Spaetzle

No, that's not a foreign swear word. It's a pasta -- a german pasta -- that I haven't had in years. But I'd like to. I once had a roommate who was German. Her mom and brother were awesome cooks. When we'd go to their house we'd have awesome food -- and my favorite was ... spaetzle.

In all honesty I can't remember exactly what it tasted like. But, given my love for mac and cheese I'm guessing it was something like that. Mrs. Wolske's was the best. The total best. Even better than when I ordered it when I spent a summer in Austria.

I remember Mrs. Wolske and Michael making it by forcing dough through a collander (with larger than normal holes) into boiling water. That's all I really remember about making it. As I looked for a recipe I found that you then pan fry it -- with butter or bacon drippings. Oh, yeah, no wonder I liked it.

Drooling. What brought this on? We're watching Anthony Bourdain "No reservations" and he's in Austria. He just ate brains marinated in red wine (ick, ick, ick) and some really red, red, red liver. I had to look away when that flashed on the TV screen. I'm starting to feel queasy seeing that stuff.

Now flash up some spaetzle and I'd be all set. Wishing I could get Mrs. Wolske's recipe so that Rico could make it for me. Yum!

The case of the missing scones

Killer is doing ok. She's starting to breathe a little heavy again, but she's not in pain and seems like her normal self.

And yes, she's getting spoiled. She enjoyed toffee-chip scones yesterday... twice.

I should clarify it's not because I gave them to her as a treat (but you know I don't mind). I left the package on my night stand and forgot to take it to the kitchen yesterday morning. Apparently they sounded good to her because when Rico came home at lunch she'd taken the package to her bed, opened the plastic top, and eaten a few of them.

Rico (the silly guy) put the package back on the night stand, and by the time I came home after work she'd gotten them back down and finished the package. Yummy!

I'm glad she enjoyed them!

The terrible horrible no good very bad day

We love our dogs because they teach us to live in the moment, and they make that moment happy. Unless they are cowering in thunderstorms.

Words of wisdom from my friend, Paula. I'm struggling today because it's been a terrible horrible no good very bad day... we received the sad news that our big old puppy dog has cancer.

She started breathing really heavy last week when I was home with the flu. Rico took her in on Friday and the xrays showed... well, nothing. All they really showed was that her lungs were full of fluid. So much fluid that they couldn't tell anything else. That's not good.

We saw a specialist yesterday afternoon and they withdrew 2L of fluid from her chest. Yes, 2L -- the size of the Diet Coke bottle in my fridge.

The lab results came in this afternoon: It's an aggressive blood or bone cancer and there's nothing we can do for her except make her comfortable.

My heart hurts.

This is what she's doing now -- but on the carpet instead of the sand on the shore of Lake Michigan. She's napping and chasing after something in her dreams. Sweet dreams, baby dog.

Gorgeous day in Michigan today!

It's finally showing signs of warming up in Michigan -- we were up to a balmy 68 degrees today -- and I really mean that sincerely. Balmy. As in I-didn't-wear-a-coat-to-work balmy. Yippee!

In light of the great-weather-warm-up I figured I should update my list of "Things to do (... before the snow melts). Here's the progress (but before I get to that can I tell you how irritating I find it that there's no strike through option in blogger? Irritating. So what I would normally strike through I've turned to green):

- Do a major clean of all rooms. Clean out junk and only leave essentials. Put the rest in the barn for the spring Relay For Life of Lowell garage sale fundraiser. Pretty much done, out of necessity, because we hosted a baby shower on Saturday and I had invited many people who hadn't yet been to our house. Can't make a bad impression, you know, this might be the one and only time they see the house.

- Get Rico to build the cabinets for the "new" laundry room and finish the beadboard and trim. BIG, big excitement here! The cabinets are assembled and are cooling their heals in the living room -- waiting for another pair of hands to help Rico hang them up. My weak-armed self was no help as I could barely help hold up the tiny 10" cabinet Rico built to store detergent -- look at it. It's so small -- and I was no help at all. My only contribution as to make sure the bottom of it was "on the line" -- you know... the pencil line.
In my defense I'm too short to reach them over the washer and dryer anyway, so Rico pretty much knew I would be no help with hanging the cabinets. Oh, wait! I handed him the drill too. Wow, I'm good. Definite progress. Now I just have start putting money away to purchase the doors for these lovelies from IKEA.

- Clean couch upholstery (and figure out where we're going to put the couch now that it's been displaced by the treadmill). This one's half done --it's not steam-cleaned yet -- the couch made it to the basement (opposite the bookshelves and the toy table). I like it. I LOVE that it's no longer in the living room taking up space. While it was handy to have it there for the Christmas Eve party it got old fast.

- Scan old photos and eliminate prints not displayed. If you never look at them what's the point of having them sitting in a cupboard? I've got 75% of them scanned, but I still need to separate them and save them as individual images as I ganged them up when scanning to save scanning time. So, this one is half done too.


Still on the list -- and with the piles of snow melting we're running out of time -- unless it snows again. (it is Michigan after all):

- Patch cracks in drywall (1 living room, 1 bedroom, 1 basement stairwell, 1 hallway) and nail pops in ceiling. Rico, if you're reading this... I can't reach these, so I'm leaving these fixes up to you.

- Repaint master bath and add tile above the shower unit. Rico, if you're reading this... ha ha.

- Continue purging "holiday" decorations and paraphernalia. Too much, too, too much stuff. (And I'm not just talking Christmas stuff.). I still want to get to this before the May garage sale fundraiser.

- Sell Polish pottery that I don't use. Note to self: Let Desiree and Cookie know what's available as they might be interested.

- Pare down dishes in kitchen -- too many extra sets of dishes and way too many bowls. Rico did check with a place that buys and sells china about a set of dishes he has from his previous life (ha ha) -- we've just got to ship those off and rake in some cash. Woo-hoo!

- Clean out cabinets in bedroom. Purge, purge, purge. This will be easy once the new cabinets are up in the laundry room. I can purge, and move, and organize at the same time.

Ok. my work is cut out for me.

And I've got to get better about blogging -- it's been quite a while since my last post. I've been a bit out of sorts for a few weeks and haven't felt like I had the energy -- and then the shower prep took up time, and then I had the flu for 4 days (yuck). I've got to get back at it (and get back on the treadmill too)! Oh, that's another thing. I've been getting on the treadmill and that's cutting into my sitting on my backside time (also known as lurking/blogging, for me, anyway)

I'll have a baby shower post soon -- and I can share the "project" that I had my Dad work on for it (Thanks Dad!). Ber's due ANY DAY as the doc keeps moving up her due date!

Huh.

Rico is walking down the strip looking for the perfect spot to place a few bets at the roulette table. I'm shoveling snow. What's wrong with this picture?

Nothing! I hate Vegas. Well, that's not strictly true. I like people watching in Vegas (omg are there some freaky-deaky peeps), and I like browsing at the shops (even though it's all to chi-chi for me), and I like the warm weather (in theory it's warm there, not so much this week). But really I could take it or leave it. Vegas that is. I'd almost always take warm weather over cold!

He's been there for a few days helping a friend do some work at the hospital, and I've been enjoying my solitude (sorry Hon, no offense).

The dog has not been enjoying his absence... she's had an accident two days in a row. Apparently she's so used to Rico being home with her that she can't "hold it" until I get home from work. Ick. Ironically Rico is the one who is normally responsible for cleaning up such accidents so I'm stuck with it.

Gag reflex here we come.

So I'm cleaning up doggy messes. Doing laundry. Doing my own dishes (gasp). Vacuuming. Meh.

But I'm also LOUNGING in bed, reading, and playing on the computer, watching HGTV, eating chocolates. YEAH!

So it's a house full of girls right now -- NO boys allowed -- and we get to do whatever we want AND have control of the remote! Woop! Woop!

House Notebook

The holidays are over and it's time to get serious. It's time to haul out all the crap that got stuffed in cupboards, drawers, and closets as we prepped for hosting holiday parties. And as I think about doing that stuff there's a lot of other stuff I'd like to get done. Stuff that needs to get done before it gets nice and we want to spend time outside.

So here it is -- stuff I'd love to get done before the snow melts:

- Patch cracks in drywall (1 living room, 1 bedroom, 1 basement stairwell, 1 hallway) and nail pops in ceiling

- Do a major clean of all rooms. Clean out junk and only leave essentials. Put the rest in the barn for the spring Relay For Life of Lowell garage sale fundraiser.

- Get Rico to build the cabinets for the "new" laundry room (and when I say "new" I mean 1 year old) and finish the beadboard and trim.

- Clean couch upholstery (and figure out where we're going to put the couch now that it's been displaced by the treadmill).

- Scan old photos and eliminate prints not displayed. If you never look at them what's the point of having them sitting in a cupboard?

- Continue purging "holiday" decorations and paraphernalia. Too much, too, too much stuff. (And I'm not just talking Christmas stuff.)

- Sell Polish pottery that I don't use.

- Pare down dishes in kitchen -- too many extra sets of dishes and way too many bowls.

- Repaint master bath and add tile above the shower unit.

- Clean out cabinets in bedroom. Purge, purge, purge.

And then when the snow melts.....

A big blogging break...

A big break in blogging was started because of an eventful Thanksgiving week in 2010:

We had Chinese food on Tuesday night, and Rico had an upset stomach all night. Then Wednesday -- when he was supposed to be cleaning the house prepping for our big family dinner when we were hosting 20+ of my closest relatives -- he was busy tossing his cookies all morning, and we were thinking it was food poisoning or the flu.

Then he did tossed 'em again a bit in the afternoon. Then again when I got home from work. Then a TON at midnight. You're not supposed to go to the doctor for the flu, so we didn't. But then when my sister, the nurse came over she took one look at him and said he needed to go to the ER. So she took him. Thank goodness for sisters who are good in medical emergencies (because I am so, so not -- there's a reason I didn't go into nursing).

After several hours in ER (and a few funny stories of how you can bi-pass the triage area and go right to a bed) Rico ended up getting admitted that night with internal bleeding. I relieved my sister later in the afternoon, once the emergent situation was under control. Yes, I'm a wuss. I freely admit it. We all have our strengths.

Rico had a upper GI scope the next morning and it showed a tear where the esophagus and stomach join up (from tossing his cookies so hard and so frequently). Luckily it had stopped bleeding so they didn't have to do anything else. And we got a couple of really nifty souvenir photos of the scope (SCORE!).

So he was in the hospital, missing the big game in Detroit (high school state football finals) and eating hospital food that day. We were hoping that he'd be able to come home, but his first two blood draws after the procedure didn't show enough improvement. Then we were looking at the need for a transfusion. Ugh. Luckily his evening blood draw showed an improvement -- and he got to come home around 9:30 p.m. So we had our Thanksgiving dinner a couple of days late. :) How was your holiday?

The next week was spent keeping an eye on Rico and trying to get him to eat as may high-iron foods as possible, and getting him to rest and relax. That was work in and of itself. He's not a good relaxer. At. All.

So that was blogging absence #1. Then, a couple of weeks later my dad's oldest sister suffered a massive stroke while at bible study. Aunt D didn't recover, so December brought sadness and a funeral. My dad delivered a beautiful eulogy.

The Christmas holiday saw us all pulling together for our family's 50th annual Christmas Eve gathering and remembering Aunt D and all she did for us:
- my mom made deviled eggs for our party (Aunt D's normal dish-to-pass)
- Rico made Aunt D's queso dip recipe
- my brother and sister-in-law bought all the kids boxes of movie candy (and Aunt D tradition)
- my cousin J gave shoulder rubs (Aunt D's way of connecting with each of us)
- all the guys (and a few of the girls) gathered on our front porch to sing carols (again, Aunt D)
- we all spent time looking through boxes of photos that Aunt D had stored (which I am in the process of scanning so we can all have copies)

So that's it. The holidays.
Bring on 2011.