These are things that have bothered me for ages:
It is no longer "The Ukraine." It's just "Ukraine." Ukraine is its own independant nation now. It is not a part of the Soviet Union (which no longer exists as such). I have been told that Ukrainians do not like it when you say things about "The Ukraine" because it implies they are still under the thumb of the Russians. Stop saying it. If you are reffering to Ukraine during a time when it was under Soviet or Russian control, it is okay to refer to it as "The Ukraine." But otherwise knock it off.
Stop saying you had the stomach flu or the flu if you did not really have influenza. Influenza's most common symptoms are chills, fever, muscle pains, sore throat and a hacking cough that makes you want to die. Throwing up is not usually a symptom of influenza. If you are having gastrointestinal problems, you likely do not have the flu. Instead, say that you have a stomach bug.
Don't refer to somebody's child as their "adopted child." It's rude. Unless you are making a point of telling about the adoption or some other situation where you need to point out that the child is adopted, it is generally uncalled for.
I feel glad to have gotten all that out of my system. Thanks for obliging me.
29 January 2012
26 January 2012
Fashion Schmashin . . . OR Smashin' Fashion? (Probably the Former)
I seem to be doing Kayla's Winter Fashion Challenge. I wear plain colored shirts and jeans pretty much every day. I do not have a lot of clothes in my closet (or elsewhere). Plus I hate most fashion trends. Seriously. So why am I bothering? Because I want to make at least a feeble attempt at just looking nice-ish sometimes. (And that sentence shows you just how committed I am to that.)
Day 1 was "Layering." Kayla said, and I quote, "Anyone can throw a cardigan over a t-shirt and call it layering..try and push yourself a little." I do not like layering. I have never been a fan of the style. It is very popular, even in the summer time when extra layers means extra heat. I do not understand it. Consequently, I do not own much that can be used for layering. I own two, yes only two, tank tops. I own a few cardigans, two of which are not in really great shape. Plus, I looked at every single picture that Kayla provided as inspiration and thought, "That person looks ridiculous." So for day one I wore one of my two tank tops purchased somewhere completely forgotten to me now, a yellow top from American Eagle, a purple cardigan (with rosettes along the side that you cannot see in the photo) from Ross. Black skirt that my friend, Jessica, gave to me in 2004, pantyhose (because I still have not gotten into this tights thing), and black flats from somewhere. Maybe Ross. (As you can tell, I am very attached to my clothing and have perfect memory of where and when I obtained my most precious and favorite items.) Also there was a headband and a necklace and earrings.
Day 2 was "Monochrome." Unlike the previous day, I did like some of the photo suggestions. The difficult thing is that I don't really have a lot of non-jean pants, and I do not have a lot of solid-ish skirts that are not black or gray or brown. Plus I don't wear skirts unless I'm at a function that requires me to wear a skirt. I like to sit cross-legged and with my knees pulled up to my chest, both at home and at work, and wearing a skirt does not facilitate that. Plus most of my skirts are very multi-colored. So, I decided to wear my Old Navy "perfect khakis" that are incidentally the only pair of non-jean pants that fit me right now. Only, they're not the traditional khaki color, they are "poison ivy," which means "green so dark you will probably think it is black." And I wore my green turtleneck. Plus some green jewelry, which was kind of fun. Overall, I liked Day 2. (I had just come home from a Mary Kay facial party, so I was not wearing makeup for the photo. Pity.) Pants from Old Navy. Turtleneck from somewhere. Necklace from my MIL from her Alaskan cruise. Bracelet from my MIL from her trip to Armenia.
Day 3 was "Embrace a Trend." Um, see above. The trends Kayla suggested included many things I do not like - animal prints (tacky), faux fur (gag), skinny jeans (just cannot bring myself to wear any), sequins (is this a trend?) and a few other things that I didn't know were trends. In short, It was very hard to embrace a trend when I do not purchase, and therefore do not own, trendy products. I decided the best I could do was wear a scarf. I got several compliments on it at work. Black top from Old Navy. Scarf from my sister-in-law from her trip to Thailand.
So, that's what I've got so far. Sorry for the dark and grainy pictures. The cord to our camera is missing, and it's a pain to get the pictures off of it, so I've been relying on Eric to take pictures of me with his phone. And Eric does not get home until nighttime, when it is dark and the lighting is terrible. (Stupid winter.)
Day 1 was "Layering." Kayla said, and I quote, "Anyone can throw a cardigan over a t-shirt and call it layering..try and push yourself a little." I do not like layering. I have never been a fan of the style. It is very popular, even in the summer time when extra layers means extra heat. I do not understand it. Consequently, I do not own much that can be used for layering. I own two, yes only two, tank tops. I own a few cardigans, two of which are not in really great shape. Plus, I looked at every single picture that Kayla provided as inspiration and thought, "That person looks ridiculous." So for day one I wore one of my two tank tops purchased somewhere completely forgotten to me now, a yellow top from American Eagle, a purple cardigan (with rosettes along the side that you cannot see in the photo) from Ross. Black skirt that my friend, Jessica, gave to me in 2004, pantyhose (because I still have not gotten into this tights thing), and black flats from somewhere. Maybe Ross. (As you can tell, I am very attached to my clothing and have perfect memory of where and when I obtained my most precious and favorite items.) Also there was a headband and a necklace and earrings.
So, that's what I've got so far. Sorry for the dark and grainy pictures. The cord to our camera is missing, and it's a pain to get the pictures off of it, so I've been relying on Eric to take pictures of me with his phone. And Eric does not get home until nighttime, when it is dark and the lighting is terrible. (Stupid winter.)
25 January 2012
Boys Will Be Boys
Let's just get the exciting stuff out of the way. Ike broke his arm. Here's how it happened:
On my work-at-home days, I hang out for a good portion of the day in our upstairs office that faces the street. I keep the blinds open mostly because I like sunshine, but also because I like to see what's going on outside. It was last week that I realized my kid might like to see what was going on outside too. The neighbors across the street were getting some exercise equipment delivered. So I pulled the blinds all the way up and let Ike stand in the windowsill to watch. Then the next day he watched the rubbish truck do its thing up one side of the road. Then I quickly got him dressed and plopped him back in his windowsill to watch the truck come back the other way. He was totally mesmerized. Later that day he stood in the windowsill some more, eagerly hoping that something awesome would happen on the street. He did get to see his babysitter come out to bring her rubbish bin back to the side of the house, and he was so excited to see her. (She lives across the street and two doors down.) On Sunday he stood in the window sill and watched Eric leave for his morning meeting. And then he promptly fell out of the windowsill because I am a negligent mother.
He cried for a little bit but then settled down. Everything was okay, and he took a nap. The rest of the day proceeded as a usual horrible Sunday with one o'clock church.I noticed when I changed him over the next couple of days that he whined a lot when I pulled his arm in and out of sleeves while dressing him. Because I am a negligent mother I let him keep doing that thinking that he'd probably get over what was bothering him in a day or two. Last night he was climbing the stairs when he suddenly began to wail, and for the first time in this whole ordeal, hold his arm. Eric and I decided to call the pediatrician's office, which has extended hours a couple of nights per week. The nurse on duty told me that if this had been going on for a few days I ought to bring him in. So I sent Eric. And then the nurse practitioner sent Eric and Ike over to the hospital to get x-rays. Ike cried a lot during the x-rays as they put his arm in all the positions to get the shots they needed. The technician said he couldn't see anything obviously wrong with the arm, but based on how Ike was behaving there was probably something wrong. He was right.
Shortly after Eric got home the nurse practitioner called to say that he had two very minor fractures - one in the radius, and one in the ulna. She said to make an appointment to get the boy a cast on Thursday, so that's what we'll be doing tomorrow morning.
With all that said, the kid is as chipper as ever. If it weren't for the whining when we pull his arm through his sleeves neither one of us would have any idea that anything was wrong with the kid.
He cried for a little bit but then settled down. Everything was okay, and he took a nap. The rest of the day proceeded as a usual horrible Sunday with one o'clock church.I noticed when I changed him over the next couple of days that he whined a lot when I pulled his arm in and out of sleeves while dressing him. Because I am a negligent mother I let him keep doing that thinking that he'd probably get over what was bothering him in a day or two. Last night he was climbing the stairs when he suddenly began to wail, and for the first time in this whole ordeal, hold his arm. Eric and I decided to call the pediatrician's office, which has extended hours a couple of nights per week. The nurse on duty told me that if this had been going on for a few days I ought to bring him in. So I sent Eric. And then the nurse practitioner sent Eric and Ike over to the hospital to get x-rays. Ike cried a lot during the x-rays as they put his arm in all the positions to get the shots they needed. The technician said he couldn't see anything obviously wrong with the arm, but based on how Ike was behaving there was probably something wrong. He was right.Shortly after Eric got home the nurse practitioner called to say that he had two very minor fractures - one in the radius, and one in the ulna. She said to make an appointment to get the boy a cast on Thursday, so that's what we'll be doing tomorrow morning.
With all that said, the kid is as chipper as ever. If it weren't for the whining when we pull his arm through his sleeves neither one of us would have any idea that anything was wrong with the kid.
23 January 2012
Meal Planning - Don't Get Carried Away!
I've had a few people ask me lately about my food shopping and cooking methods. I think I'm somewhat organized in this regard. But I am by no means hyper-organized. I usually only plan 3-5 meals in a given week. I've found that when I plan more I either shop for way more food than we will actually eat, or I end up having things come up that cause me to put the meals on hold, and then the food goes bad. I do not assign specific days to specific meals, but I do try to keep in mind which days I will be working and which days we may have unusual things going on that could put a kink in our dinner plans.
So what do we do on the days that we don't have a planned meal? Leftovers. And we have a handful of go-to food ideas. Some of them are incredibly simple like deluxe grilled cheese sandwiches or bean burritos (with tomatoes, onions, cilantro, sour cream and green salsa). Some are a little more involved like red lentil curry or kidney bean curry. We eat a fair amount of pasta, too. As you may notice, most of our go-to foods are vegetarian meals and do not require a lot of fresh ingredients. That means that I generally have all the supplies I need for that meal on hand, without even having to add things to my grocery list. (Most of the items require onions, cilantro or both. These are staples in my household, so yes, they are almost always on hand.) We just celebrated the Chinese New Year with a bunch of neighbors, so we happen to have hundreds of frozen dumplings on hand right now as well. The dumplings will be added to the list of go-to meals until we run out of them.
When I plan my meals each week, I try not to put a whole week of new recipes. Usually I limit myself to only one or two new recipes. That way if the recipe is a dud, at least we know something that week will be really good.
I'll be writing a few more posts about organizing my pantry (Take that 2012!), making my grocery list, and planning crock pot meals.
So what do we do on the days that we don't have a planned meal? Leftovers. And we have a handful of go-to food ideas. Some of them are incredibly simple like deluxe grilled cheese sandwiches or bean burritos (with tomatoes, onions, cilantro, sour cream and green salsa). Some are a little more involved like red lentil curry or kidney bean curry. We eat a fair amount of pasta, too. As you may notice, most of our go-to foods are vegetarian meals and do not require a lot of fresh ingredients. That means that I generally have all the supplies I need for that meal on hand, without even having to add things to my grocery list. (Most of the items require onions, cilantro or both. These are staples in my household, so yes, they are almost always on hand.) We just celebrated the Chinese New Year with a bunch of neighbors, so we happen to have hundreds of frozen dumplings on hand right now as well. The dumplings will be added to the list of go-to meals until we run out of them.
When I plan my meals each week, I try not to put a whole week of new recipes. Usually I limit myself to only one or two new recipes. That way if the recipe is a dud, at least we know something that week will be really good.
I'll be writing a few more posts about organizing my pantry (Take that 2012!), making my grocery list, and planning crock pot meals.
20 January 2012
17 January 2012
My House is So Cold...
Back when I lived in New Zealand I sometimes wrote and whined about the cold. I couldn't wait to get back to the States and live in homes with central heating that I could set to 72 degrees. And I did. Except now that I have to pay the gas bill to heat an entire house, I am much more frugal with my heat.
I have the thermostat set to 60 degrees during the day. I only keep it this low because I don't want to forget to turn it down on days that I'm not in the house. On days that I am at home, I usually will turn the heat up to 65, maybe 67 if I feel like it. I pretty much always wear a fleece jacket when I am at home. It basically doesn't matter how cute my top is because I never even get to see it. I also usually wear some kind of warm socks or slippers. Some days I forget to turn the heat up in the morning, so I'll be upstairs working away and wondering why I'm so cold. Then I remember and run downstairs to turn the heat up a few degrees.
At the beginning of each month I check dutifully for the heating bill to show up online. I get very antsy about it. Our bill shows us how we compare in our utility bills relative to other homes with our same square-footage. As much as I like to keep my bill low (because I like money), I am even more thrilled to see how my usage compares to previous months, and whether I earned a 5 star rating for energy efficiency. I probably deserve a Saving the Planet badge. Somebody should get on that.
I have the thermostat set to 60 degrees during the day. I only keep it this low because I don't want to forget to turn it down on days that I'm not in the house. On days that I am at home, I usually will turn the heat up to 65, maybe 67 if I feel like it. I pretty much always wear a fleece jacket when I am at home. It basically doesn't matter how cute my top is because I never even get to see it. I also usually wear some kind of warm socks or slippers. Some days I forget to turn the heat up in the morning, so I'll be upstairs working away and wondering why I'm so cold. Then I remember and run downstairs to turn the heat up a few degrees.
At the beginning of each month I check dutifully for the heating bill to show up online. I get very antsy about it. Our bill shows us how we compare in our utility bills relative to other homes with our same square-footage. As much as I like to keep my bill low (because I like money), I am even more thrilled to see how my usage compares to previous months, and whether I earned a 5 star rating for energy efficiency. I probably deserve a Saving the Planet badge. Somebody should get on that.
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