Mommy just vacuumed the car, and ain't nobody eating nothing with sesame seeds in there until the clean wears off!

I made this for last night, because I needed to cook without shopping. It was an awesome, impromptu dinner:

Roast remaining beets and carrots from garden in olive oil and salt (450 degrees, over an hour, peeled and cut small).

Frizz (a lot of choppd) garlic in olive oil, add (6 or 7 frozen) basil (lumps) and one can of drained chickpeas.

Add roasted vegetables to chickpea pan.

Cut in thin ribbons of chard (central stem cut out of each leaf).

Throw in some chicken broth and cover to cook chard. Stir around.

Add one box of cooked (al dente) angel hair pasta.

Add leftover spinach and artichokes from Bertucci's dinner the night before.

Stir around until all hot, add more broth as it gets absorbed. Add some parmesan cheese for laughs.

It was so, so good!

 So, this week has been about getting up and going with the get up and go, and I've done varying well with that. I've put together good to-do lists and banished the scary mystery piles, so that helps. My bills are paid up to date (for today), and that makes me feel okay. I have groceries in the house. That said, I got up this morning, brought the kid to school, and knew I was not going to be getting much done today. My brain just isn't complying.

I have a secret belief (don't tell anyone, or even say it out loud. When you say it out loud, it sounds crazy) that if I play dead like a possum, I can stop time and the commensurate flow of responsibilities, bills, emails and phone calls to return, the spoilage of lunch meat, the uncontrollable and occasionally violent growth of my hair, the weekly erosion of my unemployment qualification, and possibly, the inexorable trip south of my breasts. Playing possum can look like napping, or just laying on my belly reading a book. This, not surprisingly, not only doesn't stop time, it makes the very real time I'm living in go more quickly and when it's gone? I'm no farther along in my tasks and jobbies and manifesting my fuzzy vision of my personal development.

So I'm trying to stay present with the time. It's hard.

This morning, in the interest of not running home to sleep, I picked up a free pound of (unsalted, or course) butter at Stop & Shop (use your coupons, people!), my free book for October from Salvation Army (punch card!), then I hit up a church tag sale on the way home. I figured I'd only spend a few bucks, and there might be some cool books or toys for the kids. Well, there were, and I got an awesome vintage rubber duck (in hopeful belief that a trip through the dishwasher and/or washing machine would render it sanitary enough for child enjoyment), but the coolest thing I found was a(nother) big statue of Mary and St. Theresa. For those of you who have known me for a while, I no longer collect madonnas, having deaccessioned over 500 of them over the course of years. Never again. That said, it's hard to see the girls out in the world, getting disrespected. Last year I found a big (2 feet tall x 2 feet across) plaster or chalk joined twin statue of Mary and St. Theresa, which I presented to my very grateful sister Theresa for Christmas. Today what do I find at this Methodist tag sale? Same thing. For two dollars. And it was standing sort of off to the side on a table of tragedies. When I hustled up to pay for it, the woman said, "Oh yes, someone dropped that off, and they said it had been blessed, so I didn't think it would be right to throw it out." What? They were going to throw out a statue that been donated to a tag sale? I felt like some sort of papist hack, standing there explaining that it was Mary and Theresa ("See? She's always shown with flowers"), but I was grateful that I'd saved the girls.

When I got home, I poked around on amazon and posted a few CDs and books I'd picked up. I've been selling a few books on amazon lately (do it! It's super easy). If I sell one unopened set of CDs I bought today, I'll make back the $10.00 I spent on the tag sale. And I'll still have scored a wooden puzzle and a few other toys for the kids. (Plus a 1968 Snoopy music box that I'm going to try to ebay, although I've never been able to sell anything there.) I looked up the statue to see if I could sell that, but I can't find anything really like it, and it's really heavy and fragile. So it's living in the kitchen for now. 

If my goal today was to get a job, or solve my problems or save the world? Not so much. If my job was not pass out in a depressed funk, I'm doing okay so far. 

Okay, I need to grocery shop, and I'm the anxious sort who buys doubles when staples are on sale (and when I say staples, I'm including Fluff, frozen basil lumps and baker's chocolate). Because of my false-memories-of-a-Depression-childhood-lifestyle, sometimes I squirrel away things to the point that I can't remember when I bought something, and I'm not sure (when or if) it will be consumed. Therefore, before I buy more food, we're eating down the freezer and fridge. It'll just be a few days, but dinner tonight was:

4 crab cakes,
a bag of frozen onion rings (cooked, okay?),
half a can of baked beans,
the contents of a mysterious ziplock bag,
and the last carrots and beets from the garden, pureed with honey and dill (dillicious!)

My sister called me when I was setting the table, at which point I confessed to her that not only did I not know what was in the ziplock bag when I took it out of the freezer last night (lasagna? spaghetti sauce?), but even when it was thawed in the bag, I couldn't tell. I'd already covered the vegetable (not green, but beta caroteney at least), protein (beans and crab cakes), and crap (onion rings) categories, so I figured whatever was in the bag was just gravy. Of course, it might literally be gravy. Except it was red. Tomato-based soup? I finally just dumped it in a bowl and sent it for the nuclear spin, and it turned out to be... leftover lentils and potatoes in a nice tomato sauce. Awesome -- protein and lycopene!

And the best part was that the kids and everyone else horked down the whole damn thing, happily, and it was just the right amount. Abundance may not always look like an Olive Garden commercial around here, but even without the endless breadsticks, dinner's pretty tasty.

Okay, cindy_lou_who8, here's the mac and cheese "recipe":

Boil some pasta. Drain it.

Make a white sauce. The sacred ratio for a white sauce is 2 T butter, 2 T flour, to 2 C milk, but I'm more likely to frizz a half stick of butter* in a pot until melted, throw in a few high tablespoons of flour, stir it and let that bubble for a while (a few minutes) (to kill the raw flour taste). Whisk in milk until it makes a sauce of an appropriate thickness. At this juncture, for mac and cheese, melt in as much cheese as you want, of whatever kind you wish. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper. (If you were making a tuna casserole, you would, instead, throw in some drained canned tuna and peas. Salt and pepper to taste.) Add pasta to sauce. Remassage seasoning.

Eating it out of the pot is fine and delicious, but if you want to bake it, you can put it in a heat happy dish and top with crumbs. (I mix bread crumbs with some melted butter and parmesan cheese if I have it.) Bake it (at, say, 400 degrees American) for, oh, any length of time, until the sauce bubbles up at the sides, and before the crumbs burn.

There you have it!

Subtle, right?

---

* Alright, sometimes a whole stick, and a little more flour.

Hi, gang. I promise I'll post at some point about myself. For the time being, you may assume that no news is, well, no news.

That said, I have a friend in desperate need of good energy, prayers, etc. Here's the link:

http://goodbadgirl.livejournal.com/374230.html

Please keep Gabby (and goodbadgirl, too: she's dealing with some very bad health herself) in your hearts.

I'm pretty sure we're here to carry each other.

(Cross-posted from wls)

I briefly Facebooked this yesterday, but yesterday (after standing in line in a government building, with four children, for three hours*,**), I stopped at Mercy on the way home and ran in to weigh in, since my attempt of Friday had been foiled by the government holiday. I hadn't been in in about two months (well, I'd been in once, but my weigh was a few pounds up so I pretended it had never happened), and my loss has been slow lately (about 60 pounds this past 12 months), and I wasn't expecting much because my pants have felt the same since Christmas. I mean, I could have gained. But when I hopped on, the number was... 216.6. I don't process numbers well or quickly, so I just saw the "6" and thought, "I still need four more pounds to have lost 200 pounds." Then I thought, "Wait... is that a number in the teens?" I got on and off four times, and it stayed the same. Go figure.

So I'm officially 200 pounds down. 205 (.4) to be precise. Thanks, DS! It's slow, but I'll freaking take it.

I wonder how much weight I'll have to lose until I'm not a fat girl anymore? Who knows. Anyway. The next number I'll point my nose at is getting below 200 pounds. The last time I weighed 202 was in 1990, when I still lived in DC. Huh... that'll be like I lost the whole outside layer that experienced grad school. I wonder if pain and anxiety are fat soluble? Have they been dumping back into my system as I lose the weight?

I thought I should celebrate, so after walking into TJMaxx and spending 3 minutes picking the pair of sandals closest to the ones that had just broken on my feet that morning (and wearing them up to the register, removing them only to pay and have the big white clip removed), The Beetle and I went to see the new Ice Age movie. So painfully boring, and one of the sweetest things ever, sitting with my laughing child in a movie seat I could fit into. With her on my lap.

--
*People were totally glancing at me and I know they were thinking, "At least she'll be going through menopause soon."
** And they were good as gold, I tell you no lies.

DS in two stages, November 2007 + April 2008
Dr. Alfons Pomp, New York Presbyterian Hospital
5'2"
422/377/298.2/216.6/healthy-TBD
Highest Weight/First Surgery Weight/Second Surgery Weight/Current Weight/Goal Weight

I'll post for real sometime soon, I promise. Suffice to say, I'm alive and holding it together.

Meanwhile, here's an "NSV"* from this evening: something I'd never been able to do with my kid before:



---
= Non-scale victory. The ones that count.

A woman who can do this? Could probably make me a pair of pants that fit well. Out of eyelash yarn.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7947984.stm

from the wise and well-informed fattest

(This video has subtitles in English that I don't have a way of transcribing... it shows a series of people with varying physical and mental challenges and says they're not to be pitied, difference is normal. The ironic lack of access is not lost on me.)

Even in the depths of protracted flu-like illness, there lays within each of us the strength to stretch out a trembling hand, grip a tiny phillips head screwdriver, and build a "Robug".

You go, Beetle! (And she's better now. Phew!)

Although I had socked away $500 for the professional organizers' conference in Orlando next month, finding out the hotel room is $200 a night for three nights made the decision for me. It's fine: I already sent the $500 off to my credit card and another bill. Money does not get dusty around here. :)

The Beetle is home sick today, and so I'm tending to her sweaty form, and making her read books about robots for her science fair, because I'm an animal. Please know, I listened to four hours of "Oliver" wafting from her room, then opened a can of chicken soup and microwaved it for her before I made her work.

I'm also conquering hideous items on my to-do list, like calling the insurance guy and asking why I'm still getting collections notices from the hospital. Oh, that reminds me, have to call another insurance guy to ask why I haven't gotten the estimate for what they'll pay to fix last week's car accident damage. I'm off to make that call!

Don't envy me.

If you've ever heard me complain about anything, it may well have been my kitchen ceiling. It was aesthetically loathsome to me, so I made it even more so by ripping down a dropped ceiling, then taking a looong time to get a new one up. But, thanks to my brother Joe and other forces for good, it has been completed, and I painted it over the past week, and except for some manner of specialty switch plate cover I need to hunt and gather, it is a joy and a delicious slice of completion in my life. The pictures are dull, but I'm posting them anyway.
( Kitchen Ceiling Befores and Afters )

On a different note, although my weight loss is much slower now, it continues, and apparently my body responded well to running up and down a ladder for two weeks. I lost about 7 pounds during that time period, and as of this morning I'm 238.8, or over 183 pounds down. My shoulder area is getting pokier, and my ass is getting, well, lower. I bought my first white bra today in about a million years, because I'm actually wearing shirts that are of a color that the black ones show through. And since I'm not Sandra Bernhardt/Madonna, and this isn't 1985, we're not going to that place anymore.

I'm just reporting in to say that I'm having an awesome day. I got some nice cuddle time in with the kid this morning, then I buckled down and have gotten all this work done (including a new book review up at my org site: http://www.mmartone.com/?page=1). I've figured out my scanner so it's not a psyche out obstacle any more (I know, duh). I'm making a systematic file of all my blog entry ideas for work, and I have some good leads on computer backup strategies (thanks, ironman!), which has been preying on me.

::runs to kitchen::

And despite the fact that I just spaced out a pot of pudding on the stove which led to a bit of a moment right there, I'm still happy. I'm also on my fourth John Lee Hooker CD in a row, which has got to be facilitating the righteousness.

Hope you all are enjoying your days, vacation-y or not.

So here I am, being a responsible home office type and realizing that my random and infrequent stabs at backup are inefficient at best, and a prescription for heartache at worst. My dream would be to backup my files offsite, and the types of files most critical to backup are my photos (can't find the gigs, but 8137 pix), my music (over 63 gigs), and my work files (not so much, but increasing numbers of Excel files).

I'm seeing Crashplan: http://www6.crashplan.com/consumer/features-compare.html

and Backjack, which seems prohibitively expensive, considering how much music I have: http://www.backjack.com/faqs.html

I'm suspicious of free plans (should I be?), and I'm willing to pay, but I really can't afford $1000 bucks a year because I can't stop taking pictures of weird things.

Anybody have any advice?

Apparently, when I'm not being forced by "the man" to sit in front of a computer all day, I only sit in front of a computer the bare minimum of time it takes me to make sure I haven't missed an important email. I've been skimming Facebook and LJ, but the absence of forced desk time has really cut into my reflective ramblings. I'm quite sure you miss all of that.

So what's been filling my days? Oddly, work. I've been getting a slow but steady stream of organizing gigs, and I think the people at the thrift store where I bring most of the donations are beginning to view me as their cash cow. I deeply enjoy my days of sitting with people and helping them sort their physical (and sometimes their internal) stuff. I also enjoy a much more physical relationship with the work than I had in years past: I can really heave the stuff around and go up and down stairs with much more enthusiasm, and fewer thoughts of imminent death than I did 175 pounds ago.

On the weight front, I've stalled a bit, but that's cool. A friend and I are scheming on some means of motivation. I'm not gaining; I could just be making more healthful choices. I need to stay more present with my food choices even when I'm busy or running late. I'm not living the same "bring a lunch to the office" lifestyle, so I need to re-imagine the strategy. That said, I'm also not snacking all day in front of the computer, but I do eat when I drive distances/when I'm driving tired. Maybe I should just make a No Car Eating rule. Hmm.

When I'm not working, I'm doing my roughly-8-hours-a-week vollie gig in the ESOL program. That continues to challenge me, because it's not something I've done before. I'm freshly embarrassed that I only speak one language. Granted, I speak it a lot, but that's not the same.

The Beetle and I went to DC for the inauguration. Hopefully, time will blur the memories of how cold it was, and leave her with the sense of importance of having witnessed history.

( Tired of important, quality photos of the inauguration? Step right up. )

Besides that wee trip, it's been ordinary. I've made some changes to my office that have made it a little tackier, but more conducive to business (curtains across the open shelves, because the contents were so visually distracting). Been sneaking in a few books lately; mostly YA. Until today I thought I'd never see my driveway again, but there's been a minor thaw, and I spy bits of pavement. I haven't made any exciting new recipes lately, but I've been hankering for lamb, so once we've eaten down the freezer, I'm going shopping. Of course we'll have to eat those "Buy One Get Two Free" kielbasas first. The kids are all well, and I'm grateful for each day I get with them. The Beetle came back tonight from a day out with two yarmulkes on: I'm not sure what that means.

And that's me in a nutshell.

Oh... and I'm on Facebook now, although I'm not a big poster. I'm just there under my real name and there's a picture, so I'm easy to find. Add me if you wish. :)

I'm working at being a good worker from home. Staying focused.

That said, I'm also pumping through some laundry, and this morning I actually had an entire load of "pinks."

I didn't take many pictures over the holidays, because I'm working on enjoying the moment instead of documenting it. Plus, my neph, J., took a bunch of family photos, so hopefully I'll have access to those. That said, there were a few things I thought I'd share.

( Stockings, a statue, and a shitzu )