Life's been good to me so far

I was really going to do the New Years pics, but then I was thinking I never posted Christmas pics, and I've just made so many yummy things this week that it started me looking back at other yummy things...I'm sure you get the idea :)

( Best of eatin' in late November, December and early January )

One of my favorite things is to be cooking something delicious in my kitchen, with a glass of wine and music playing. Tonight it's a couple of whole chickens being roasted different ways - one dry roasted with onions, potatoes, garlic, carrots and salt, and the other cooked with lots of butter under the skin and along with broccoli and mushrooms. And Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, and Regina Spektor.

Today was pretty good. Grant went and got our three littles from his father's, where they spent the night, at 10. They were thrilled with their time and told us so many stories that you'd think they'd been there for a week.

I went and got Ananda and Aaron from Cybele's, where they spent the night, in the afternoon. On the way back the three of us stopped at Whole Foods for kefir and at Tim's (oriental grocery) for rice paper wrappers and more boba. Back home I made everyone bubble tea and did a ton of work for my Sensation and Perception class - we have three of these massive 50 point assignments that use three different websites and software, and involve printing and filling in 9 pages each. One down, two to go O_o I also have an exam (and he's warned us they're vicious) on Thursday, in that class, and a research project to get out of the way soon now that we're somehow already in week 3 of 6...the summer semester is kinda intense with everything crammed in.

Grant and I went up to Publix in the rain when I was finished, since they had a great deal on this tea I love that adds up if you buy it at Starbucks or on campus. It's nice to just sit in the dry, quiet car with him and talk about sensation and perception and research and cooking and whether we should move somewhere more urban or not.


This three day weekend has involved:

-swimming at the Y, twice - and all of a sudden (just when I was finally about to resort to lessons) Isaac, Jake and Elise are all swimming! And floating! And super excited about it!

-observing both the southbound (Friday) and northbound (this afternoon) highway traffic coming and going from the Keys for the holiday - it was thickly boat laden, with a lot of jet skis, bicycles and tow behinds, and at least one car pulled over with people sitting on the ground playing guitar in the median - and overall this always tends to remind me of this.

-sitting in my car* reading about Alfred Adler and taking notes on my phone while Annie had roller derby practice

-two solid hours talking with her and hugging her and trying to encourage her as she talked about how much she hates being upset for no reason and how freaked out she feels by things that aren't freaky and otherwise cried and raved about the general bullshit that is her age...it is really, REALLY AWESOME to me that she can talk about any of this with me, now...I eat it up, actually. I'm so glad we got a lot of her communication troubles out of the way before adolescence kicked in and over complicated things more.

-dropping/picking up Aaron at dance for the millionth time this month (recital and company show coming up...)

-seeing Brian Viglione post that the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (which I have always had on my bucket list) is in danger in the post-Hurricane-Sandy reality up there, and that he would be playing with Amanda Palmer the following night in a "Save the Mermaids" benefit. I wanted to go to this SO BADLY, like Grant has so many frequent flyer miles and hotel points saved up from business trips that we actually researched flight schedules and ticket prices and hotel locations and I was flipping my shit with longing. I was manic about it. It was a really sucky letdown when it all proved impossible, and then I spent awhile the following morning being very emo about it. Tears. I think it represented something larger to me, about personal freedom and living in the moment - I haven't really went nuts trying to make something impossible like that happen in several years. Sometimes it works, is the thing :p This just would have been TOO inconsiderate, though, unfortunately :/

-so much sex. Really, this was so overdue, and it's been awesome and I am not slowing down anytime soon. HEDONISTIC FRENZY FTW

-also, last night Grant and I had a date out alone, for probably the third time in the past couple of months...it was good, we ate at Outback and saw Hangover 3 - I was very very aware that the movie could go either way (too dumb to even deal with, or hilarious), but aside from some problematic shit I could do without** - it was pretty funny for what it was.

-a bubble bath and textathon Saturday night, while G was out with Shaun

-about 4 hours spent naked that ended with eating gelato straight from the container, with a spare plate, so that I could pull it out, pick through it for chunks and put it back. Because that's how I roll.

-a nap-too-long at an odd time that I woke from confused about day, place, and general life.

-tacos and cider for lunch in our dining room


I've done so many step-by-step pictures as my days progress, either for Jake to see one day while I was in school (he demanded to know what the heck I mean by, "going to college" and why he can't come - Grant works from home on days I go to school but he's fairly distracted with the "working" part), or for Grant when he's at the office and wants to see what we're up to at home. I keep thinking I should just put a DITL together and then realizing that what I get with them in mind is not what I'd put on the internet at all. For instance, Jake's report featured lots of stuff like escalators and elevators and riding in a golf cart, and banks of vending machines, and some guy on a skateboard, and all the sort of things a 7 year old would think was cool.

This weekend was great for the most part, but I get really lonely, sometimes. I have one budding friendship in one of my classes and my sister and I keep having these times when she's like, standing around my front yard with her kids in the car and we talk because she's passing through my side of town for something (they've been mildly sick for weeks with something she's afraid to pass on because it's so hard to kick). But way too many of the people I care about are really far away and only available through my phone.


*We got a second car about 10 days ago! It's such a relief. It's a 2011 Ford Fiesta, which is not really something we're "excited" about in and of itself, but we picked it because it has excellent safety ratings and amazing gas mileage (better than the Prius did - 29/38 city/highway). Already it seems like we'll be saving the payment each month in gas savings and breaking even, it's crazy what a different it is to have a "commuter" for work/school...

**Really, it's 2013 and we're laughing at a "Chinaman" with an exaggerated accent who speaks bad english? *wince* Also, what IS this weird Hollywood insistence that fat people can't have chemistry/fall in love/get it on? The whole idea that it's supposed to be inherently hilarious for fat people to act like human beings is fucking ridiciulous, and obviously has nothing to do with reality.

For the past 48 hours or so, I've been totally out of butter and milk but had tons and tons of greek yogurt (like way too much). So, I've been doing research and experimentation. So far, I've made:

-scrambled eggs with tablespoons of greek yogurt stirred in after the first minute of cooking - they came out great (I put in some herby Mrs Dash and salt, too, when I beat the eggs)

-an Alton Brown carrot cake that calls for yogurt and oil (and I actually made cream cheese frosting without butter, too - just whipped the room temperature cream cheese with some vanilla extract and lots of powdered sugar, and threw in some shredded coconut I had in the fridge at the last moment). It isn't the best carrot cake we've ever had, but everyone likes it and it's definitely getting eaten

-cheese biscuits. There are easily google-able 3 ingredient yogurt biscuit recipes all over (though they're more like 6 ingredients for me because I had to mix up my own "self rising flour"). I just shredded some good cheddar into the dough, which is how I magically turn any biscuit recipe into a cheese biscuit recipe ;) Incidentally, those were to go along with this DRY ROASTED <--O_O chicken recipe that gets stellar reviews all over: http://1tsplove.blogspot.com/2011/07/thomas-kellers-roast-chicken.html I normally use almost a whole stick of butter to roast a chicken, between what I put under the skin and in the cavity and what I leave on top

Next: Nigella's lemon yoghurt cake, which I've made before and know we like :) I have it in her Domestic Goddess book but I'm sure it's all over the web. I think that will be for tea tomorrow.

For lunch, tomorrow, I'm making a variation on an old curried chickpea thing I've done a lot of times that adds in condensed cream soup and tomatoes. It's a little scary, but well reviewed, and I have gross canned leftovers from the holidays ;)


Before I started to see the weird surplus of things in our fridge and cabinets that we were allowing to equal "there's nothing to eat!" - when I was well stocked with that surface layer of food that gets eaten first after a trip to the store - I made Julia Child's french omelettes for the first time and THEY WERE EPIC. Omelette is, clearly, a french word, but basically a "french omelette" is just an omelette cooked briefly at high temperatures in a lot of butter, rather than for awhile at medium temperatures on, you know, PAM or something. I upped the ante by seasoning them with herbs and filling them with brie and mushrooms I'd pre-browned. Ananda, Jake and I each tore one up, and I used the same basic formula to make "french scrambled eggs" for Aaron and Isaac (Elise claims to hate eggs for the last few months).

I am working on a creamy mushroom soup that is ultra-healthy, vegan, etc. So far what I've put in the stock pot is:

-2 yellow onions
-red and orange bell peppers
-many cloves of garlic
-3 cans of chickpeas
-a can of black beans (both drained)

All pureed in the magic bullet with small amounts of water added to each run-through. I'm filling the pot up the rest of the way with chicken broth after all that boils for a few minutes and then simmers for a bit. Then I'm adding tons and tons of mushrooms and cooking it just a bit. Then I'm eating it.

I'll report back.

I keep being blown away by how manageable things are around here, lately.

I don't get everything done that I want to get done (LET'S NOT GET CRAZY) and there are always snafus along the way (see: last night's entry), but...this is still worlds apart from having a bunch of diapered wild things that need every bit of their day attended to. Worlds apart from being so crazily overwhelmed by new responsibilities. Worlds apart from being in the darkest stretch of ignored, worsening PTSD.

I didn't get much sleep last night; I just couldn't seem to get down. I was pretty damn tired driving Grant to work this morning. I came home to a quiet house, my brother left for JobCorps, and I was like dude whatever and went back to sleep. This was at like 8:30.

I woke up at 11:30, feeling way better. House is still noticeably cleaner than usual from the massive cleanup we did yesterday.

All five kids had gotten bowl of cheerios and almond milk and eaten bananas and granola bars on their own and there was only one bowl and one wrapper left out.

Ananda had done all her chores and was most of the way done with her math work for the day.

Isaac, Jake and Elise were gathered around the Sesame Street YouTube channel (Aaron had helped them) watching videos.

Aaron was constructing something out of golden orb spider web from the sideyard.

I took about one relaxed hour that involved lots of talking with all of them about the movies they went to see with Dad last night and all our plans for tomorrow and the next day, during which I handled lots of food stuff:

-2 pitchers of sweet iced tea brewed, mixed and chilling, to go with dinner tonight
-whole chicken from the freezer thawing in a big bowl of water, for roasting this evening
-pasta boiled up, sauce heated, and mushrooms butter sauteed, for lunch
-2 jumbo cans of pineapple chunks chilling in the freezer for "dessert", after lunch
-double-sized crate of strawberries chopped and coated in sugar, marinating in the fridge for tomorrow morning's oatmeal

We boiled extra pasta for ducklings I'll take them to see after they endure coming along with me to get my financial aid debacle straightened out; Aaron is writing a paragraph about this latest nonfiction book he read for me.

It's just kind of wild how EASY so many things are.

---

FedEx just came by. When I was in Boston, pregnant with Elise, a lawyer-activist friend of Nancy's asked me if I would pose for some pictures with different facial expressions. She was having several women do this, pregnant or with newborns, for a series of shots to be used as promotional materials for her new site (consciouswoman.org) when it launched. I'm still in contact with her (she's most likely, hopefully contributing to my surgery book) and she was telling me about how she had the images painted by an artist and was sending all the "models" lithographs of the painting of their own image.

So that's what FedEx was delivering to me; a matted lithograph print of an oil painting of me on all fours in a floor length dress, a million months pregnant with Elise, trying to look like I'm "awakening" or "realizing" or something like that (I can't remember).

I'm really not sure what I think of it O_o Ananda and Aaron give neutral reviews.

This big dork personifies pubescent awkwardness, and I love her for it ♥ That's the caution tape we had blocking the redone driveway (some guys came knocking that they'd done other peoples' and had leftover materials so they'd do ours ultracheap) and a shirt she bought with her own money.

When she spotted that one in the pile at Hot Topic she was like, "Is that Lucius Malfoy?!" at first glance. Grant said, "That's Lucius Malfoy 1.0" and I laughed, remembering this:


The King (Elvis) has been making Isaac really happy keeping him company at night. The sling makes it harder for him to get to sleep so he ends up feeling alone after the other kids are down.

He's also had a lot of hunting to do...last week he brought me two dead palmetto bugs, and then woke us in the night...he'd knocked over a chair and was apparently playing with a SCREAMING mouse...I shook Grant awake telling him it sounded like someone had broken in and was robbing us with a rubber duckie, and he ran out to see what was going on.

Beautiful girl.


Our new ultrablack driveway is really awesome for my super fancy mail ordered ultra vibrant chalk. That is oily and messier than normal chalk. We came out and found them this way today.
















She was making iced tea to go with dinner, from some loose leaf blood orange tea, and kept finding bits of real peel that seemed to impress her.


I was making the rest of dinner. And having cinnamon cardamon tea with almond milk and lychee honey in it. It was SO YUMMY.


And Grant made this little table for Elise's Princess Palace. I had my doubts about where in the hell he was going to fit a TABLE, but he obviously had the concept well developed. She's getting a little chair to slide in under it tomorrow. The (sewn by Kristin) cat family is living under it for now.



I leave you with two AMAZING Florence and the Machine songs that Grant and I had left undiscovered on the CD for months because we didn't understand they have to be played LOUD. Seriously, if you are in a position to play something LOUD, try these :D

(Grant and I BOTH got speeding tickets in the van, separately, the other day, while blaring this damned song...so maybe listening to it up loud while driving it TOO good...)


And then this one was part of our "magical night" and just...I love this woman :D


I really cannot emphasize the LOUD part enough, though. There are Florence songs that sound great low but these aren't them.

I was in this ridiculous funk during his last group of work days (he does either 3 or 4 12 hour shift days - plus commute - in a row each week, then is off for 3 or 4 days until the next week's shifts start up). He and I had stuff to work through...not horrible stuff, but stuff causing tension, and it's really hard to do that through email and the occasional interrupted phone call. I'm really sensitive to any slight problem we're having and it just eats away at me all day long to know there's something being left there to fester.

I also have a hard time reverting back from active days - last week for instance I biked with Aaron for 40 minutes Sunday, walked for an hour with the double stroller Monday, and swam with Ananda for an hour on Tuesday. Then Grant went to work and W-S I had no way to break from having all five kids and so it gets really complicated trying to do any kind of continuous excercise. I have a really, really hard time with recorded workouts and floor excercises, or any kind of gym type repetetive indoor junk. The best I manage with the kids is slower walks, often shorter; whole afternoons cleaning; and sometimes danceathons with them. The point is, I can start to feel really sedentary and cooped up. I spend tons more time stuck in the van on his work days, too, as that's when pretty much all of their activities happen to fall.

AND, it was a nice sleep-free 4 days between late night allergy attacks waking me and Elise's increasing failure to co-sleep like a rational human being (she's being transferred to the toddler bed now).

All of this culminated in me irreparably burning soup I was making for a potluck we were already running late for while I typed another emotional email back to Grant at some frantic pace - I smelled it and ran for the kitchen...just as Jake peed in the clean clothes I had set out for the little kids to wear when we left and I dunno. A friend posted this, and I really needed it -



I pretty much could have written those lyrics, and the energy, it was perfect. The video is a huge part of my perception of the song. I called to cancel our potluck attendance, and cried, and had a danceathon with Jake and Elise, and then Grant came home. Since then, the songs for living by are;

-That one, Feist's "I Feel it All"
-Feist's "1234"
-MGMT's "Kids"
-MGMT's "Time to Pretend"

The last two are not songs I'd have written the lyrics to ;) The videos are also ridiculous. Great for turning dishes into a danceathon, though. G and I are pretty much keeping that playlist on repeat in every room of the house and both vehicles.

SO.

We all went to church Sunday, and it was good, and then we dropped Ananda, Aaron and Elise off with my sister, and Jake and Isaac off with my mother in law, and hit it up to the metrorail station just the two of us, where we caught a train to Viscaya...

(camera phone)

I'd never been before. It was pretty awesome. I was excited to see, as we turned one corner of the place, that we were on the ocean...I'd had no idea and oh my how I love being near/in the ocean. The place is just incredible. We spent about 6 hours out alone together with what I would call the ideal balance between Serious Talk and Laughing Our Heads Off, with some nice food and kissing breaks. Also both of us had sore legs from all the stairs everywhere - wth, when did we get so out of shape?

We watched Appaloosa one of these nights, and started The Fall tonight. Pretty great stuff.

Some "out by ourself" or "with just one kid" times for each of us. Some really great extended and miraculously uninterrupted lovemaking.

I'm normal again.

I want to talk about a billion other things, but I'm going to be scattering about 20 pictures through it all, so you'll have to ( Join Me Behind This Cut )




.

Due to lack of time, or disctraction, mostly. I've been doing well, though. Kind of got my head straight about continuing to be pregnant, and Isaac has been more calm, too. My due date is in 4 or 5 days, btw - does anyone know what happens to my ticker once it's passed, assuming I haven't had the baby yet?

I had/have a huge update I would like to type up, about how I love all of my children, Grant and I can easily imagine wanting/having more in the future, and I'm damn tired of total strangers in the grocery store asking if I'm getting my tubes tied and neighbors yelling "No more! No more!" across the street at me (that really happens!). I feel like only children are missing out bigtime and like closely spaced siblings have much cooler relationships...but I'm sure as heck not lambasting random women at the park for not feeling the same way within their own choices! It just boggles my mind that people see kids - new life, the ultimate blessing, etc - as this huge burdensome chore and interpret many of them as some sort of insane excess. I still do look forward to one day going back to school, being a chaplain, writing things that get published...but on another level, it really seems like anything else I do will be so empty, compared to raising children right. I'm so *fulfilled* by holidays and traditions within a big family...and absurdly satisfied by the look of the kids' room, with Aaron's play rug and the fabric'd out bunk beds all done and the drum set and doll house. It makes me so happy to do science experiments and go to Girl Scouting events and pray with them before they go to sleep at night - I think the best is how we figure out new things and get better at it every time. Like, I didn't know about slings or cloth diapers before I had Isaac. I never took control of my health and prenatal care before this pregnancy. We've consistently been more stable, more educated and more financially capable with each baby...in that respect, it just doesn't make any SENSE to make some sort of definitive decision that we are "done" forever now - NOW that we have everything we need for a baby in the house already and don't even have to buy anything new, now that we already have a vehicle with extra seating, etc. I DO want a break - I wouldn't want to get pregnant in the next 2-3 years, because I want to be out on our own or have this place to ourselves with Grant Sr moved out, due to space constraints, I want to continue to be able to provide one on one time to each of them daily, and my body could use a break. But it's easy for me to imagine wanting another "pair" (like A and A are and Isaac and Jake will be) after that. It's easy for me to imagine Grant and I being 35 and most of them being basically grown and deciding to start all over, because we just can't stand not having a baby or toddler around anymore. /end tons of kids stuff

We spent the whole day out yesterday; Grant had to fix some internet issues for a customer up in Miami, and I had to get more yellowdock from Wild Oats, where we ended up having late lunch, and then he also ended up stopping to look at someone's computer in Pinecrest, on the way home. We brought homeschool supplies so that A and A could do workbook pages or get read to in the van, while Isaac nursed/got changed/ran amock as we waited for G. It ended up feeling really productive to me - he made $150, I was out of the house for hours, we ate well and Ananda learned new phonics rules. When I got home, my mother, mother in law, father and sister had all called while I was out...and I have to admit I was glad to dodge the labor questions for at least one day. From the top of a parking garage Aaron thinks that north Miami looks like "a city with lots of brocoli growing all over it".

The birth center show started yesterday :) I have a sweet lady tivo'ing and recording it for me, but it's still driving me batty that she's SEEN it already, and I have to wait!

Today's agenda includes lots and lots of fall-type cooking. I have peaches that will be muffins, pumpkins that will be pies, and apples that will be sauce. I think we'll do chicken and yellow rice for dinner, it's been a long time. I'm finding I actually feel a lot BETTER, when I'm on my feet most of the day moving, then I do when I try to relax. That just makes me get all stiff and sore and then it feels too hard when I DO move. When I am sitting I'll be working on orders - I did a bit of that yesterday, too, and the day before, and am starting to see some new stuff near completion for mailing out.

We stayed up too late last night, like everynight, but it was productive, as it has been lately. I made the top half of a fairy doll and her first wing, in the office talking with Grant, while he designed most of the website for the Homestead Art Club. It's just so easy to get things accomplished, when all the kids are asleep.

So we woke up far too soon today with plans, and fulfilled them. Stopped by the post office where I ran in and dropped of my first custom order to be shipped (sushi, of all things). Then we took the big kids to Teresa's (mother in law) and went over to the farmers market with Isaac. Shaun ended up meeting us there, Grant wore the baby. It was MISERABLY hot for me, but we got:
-a bunch of bananas
-3 apples
-a crate of 5 or 6 good sized red potatoes
-8 plums
-a large zuccinni
-2 heads of brocoli
-8 BEAUTIFUL roma tomatoes

All for $7 and change. Like...seriously. It was amazing! It's not organic, but it is locally grown and extremely fresh, which I like supporting on a lot of levels.

Then we went and picked the kids up (the farmers' market is really crowded and cramped) - they had had a great time. Ananda was coloring and Aaron was talking with Oma (Teresa). We went over to the mall, still with Shaun in tow, because Grant had to meet with this guy who owns a tshirt store there, who's site is almost done. There was a heinously loud kids' thing set up - some fool dressed up as a dancing dolphin with Miami Seaquarium logos stuck all over him, trying to get preschoolers who were all hysterically afraid to line dance in the middle of the mall...Aaron always curls in on himself with his hands over his ears in any situation with large speakers. And since when do dolphins dance to gangsta rap? Bah. But we weren't there long, basically a trip to the family bathroom and long enough to read "Miss Spider's Tea Party" in the bookstore, and Grant was finished.

Across the street from the mall is a JoAnn Fabrics, and Shaun graciously agreed to let us use his bank card to buy a bunch of supplies while we were up there. I have money transferring to our bank account from paypal, but nothing for that right now, and we would've had to make a second trip up to Cutler Ridge in like 2 days (with gas ringing in at $2.59 a gallon, no less...) So we'll just pay him back on Monday when we're getting money. I got a BUNCH of stuff, they happened to be having a sale, and I'm excited :) It's great to have a real, responsible reason and a funded way to go nuts buying yarn and notions.

Back home, I have scrumptious dinner plans. Grant Sr went and got mushrooms, baby spinach and chicken broth to help me carry them out. My friend Memo called and we talked for a bit. And I got great mail! Bamboo knitting needles from ebay, a newsletter from my old church, that looks like it might be getting itself together, and a postcard from Sara :)

So despite the insanely disgusting poopy diaper that leaked everywhere, the dishes I washed, the lawn Grant mowed in the intense humidity...I'm content. It's nice to hear Steely Dan on the radio while I'm out driving, nice to have wonderful kids. There are about a BILLION entries I've read and want to comment on, on my friends' page, but it's just so tempting to spend all my time staring lovingly at the beautiful banner on the top of my silly community :p

I suppose I should go clear carpet clutter and sweep tile now, before it's time to start cooking.