I bought Gbic a new puppy bed today, with sides to give her more support and comfort.
March 2009 Archives
Busy week again, and the weather has been good for the most part. There's not much to report. The doctor's appointment was as expected. Another endometrial biopsy, a talking to about my weight gain, and that's about it. We'll get the plan together on egg harvesting in a couple of months, and go from there.
I'm still organizing the house and trying to cook better for us. The random tasks of organization and cleaning have been taking up the majority of my time. The truth is I really don't have much to say right now. Getting the house finished is my sole focus right now. I'd like to entertain this summer, and that requires the house be finished, presentable, and everything we hoped it would be when we bought it.
I'm happy to report that all packages arrived at their destinations and all recipients were quite pleased with the contents, yay! Double yay for no breakage along the way. Being able to brighten someone's day from thousands of miles away is something special and wonderful, and as much as I bitch about the USPS, everything got to where it was going on time.
Yesterday we dropped off another 6 bags of stuff at Goodwill. I hope that the clothes and stuff we're dropping off are being resold in the stores and not being sold as rags. That's the one thing that bugs me about some of the drop boxes and other charitable organizations that collect clothing. I don't think it's a great plan to ship this stuff off to foreign countries by the ton to be used as scrap. Most of what we're donating is nearly new, and I'd hate to see that shredded. Yesterday was also garbage day and I cleaned through more of the stuff in the garage and got that out to the curb, yay!
On the cooking front, it's been kind of hit or miss. I made a graham streusel coffee cake yesterday that I've made many times before, but this time it was really dry and got a little too brown on the bottom. I think that might have been due to an ingredient substitution because I was using up what I had in the pantry. Tonight I baked a cherry crumb pie so that I can finally celebrate Pi day tomorrow! That looks like it turned out okay -- either way I'm sure we'll eat it. I'm not really sleepy so I decided to get a jump on tomorrow's cooking as well. I have lasagna roll ups in the oven now, and those will be even better tomorrow. Also on the agenda for this weekend, some sort of chicken dish, and canelloni. Jordan's birthday is coming up, and I want to make a cake, but I'm a little gunshy on baking right now. I'm not sure if my oven is off, or if it's me, but things have not been turning out consistently :) We'll see what I have time for and what I can come up with.
Updates have been more sporadic the more work I do around the house :) I'm still working on cleaning and organizing -- organization has been a bit of a bog down, but I'll get through it. This weekend I prepped some far flung and long overdue packages to be sent out. We went to the Wilton Home Goods store over in Woodbridge/Darien, and I have to say it was not that impressive. I did see a notice on the door that they were going to bring back the tent sale this year; so, when I got home I googled that. Apparently it's quite impressive and on the scale of the Pfaltzgraff tent sales each year. I'm definitely going to find some time to go, but I am debating picking up some items to ebay. I'll have to check prices etc to see if that's a worthwhile endeavor.
On Sunday I made bean pie for Adamy to put in the box of stuff that I was sending out to Leslie. I found the recipe on Homesick Texan's blog, and it seemed close to what was in the old Your Black Muslim Bakery's pie -- before they had to shut down for kidnapping and corruption charges. I think I might up the beans next time, take the sugar down a notch, and add ginger or some other spices.
Monday I made scotcheroos for Leslie's box and for a box I was sending out to WC. I also wanted to have some on hand for the UPS dude on Tuesday since I knew he'd be delivering the Bradley smoker :) I finally got all the boxes packed up and sealed and all of the customs paperwork and postage printed out. Then it was off to the post office! Except, the post office's intarwebs were down, so they couldn't accept the package going to my sister in the UK since it was going out via their FedEx partnership. No problem, we wheel over to the other post office, and I take a number, and I wait in line. And then I get the slow old postal lady, who questions and corrects every single one of my pre-printed, pre-verified forms that were printed out online according to USPS standards. 10 minutes later, she sees that the postage that her little computer is telling her is due, is more than my pre-printed commercial rate, and she says she'll have to collect the extra postage. At which point I put my foot down with Mary Lou. You can make me fill out a commercial invoice for a shipment that is both valued less than $43, and is clearly marked a GIFT. You can spend 5 minutes going through harmonized codes trying to find FOOD, NON-PERISHABLE. But you will not blow away my $20 discount for dealing with all this crap online and printing it myself. So, I informed Mary Lou that I was not going to pay more and she should just scan my paperwork in, and I assure her that it will show that it's been pre-paid in the correct amount. Wonder of wonders, she scans it and it says $0.00 due. Go me. But because of the amount of time and fuss that she has poured over this package, it's now delayed a day. This is quite vexing, but whatever, it's out and done. Leslie got her package yesterday; Heather got her package this morning. I'm just waiting to see if WC gets her package today, or hopefully by tomorrow.
WC sent me an awesome package of stuff -- all things BC! These awesome salad hands, some absolutely delicious chocolates and some really cool pics and postcards from the area. The chocolate was to die for, so so very yummy, and yes I ate it all :P And the Kootenays look very beautiful, but I definitely could not handle that much snow and winter. The gifts were quite unexpected and very appreciated on such a dreary rainy day here :)
In other news, the donation spree continues. I went through our master bedroom closet last night and got out a bunch of stuff to donate. We'll probably swing by Goodwill later today to drop off again. It's definitely nice to purge all of this stuff, and nice to think that it's going to a good cause. Time to go purge some more!
Been a busy couple of days, including the rediscovery of my iTunes and Pat Benatar. Cleaning continued on track, and the movers came yesterday to get the big stuff out to the curb, and the other stuff moved around. It was very cheap and it was very useful. The garbage men were none too happy with the cali king mattress at the curb, but I did call the city beforehand and they confirmed that it was a-okay to put that out at the curb!
Right now I'm working through getting donations going out to Goodwill and other organizations. For tax purposes next year, I'm cataloging everything that we're donating so we can have accurate receipts. So far we've dropped off 12 (smaller) bags of clothes and other items, and more to come. I don't think we've ever really donated a bunch of stuff, or bothered to cull through the older stuff in our wardrobes, but now is as good a time as any :) The guest rooms are habitable; the master bedroom needs some reorganization and a little cleaning; my office is doing much better but needs a bit more work on the desktops and final organization; the living room is looking good, just need to take some bins to the basement. We're doing great with not re-crapping things up; so, I do have high hopes that we're really going to do it this time.
The weather has been spectacular the last two days -- I know it's too early to last, but I went out and enjoyed the 65 to 70 degrees while it was here. I do want to get the roof replaced sooner rather than later to minimize the damage to the landscaping, so I'll put out some calls on that next week. Hopefully we'll be doing some entertaining as the weather gets better, and we're definitely going to have my family out sometime later this spring. I need to work on more cleaning and putting things away this weekend because I really want to try hiring maids again. I want to get a deep cleaning on the house done, ceiling to floor in every room.
I have a few things on the cooking front coming up, but nothing terribly exciting. I've been transferring some of my massive collection of random notepad files to a blog/journal format, but that's also not ready for primetime yet. Tomorrow I want to get things together to take to the cleaners. I have several formal dresses that I want to donate to The Glass Slipper Project, especially since I know how hard it can be to find fashionable dresses in larger sizes. I could ebay them, but with things being as bad as they are all around, I'd rather see them donated and making memories for some lucky girls.
Well, I need to get a marinade for salmon going before bed, so that's it for now.
Two weeks out til the next appointment, and I'm hoping for good news. But, I know I will go insane if I keep thinking about it for the next two weeks; so I'm just trying to keep busy. I still have lots more cleaning to do, but I slowed down a little bit today. No big deal, back at it tomorrow.
Yesterday I got a tiny windfall. Ten years after quitting my job in NYC, I got a check for the disbursement of my 401k... from 2002. It took them 7 years to track me down :) So, $569.57 is the little windfall -- not chump change, and because it was disbursed in 2002, that means it was already on my taxes then, so it's free and clear. I'm lusting after a Bradley smoker, but I think I'll wait a bit and see if I can get a better price.
I'm really looking forward to spring and summer and beyond. Finally having the energy to match my ambitions is just a wonderful feeling. I think I've solved the watering dilemma -- I'm going to make use of the HOA listings of teenagers advertising for odd jobs! So, this weekend I'm going to make another round of the seed catalogs and plant catalogs and figure out what I can handle this year.
