound up out here anyway for her funeral, which was Wednesday.  Joey left me at my parents’ house on Thursday and rode back to Indy with my grandparents in their RV.

So here I am.

In Iowa.

I decided I might as well as not make dinner for my parents, and my mom’s brother from Texas happens to be in town this evening.  He’s bringing a friend.

Fortunately, I packed my laptop which is my baking and cooking brain; almost all my recipes have been imported to my cooking software, so yesterday I sat down and planned a menu: beef & cheese enchiladas, mexican rice, refried beans.  (All from scratch, of course.)  Naturally I will omit the jalapenos from the rice and beans, as well as dial down the chili powder in the enchiladas.  I haven’t forgot which state I am currently in.

Mom and I went to the grocery store yesterday  afternoon and, would you believe it, THEY WERE OUT OF CILANTRO!  I just kind of stood there, pouting and staring at the empty space where the cilantro should be resting in the cooler and squeaked a few disgruntled squeaks.

Then, in the middle of the night, I decided I needed to also make a French Silk Pie for dessert (because that goes SO well with rice and beans, yes?)  We don’t have enough chocolate or heavy cream, so I’m headed back to a different store again today.

They’d better have cilantro.

I’ll probably be making a disasterous mess of my mom’s kitchen this afternoon while she’s at work.  In fact, I already have a spot of flour I forgot to wipe off the counter from when I was just whipping up my pie crust dough (which is now resting in the refrigerator for its alloted hour) and I should probably go deal with that before I get busted.

Childhood Laird Rule #1: you can experiment with making pretty much whatever you want in the kitchen, but you’d better leave it cleaner than when you found it. If not, Mom WILL come find you wherever you are and make you come back and do it right.

I’m hungry.  When’s dinner?

Jul27

The Name Game: Week 3 Results

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The Name Game: Week 3 Results

When I was a little girl, I got a Cabbage Patch doll for my birthday.  I was SO EXCITED when I tore off the wrapping paper and saw what was in the box, and the first thing I did after I un-twisted her from all the twisties holding her on to the display cardboard was rip open her birth certificate and see what Xavier had named her.

Marna Cloris.

“It’s a really ugly name,” I sighed.  But then, I think all Cabbage Patch dolls have to come with ugly names on their birth certificates.  I don’t understand this.

Since her name was already Marna, I never changed it.  Even though I hated it.  I played with that doll for years and I loved her in spite of her name.

Ten years later, I was home from college and decided I wanted to go dig around in the laundry room and find my dolls to see how they were looking these days.  All my old dolls were easy to find, Mom had left their crib, bassinet and diaper bag (which used to be the diaper bag back from when I was a baby; it has animals on it) right on the second to bottom shelf.

I pulled out the crib because I could see that all the dolls were conveniently stored inside the crib for efficiency.  Marna and my other two favorite dolls Melanie and Elizabeth (I named those myself, can you tell?) were facedown under a few other dolls of my Sister’s, so I pulled emptied out the crib and flipped them over.

Silence.

Then, a scream. “MOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!”

I grabbed all three of my dolls, tucked them under my arms and ran up the stairs with their little heads and arms bouncing as I did so.

“MOM!  The boys wrecked my dolls!”

I deposited them on the kitchen table so Mom could see the proof.  Through each eye, nostril, ear, and lips and top of the head were nail holes.  Big ones.  And I certainly hadn’t done it.

Marna was the worst.

I don’t remember if Sister’s dolls had gotten wrecked or if it was just mine.   Perhaps I will check later today when I go home.

Mom felt bad for me, naturally.  ”I was going to give these to my little girls someday,” I sighed as I stared at my ruined dolls laying on the table.

The Kid and The Brother disavow destroying my dolls, even though it’s obviously it was them.  I think they just feel too guilty and so they blocked the memory.

A few years back, I noticed Cabbage Patch dolls were sold in stores again, and Joey bought me one  She was much bigger than Marna, who had been a Preemie, but she came with shoes and Marna never had shoes.  I can’t remember her name, I stuck her, her birth certificate, and her pink plastic shoes straight into a box so she’d be safe for when we had a little girl someday.

I’ll dig her out when we move and put her in the baby girl’s room.

All this to say, when it came to making our Baby Name Alphabetical List, when we game to the letter M…I lobbied hard for the name Marna.  Even though it’s not very cute.  ”For my destroyed doll,” I told Joey.  And he rolled his eyes, but he agreed since there was a 0% chance we were choosing that name for our baby.

The two eliminated names from this week are not terribly surprising.

  • Uma was the overwhelming un-favorite with 67.67% of the votes.
  • Marna came in a distant second with 18.67%
  • Frances and Lenore tied with 9.33% each.

Therefore, Uma and Marna are now eliminated.  The list reads as follows:

Analie

Beatrice

Coraline

Darcy

Elinor

Frances

Gillian

Helena

Isabelle

Julianne

Kiera

Lenore

Marna

Nora

Olivia

Piper

Quincy

Rowena

Simone

Talia

Uma

Violet

Wren

Xara

Yalena

Zerubabella

Jul24

I knew better

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I knew better

Two years ago in Branson I  gave Joey his vitamins with a glass of orange juice and he turned gray and upchucked all over the place right before we were heading to go out to do whatever we had planned to do that day.  He brings this up regularly.  Like, as in, once a month or so.  It’s usually something like, REMEMBER THAT TIME YOU MADE ME THROW UP?

In our Bradley class last week, we discussed nutrition.  And the benefits of citrus and orange juice, in particular.  (For the building up of membranes so ones gums don’t bleed, among other things.)  I usually drink cranberry juice in the morning, because I love cranberry juice so much I’ll even drink the straight up unsweetened stuff that makes most people pass out.  But last night at Whole Foods, we grabbed a quart of OJ and thought, heck, we’ll just drink this with our breakfasts and get more citrus in.

This morning, we were up early because we had plans to go to a farm in Russiaville to pick corn and shoot skeet.  I dragged Joey out of bed and went to the kitchen where I whipped up a delicious spinach shake, which does not taste disgusting contrary to how it might sound.

I was sipping my OJ as I finished blending my shake, and I slammed back my vitamins before switching gears to start drinking my shake.

It was a super good shake, too.  I had used probably more strawberries than I needed, so it was very tasty.

Twenty minutes later, as I was standing upstairs holding Henry, drinking my shake, meeting some new people, and everyone was getting ready to walk out the door, I began to feel really strange.

And one minute later, I began to feel STRANGER.

I sneaked off into the bathroom off the kitchen and took some deep breaths trying to figure out WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ME ANYWAYS? when I realized that, doh!, I had taken my vitamins with orange juice.

The deep breaths weren’t cutting it.  So I ran downstairs, hoping I could at least make it that far.  Fortunately, I did.  And I will spare you the aftermath, but let’s just say I went the way of Joey two years ago.  A significant portion of my spinach shake was wasted, because I had almost finished it.

I went back upstairs, drank a few more drinks of my shake, then loaded up in the car with everybody else and we all drove off to pick some corn.  Upon further consideration, drinking more shake after that was probably not the smartest thing I’ve done all day.  (Well, it was smarter than tossing back a bunch of prenatal vitamins with a glass of OJ though, right?)

And now, twelve hours later, Angel and I have processed about 200 ears of corn and they are now happily resting in our freezer waiting for us to eat them.  Nom nom nom nom nom.  I tell you what, being back in the Midwest sure is awesome.  Corn, soybeans, cows, mosquitos…wait, scratch the mosquitos.

Now it is time for dinner.  I need to take more vitamins.

Jul23

Lucky boy

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Lucky boy

Yesterday was Lake Day, so we loaded up on the big blue bus and drove out to Freeman Lake, which is about two hours outside Indianpolis.  Even though Indy feels a lot less like a concrete jungle than Dallas did sometimes, it was still really nice to get out of town and sit on the side of a lake.

I even participated by wearing my extremely fashionable and very slimming maternity bathing suit.

That was all sarcasm.  Maybe you didn’t pick up on it right away, but it totally was.

Anyway, it was hot, it was humid, and it was a touch cloudy, which was probably good or it would have been even hotter.  Just after lunch, Joey was going to switch off with Jonathan at driving kids around on the Jet Ski, so he swapped his regular specs for his prescription Oakley sunglasses….and dove in the lake to swim out to the Jet Ski.

Guess what happened when he jumped in.  Just guess.

DINGDINGDING – you’re right!  The sunglasses fell right off his face and sank straight to the bottom of the lake.

A minute later, a very shell-shocked looking Joey came plodding up the yard without any glasses on at all.  ”My sunglasses sank,” he said.

I tried very hard not to get super mad.  Just a month ago we had updated the lenses in the frames, which he has had for a couple of years, and although our old insurance had paid for it, the thought of replacing the whole thing was making me dizzy with dollar signs.  Those glasses had not been cheap.

Joey wandered in the house to find some goggles, and a few minutes later he returned with a huge snorkeling mask.  ”I’m going to go try to find them,” he said with a gloomy voice.  ”I know exactly where I jumped in.”

So, off he went.  Down the dock and back in the water, this time with no glasses on, just a snorkel mask.

Down and up, down and up, down and up.  Each time he resurfaced empty handed.  I figured the glasses were as good as gone the moment they fell off his face, but I still sat there praying, please Lord…please let him find those glasses.

Obviously my faith was weak, because the next time Joey came up out of the water…he whooped and hollered and held up his sunglasses.  I was totally shocked.  He came running back up the yard, snorkel mask sloshing water everywhere, and deposited the glasses on the table in front of me.  ”I won’t wear them near the water any more!” He panted, out of breath from all the underwater searching he had been doing.

The part of the lake he had dropped them in was very deep, so deep that while he was feeling around on the bottom his ears were hurting from all the pressure of the water.  That very last time, he had been just about to give up when he saw something weird on the lake bottom…and lo and behold it was the glasses!

Whew.

I was so glad he found them.

We were both super thankful, and Joey’s morale immediately improved tenfold.

I think next time we’ll get a little floaty strap for them or something.  Nerdy, yes, but cheaper than replacing the sunglasses.

Jul22

All Mixed Up

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All Mixed Up

For the last couple of days, Joey and I have been tossing around me taking a few days trip to Iowa next week to see my family.  Joey thinks I should go for a week, I am thinking I might want to come back on Saturday so I don’t miss a Sunday here.  Who knows how long I’ll stay.

Here’s what’s weird.  My brain is all mixed up.  I now seem to think of Iowa and Texas equally as “home”, so in my mind when I am planning what to do when I’m home (in Iowa), I keep catching myself making lists of all my Texas friends I will go and see, and what I’ll pick up from Central Market while I’m there.  And then I have to stop myself and say, SILLY JENNA, those people live 16 hours away from Cedar Rapids.  You cannot see them and you most definitely can’t go to Central Market.

Holy cows, I am all mixed up.

Speaking of cows…I hope Pops has some good calves but he probably doesn’t.  I think they all got born a month or two ago, which means zero cute calves.

Jul21

Two cars, two days

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Two cars, two days

So, like, we always are bragging on our Toyotas. “They NEVER break,” we gloat. And they never did.

On some other day this week, maybe Monday?, Joey called me from church and said I’d need to come and fetch him because…the car wouldn’t start.  POOR LITTLE COROLLA!  He’s only 4 years old!  HE SHOULD BE STARTING!!!  HE IS NOT OLD ENOUGH FOR THESE KINDS OF SHENANIGANS!

I had just gotten out of the shower and was making dinner prep, so I grabbed my makeup and drove up to church to rescue Joey.  On the way back home he drove and I systematically applied the layers of powder to my face necessary to make me not look quite so scary.

Apparently, the battery was dead on the car.  Like, not the kind of Mostly Dead from the Princess Bride where you can take a pill covered in chocolate and then slowly come back to health and vigor.  It was the kind of completely and totally dead where all you can do is go buy a new battery.

So yesterday, I was housebound.  Joey took the UHaul blankets that we had rented back to the store and bought a new battery.  ”$90.00!??!!!” he wailed to me on the phone as he was driving back to put it in the car.

Meh.  Ninety dollah.  Could be worse.

Joey changed the battery himself, something which I really hate when I think about because he always is telling me about how he can fatally shock himself doing said activity.  I really am not ready for him to fatally shock himself, or really do anything to himself hazardous.  Because he doesn’t have health insurance right now.

Oh, did I forget to mention that?  Yeah, we tried to get him a little policy to tide him over until after the baby is born and we can join up on our new insurance…but he got rejected.  (We are currently pursuing other options.)  He’s 27, not overweight, and quite healthy, actually.  If they reject JOEY…I’m not sure who they will actually accept.

Maybe kittens?  Puppies?  Pandas?

Obviously not humans.

This is off topic.  I am not discussing the woes of health insurance in the America, I am supposed to be discussing how our cars are being lame.

Summary on the Corolla: it works now.  Joey changed the battery and now everything is fine.  I guess batteries die after 60,000 miles, or so Joey tells me.

On the RAV4, which is still a brand new 2010 baby and only has about 7,500 miles on him…just about 2,000 of which were added driving to and from Indianapolis for interviews and/or relocation.  We’d been noticing over the past few months, though, that whenever we drive over a bump, speed bump, pothole, or really anything that’s not perfectly smooth, the shocks scream “HEY THAT’S NOT MY JOB!” and go on strike.  We go out of our way to avoid anything bumpy now.  And that’s kind of not the point of having an SUV, is it?

Also he has a whirring sound when we are braking between 30-20 mph.  (It could be the gear rack on top, but since we are both inside the car when it is driving at those speeds we can’t really tell.)

Since little RAV4 is still under warranty, I made an appointment with the dealer this morning.

I drove there and sat for an entire hour.

And then they told me that nothing was wrong with the car.  I guess it’s supposed to ride like that?  At least it didn’t cost me anything to have them tell me it was fine.

I related the diagnosis to Joey and he got all riled up and said for sure and for certain he was going to take it to an independent source.  We’ll see.  I mean, neither thing is a big deal at all.  Just don’t drive over bumps going fast.  And…turn the radio up to avoid hearing whirring.

Maybe it IS the gear rack not screwed down quite tight.  I’m too short to check it out though.

Totally weird.  We never have a second of any problem with any of our cars and then within the space of two days they both get all angry with us and start misbehaving.  Totally coulda been worse than $90.00, though.

Jul20

Name Game: Week 2

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Name Game: Week 2

Well, we’ve eliminated 2 of the 26 options so far…today it’s another one down!  Joey had the power of Executive Order this week and he deleted one just now.  And it was….

ROWENA!

So now, we’re left with 23 possible names.  That seems like a lot considering how many weeks left of pregnancy I have left…we may need to do a double elimination vote again next week to get caught up.

Analie

Beatrice

Coraline

Darcy

Elinor

Frances

Gillian

Helena

Isabelle

Julianne

Kiera

Lenore

Marna

Nora

Olivia

Piper

Quincy

Rowena

Simone

Talia

Uma

Violet

Wren

Xara

Yalena

Zerubabella

Jul20

It made it!!

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It made it!!

Yesterday, our stuff made it to Indiana.  I was kind of shocked to see it, actually.  A week ago we had loaded it up on an 18 wheeler, locked the door and driven out of Dallas while glancing at it in our rearview mirrors.  It seemed kind of like magic that it was actually delivered and intact.

Just seeing my bamboo plant, couch and kitchen table made me feel better.  Since we have no home yet (well, aside from the awesome place we are staying until we find one!) we hauled everything into a back room at the church and are going to store it there for awhile.  The truck was unloaded in about an hour (compared to, what, the four it took to load it?), and there were so many people who came to help!

Once everything was all stored, it felt kind of crazy to walk around in the boxes of our stuff even though it’s not in a house.  It looked familiar, but not all at the same time.

Also, I was able to dig through some of the clothes boxes and locate two of Joey’s pairs of jeans…just not THE pair of jeans.  I still have no idea where that one is.  He’s wearing his second favorite pair today, so here’s hoping when we finally buy a house and unpack I’ll get a location on his actual favorite jeans.

I have a feeling my name is mud if I can’t find them at that point…

Anyway, it’s fabulous to have our stuff HERE!  Now I know that whenever we DO find a house, we will at least be able to have people sit on our couch.  And I saw my box of All-Clad, so my pots and pans made it.  I’m kind of dying to know if my Le Creuset pottery  survived…but no way am I unpacking those boxes until we move into a house.  Is too risky.

But yay!  Our stuff is here!  No going back to Texas for us!

Jul18

zzzzz

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zzzzz

I took a 2 hour nap from about 4:00 – 6:00 this afternoon.  I’m not even sure that still qualifies as afternoon anymore, but in any case it’s what I did.  We had movie night at church, and I was trying to stay up for all of it.

I did manage to stay awake (although I was not verbal after 9:30 as per usual) but by 10:00 it was time for mama go to home.  So I gathered my purse, my Vapur bottle (black this evening, to match my outfit), keys and cell phone and wandered out of the youth room and down the stairs and too my car.

Once I got to the car I realized I should probably tell Joey I was leaving.  So I texted him, turned on the car, and drove off.

I got nearly all the way home when I realized the roads were SUPER dark.  Like, was it a no-moon night or something?  Because it was pitch-black.  They have a lot less street lights up here in Indy than we’re used to, we often comment on how DARK the roads are.  But tonight, it just seemed darker.  And then I realized I hadn’t turned my headlights on.

Whoopsie.

I flicked them on just in time to realize I had driven past where we were staying, so then I had to turn around on a completely dark street.  Fortunately I had headlights to help in front, but this did not help for the backing up part.

Anyway, I made it home, got the house unlocked and relocked and put everything down.  I decided it would be a wise idea to take Henry and Indy outside, since I was the first one home.  Because I keep locking myself out (but usually have a backup way to get in), I thought I should probably grab my cell to take out with me.  Just in case.  It was downstairs, though, so I snagged a cordless on my way out the door with the dogs.

Good thing I did, too, because immediately I got locked out.  And because I had deadbolted the downstairs door when I came in…I was totally locked out.

So there I was.  Standing out front with two doggies, mosquitos swarming, all doors locked.

I only know one phone number right now, and it’s Joey’s.  So I quickly dialed him up…and he didn’t answer.  Probably because he didn’t recognize the number I was calling from, since I had just snagged a cordless.  I dialed him again.  Fortunately he answered this time.

“I’m locked out,” I told him.

He laughed at me.

Then he got me the code to get into the house; I picked up Henry (who refused to go to the bathroom with Indy around – he’s so high maintenance, that guy) and carried him while Indy followed us.  I punched in the code…and nothing happened.  I tried again and, to my great relief, it worked.

Once we were all back inside safe and sound, I took Henry back outside by himself and managed to not lock myself out this time.  He finally did his business, but not before a bunch of mosquitos found me.

And now I am downstairs again.  I am kind of surprised I made it home from church, to be honest.