Choices, Choices, So Many Choices

I feel like I haven't blogged in ages. Since it's warmed up, I've been taking Cutezilla outside to get her worn out so she'll sleep better at night... and as it turns out, I'm the one who's getting exhausted. Which means the few hours I spend doing things like blogging disappear when I go to bed before midnight. It's sad. Very sad.

Usually at night, I try to cram in all the stuff that I can't normally get to with Miss Ninja Fingers around. You know, anything that involves:

A) the computer
B) anything delicate
C) PAINT
D) anything tiny
E) anything needing minor concentration or better
anything involving machinery

That list boils down as follows:

• Blogging
• Art
• Beading
• Scrapbooking
• Reading
• Writing
• Movies
• Sewing
• Woodworking

It's also amazing how Cutezilla has involuntarily reevaluated what's important in terms of my day-to-day life. For instance, she is currently at her Parent's Day Out program, and I have FIVE whole hours to do ANYTHING I WANT, and yet, the things that end up on top are generally pretty boring:

• Straighten the bedroom
• Straighten the kitchen
• Go to the grocery store ALONE
• Start dinner

Additionally, it's interesting what gets tossed out of the list labeled as "total waste of time." For instance:

• Eating
• Showering
• Napping

I mean, I can eat with Cutezilla around. I could take a shower with her, if I really wanted to get clean, but I can also wait until the hubby gets home. I could probably really use the nap, especially given how hard I sleep at night right now, and how early I pass out... 9:30 is about 3 hours waaaaaay too early.

Eating? Yeah. You're surprised too? Well, of it takes me 2 minutes to microwave something and 3 minutes to eat it, that's 5 minutes of the allotted 300. Minus transit, to and from, which makes that about 10-15 minutes, that's now 270, plus transit to go anywhere, say Walmart, take off another 20-30 minutes, now you're down to 240-ish. A real meal would bump me down to 200 minutes. Take out time for a shower, and now I'm down to 160. Even a half-hour nap would leave me with barely 2 hours to myself. Plus whatever time I spend "out" and that leaves me with about 15 good minutes to work on projects or the house.

Crazy, huh? Today I went to WalMart and bought a new elephant ear plant for the yard. I even managed to get it into the ground within 24 hours! It's a new record for me. I re-assembled a new bracelet for a friend of mine, and managed to get in a blog entry, so I'll call today moderately successful. But after blogging, I now have about 1 hour and 20 minutes left (again, minus transit).

Wish me luck that somehow, I start getting more energy back. (And NO, I'm not pregnant!)

Two Hours of Freedom Left

It's amazing how fast time goes by when you're on a time-budget. Cutezilla went to Mother's Day Out this morning, and one of the few things I managed to get done was make dinner (we'll call it "Half-*ssed Curry", since I was missing half the ingredients, and didn't want to "waste" my time by going to the store, which would have actually been 3 or 4 stores considering I needed an extra can of the mythic Patak's Madras Sauce; I cannot seem to find this stuff anywhere, except Kiawah Island). I did also managed to sand and reapply a coat of paint to my two basement projects -- Cutezilla's Height Chart and her shelf, that my sister gave us, and I wanted to reapply the paint, just to make sure everything matched.

Oh and I did cash some checks. Okay, maybe it wasn't a total loss of a day.

But tomorrow, Cutezilla and I are heading to the City By The Sea to see Grammy and my sister. Should be an interesting trip, to say the least. We pick her up on Sunday, so I will have a day or two to finish some of these projects, start a few new ones, and maybe get her room more put together. I am EXCITED.

We went to see the Terracotta Soldiers (all 12 of them) at the High Museum in ATL this weekend, and the exhibit was AWESOME. I highly recommend it, should you wander that way. I really wish I knew where it was heading next, but so far, I have found no information on that.

Anyway, need to run. Got more cramming to get into my free time!

And if anyone wants to try some awesomely delicious Beef Curry, here is my friend Stephanie's recipe:

Beef Madras from Sri Lanka via Canada

3 lbs beef
3 onions sliced
3 green chilies
3 cloves garlic
1 piece ginger minced
8 green cardamom pods, cracked
5 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
3 tbs curry powder
1 tbs cinnamon
3 tbs Patak’s (Madras) Curry paste
2 tbs chili powder
1 can Patak’s Curry Cumin (Madras) Sauce
½ can coconut milk
Cilantro minced for garnish

Remove fat from beef. Brown onions, chilies, ginger, and garlic on high heat. Reduce to medium heat and add spices, browning to release flavor. Add beef, lightly brown, then add curry paste, cumin sauce and coconut milk. Reduce to low heat. Simmer for one hour or longer.

Editor's Note: I might brown everything, but then I
usually pop it into the slow cooker for 8 hours.

Another Boring Weekend

The cold is back. I should say the "cold" is back. As in, it's 50 degrees outside. Not awful, but I'm not thrilled. I was looking forward to being able to go outside a little more, and to start really working out again. (I've been slack. I only went to the gym once last week.) And I would love to start walking every day. (Not sure what Cutezilla thinks of the idea yet, but I'm sure she'll find a way to object.)

I did finish one major project today with my buddy -- we finished editing our novel for the very last time. (So far I think we've edited it each twice. At least. It's been ridiculous.) The last time I edited was either while I was pregnant (29 months ago) or a few months after I had Cutezilla (19 months ago). So yeah, this has been long in coming, and he and I are thrilled. My next serious project is to reformat the whole thing, and send it to a publisher. Which means it goes directly into the slush pile. Yippee. But at least we're done. Editing sucks.

So even though Cutezilla was fussy because she's teething (again), and the hubby wasn't feeling very well for most of the weekend, AND even though we did little to nothing and I was bored out of my mind for most of the weekend and got almost nothing done in the house, I will still call this weekend a partial success, just because of the novel.

I think I'm going to try and finish up a replacement heart for the sign I sent my little niece (it broke in shipping) and then maybe read a few more pages of the new book I'm reading, before I hit the sack. I'm pretty syked, that I have managed to actually read more than one book, and the last one I just [re]read was 560 pages. And teeny, tiny type, too! The new one is the sequel, titled, The Wilding. While the last one was unbelievably complicated, the new one is much simpler so far, because the world doesn't need as much explaining. I will admit, I enjoyed In Conquest Born much more on the second read-through.

And the hubby sent me this very cute pic, so I was thinking maybe he might still like me after all. It's hard not to call that a success!

moar funny pictures

End of the Plague, Take Six

Okay, so maybe this is the last one. Maybe. Hopefully. Please?

I'm finally feeling better, and it's just in time for Spring! Ah glorious Spri-- what? I missed it? Summer already? Okay, maybe you're right, because it WAS 80 degrees yesterday. Mind you we had a snowstorm last week, and it was awesome!

I know, I know, I hate cold weather. But I love snow! Even more I love not living in snow! It means instead of having to contemplate shoveling your driveway and scraping off your car, and how to get out of the house, you just go home, find something warm and waterproof to wear and you run around like an idiot, flailing yourself around in what we Southerners pitifully consider snowfall. (We actually got like 4 or 6 inches, which is unbelievable, really. Especially for the first week of March.)

Oh, and you must also perform your Southern civic duty to go to the grocery store and buy milk and bread. Not soup. Not something hot and wet to warm your poor freezing body while the temperature outside drops below and out of sight of what we could normally call cold here. No, of course not, that would be silly. I'm not sure why this is standard, but somehow it seems to call out to your soul to perform this action. At least it did mine, and apparently two-thirds of my zip code population as well. I somehow managed to get out without buying bread, but the milk was a must-have for some reason.

Cutezilla sat in the buggy (Southern for "grocery cart" for you non-Southerners) while I loaded the car, and huge clumps of the stuff were falling from the sky covering us both. She laughed and giggled but we weren't equipped to stay out, and she was snotty, so we went home and watched it from the house.

But yesterday, we went outside, and it's really shorts weather out there. We even went to the zoo, and it was a perfect day, all in all.

Today is my day off! So it's even better! But somehow instead of reeling in the joyous celebration of my emancipation from all things baby, I am doing laundry. LOTS of laundry. I even have a whole load of PINK. How did I get to this point in my life?

Another Freaking Sinus Infection?!??

Okay, so since I began [counting] my trials and tribulations last September, this makes my sixth sinus infection in less than a year. SIXTH. That's not adding in the stomach bugs either. It's completely unreal. I used to get two infections per year.

However, instead of cursing God, like I had planned, I decided to try a new tactic. It's an odd one, but at this point, I'm a little desperate, you know? I know a few people who have done this, but I guess I was just holding off until the very last minute possible. Which, I guess, must be Sinus Infection #6. But I decided to try a neti pot.

If you've never heard of it, welcome to the crowd. It's a device for "nasal irrigation." You put lukewarm water in the pot with a salt solution (mine came with packets), and then stick the spout in one of your nostrils and pour the water into your nose. Very sexy, I assure you. The water runs into your nasal cavity, and out the other nostril. Unless, like me, you have a blocked off air-passage even on a good day, in which came it pools in the back of your throat, and you spit it out. See? What'd I tell ya? SEXY.

Mine, unfortunately, looks a lot like a tea pot with a penis sticking out of it. Just when you thought it couldn't get any sexier, right? Seriously, somehow, someone thought that by sticking the head of a penis on the pour spout, that that would make the whole idea of using a tea pot to pour salt water up your nose a little less ridiculous. If I'd been in a better mood, I'd have probably laughed really hard about the whole thing. If it really works, then I might consider upgrading to something a little less phallic.

I finally got over that little issue, mixed up the solution, stuck the spout in my nose, and started pouring. I really did think I was going to drown, but after my nasal passage opened up a bit, it really did flow from one nostril and the other. It was a very weird sensation, honestly, but if it works, then who cares? It's not like I'll be doing this every day.

I will say my nose has felt much better than normal during the course of a sinus infection. I'm still not great, but overall, the whole mucus thing is at an all-time low, considering what I woke up with. I feel pretty decent too, but that could just be the ibuprofen talking. I've done it twice today, so far.

I'm sort of hoping this works like getting a cold at the beach. I have yet to come home from the beach with a sinus infection. Mostly because I always get knocked over by a few good waves and end up snarfing half the Atlantic. A little trivia for you: the Atlantic Ocean is the saltiest of the five oceans. So, I'm hoping that the salt and water help clear out the infection a little faster than normal.