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One year out.
Today marks one year.
I had a lot I was going to post about this, but in the end, that's all I have to say. Thanks for sticking around.
Recipe: Nutmeg Sugar Crisps
This week was one of my assigned weeks for birthday cookies, so we made one of my younger sister's favorite cookies for our school's clinic aide. (Our PTA's teacher appreciation committee lines up volunteers to make homemade cookies for every teacher and staff member during their birthday week, or near the end of the school year for summer birthdays.) We usually make a double batch of these since they get eaten quickly.
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Nutmeg Sugar Crisps
1 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. confectioner's sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp salt
Cream butter and sugars. Beat in egg and vanilla; mix well. Combine the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, nutmeg and salt; add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Shape into 3/4-inch balls; place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Flatten with a glass dipper in sugar. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes of until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool.
Yield: about 6 dozen
Source: Taste of Home Best-Loved Cookies & Bars, Fall 2007
Happy New Year.
Photo: typo in a Gilt Groupe e-mail
I'm not sure how much a pedant should cost, but I could buy one that looks one-of-a-kind.
Sharpen your mind to look for love rather than fault.
"The energy you spend on assaying other people's lives could better be spent on loving others, just as they are, not as you wish they would be.
I recommend that you not look at other people's failings, any more than I recommend that you look at your own.
Look for the good always, in yourself and others.
When you are less critical with yourself, you will be less critical with others.
Sharpen your mind to look for love rather than fault. There is more love than there is fault. You, too, are more love than fault.
None of you are guilty of anything but learning. You are not guilty but graced. What learning will you grace yourself with today?"
-- from Heavenletters' "The Tender Being You Are"
Back to school.
 School is back in swing here. Laurel started fifth grade at our neighborhood elementary school on Monday and has made a few friends already. Preschool started for my nephew today too, and it was quite nice to be able to walk in nice weather, see Laurel across the bus loop to the main building and hang out on the preschool playground with my niece while my nephew got signed in for the day.
We also got back to ensuring that cars are actually going to stop at the crosswalk when the light is red before stepping into the crosswalk. This morning we watched a middle-aged woman in an SUV drive through the red light well above the posted speed limit while we were waiting to cross and head into our neighborhood. (I don't know where she was going in such a hurry, but I hope she made it there safely.) Later that morning, drivers stopped at the crosswalk in both directions without us pushing the signal button. We appreciated that.
Laurel will be doing Girl Scouts this year as a Juliette and I'll be jumping back into Cub Scouting with Join Scouting night next week helping with rocketry and whatever make-and-take I come up with between now and then. She brought home the first-year band and orchestra information today and wants to play violin, so we'll see what we can swing there -- based on a neck-to-mid-palm measure, we're looking at a 1/2 or 3/4 size violin, which we may be able to borrow from local friends instead of coming up with $100 for school year rental.
A month displaced
Today marks a month since I left my home of six years in Dallas.
The upshot is that Laurel and I are safely back in Colorado and we have food, shelter and sufficient clothing. We left the majority of our household baggage in Texas, but it's really just stuff.
I'm about to head to Phoenix for a week of getting my kitty fix and some quiet downtime with an old friend, during which I hope to do a lot of the writing I want to catch you up and document my thoughts. Laurel will start fifth grade in just over a month at the same school my younger brother and sister attended and I will share the action plan I've put together with the help of friends and family to work on getting my legs beneath me and improve Laurel's and my lives for the better. (Er, that doesn't look right. Feel free to take a red pen to it.)
I love all of you and am thankful that you've hung in there with me through this difficult year.
Expanding on my Facebook status about leaving Dallas.:
Many things both big and little have happened since my last post, but anything I write up I'll get to later.
The big news is that I'm leaving Dallas this upcoming Monday. Things here haven't gone well for a long time yet I've stubbornly hung in there, figuring things would get better. He has said he felt the same way, but we never sat down and had a reasonable conversation about it. There is always blame, but no one is at fault in the end. It just didn't work.
Thanks for hanging in there with me through the turbulence. I appreciate every one of you.
I faw down an' go boom! Also, Mustang no va.
Many of you already know that Kevin fell rollerblading yesterday with a brief loss of consciousness.[1] He refused transport, by ambulance or neighbors, and has a memory lapse of about 3.5 hours. He agreed to see our family practitioner this morning. She took one look at his unwrapped wrist (I splinted it last night) and said it's dislocated, probably fractured, and he could either wait several hours to get in to an orthopedist or go directly to the ER for x-rays. Since old paratroopers never die,[2] he decided to do neither of those things. Instead he got a much-needed haircut, picked up a proper wrist splint, and prepared for an interview scheduled for 1 PM.
I saw him off with plenty of time, printed paperwork in a folder and his netbook charged and packed with its cooling pad. At the last minute I handed him my phone. I'm glad I did, because 20 minutes later he called to say the Mustang's engine cut out while he was on the way to the interview. He planned to cross a nearby overpass to a gas station and get the car towed. In the meanwhile, he talked to the recruiter (he did not have a phone number for the client) and will reschedule. I hope the client makes an offer; the previous screens and interview went well and we got the impression the client thinks he's a good fit.
When it rains, it pours. Also, always wear appropriate safety gear for sports.
1. Most surreal moment: a neighbor kid asked "Is he dead?". I replied, "No, people can't be dead and breathing."
2. Old paratroopers never die, they just go to hell and regroup.
--
ETA: The Mustang turned out to have a broken coil wire, a fairly simple and inexpensive fix. We'll pick her up from the shop tomorrow since our bank decided to go back on the "we will release part of your latest deposit Tuesday and the remainder Wednesday" after we verified that policy with a supervisor, purchased a cashier's check in our local branch to pay rent, and checked the balance before he left. (Will straighten that out in the morning.) Kevin didn't want me to ask any of "my" friends for a ride, so he started walking. Two and a half miles in, a stranger stopped and offered him a ride the rest of the way home.
Thank you for throwing floaties in my direction!
Good things since my last post:
- Holy crap, you guys are so nice! I teared up several times.
- We got the electric bill squared away.
- One of this week's phone screens has progressed to a phone interview on Monday. I am hoping it goes well. If it works out I think it will be nice for him to get away from the niche of medical software.
- Someone asked what jobs he's held. In approximate chronological order since graduating from high school, he's been an airborne paratrooper, a carpenter for a custom window company, a medical courier, and held various software developer positions in telecommunications, defense, mobile computing, medical practice and revenue cycle management, and financial software for ATMs. Most of the past 20 years have been in software.
- I learned these ginger doughnuts are delicious: http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2004/12/ginger-doughnuts
- I moved some of the wintered-indoor plants outside and transplanted some seedlings. The hanging baskets now have plants in them, the ivy that started taking over the windowsill is trellised in a gallon pot, and I put a couple of seasonal-clearance rainbow pinwheels I had stored away in the other gallon pots. It's silly but they make me happy.
Keeping busy keeps me focused on the things that are good.
Furiously treading water.
I haven't been posting much because I don't feel the urge to add to the numerous blog posts about the sucktacular economy. In light of a recent wave of non-friend and anonymous comments, I'd like to say a few things.
My husband has been out of work for two months. There is no unemployment check because his last two jobs have been contract positions. He talks to several recruiters a week, does 1-2 phone screens per week. So far he has had two face-to-face meetings but no second interviews. I've applied to every restaurant and store within walking distance. I am competing against people with retail experience and college degrees for entry level jobs.
We have no savings, having exhausted them during the last period of unemployment and during his last contract job he only made enough to get caught up on everything and pay bills through the end of March. I've sold everything of mine of value and hope he sells the china to a local jeweler I found that will buy china. (I got a quote from Replacements for the lot, but the cost of shipping is prohibitive.)
Our gas has been off for a month now, so we have neither hot water nor heat. I am getting along without hot water, but most of the month was unseasonably cold (we got snow at the end of winter break) so I have been sluggish at doing anything that entails me not staying warm. Our internet access may be turned off any time now since the bill was due a week ago. We have a power disconnection notice dated April 7th and our rent will be late after April 3rd. We do not have enough to pay either of those things; we can't afford to fill up the car with gas right now. We have been living off what we have in our kitchen for a month, less a few things I've picked up on clearance (dented cans and boxes) and dried rice and beans bought in bulk. (Laurel gets animal protein, milk and fresh fruit in school lunch.)
Once our internet access is off, I will be checking mail once a day from the library, which is four and a half miles round-trip and open Tuesday through Saturday. Tomorrow morning I will be waiting at a ministry-operated services agency when it opens in hopes they can help us with the electric bill. It is first-come, first-serve, so I expect to be there until at least noon with no guarantee of assistance, although I am hoping to get a bag of groceries -- theirs include milk, eggs, and tortillas, all of which sound wonderful. After that I will be volunteering at the school, which is the one place that I can go and do something productive outside of the house.
tl;dr? We're out of work, broke, and exhausted. This makes me have little patience for people I don't know leaving condescending and/or rude comments because I am in the process of settling something with Their Online Friend. I'm pretty sure Jesus would not do that.
Photos: Golden Grant, book fair trucks, tree and orchid in bloom.
I made a joke about Abelian grapes today and Kevin laughed. It is nice that despite the craptacular job market, unseasonably cold weather, and our unevenly stocked pantry, some things are still funny.
A happy part of what has been contributing to the unevenly stocked pantry is that a Tweet-length job-hunting story I submitted in February was chosen for a Golden Grant, so we received a dozen boxes of Golden Grahams:
Laurel reports that they are good dry.
It's book fair time again, so my weekdays will be tied up with that through next Monday. Even though I feel exhausted before it even starts, I will bring my A-game because it's a whole week of new-book smell and talking about kiddie lit with real live people. Setup was today after the truck arrived:
I will be sick of the sound this book makes by Wednesday afternoon:
Since I missed taking a photo of the pink hyacinths I saw earlier this month before they went by, here's a blooming tree that doesn't smell like meat (*cough* Bradford pears):
Also, the orchid that I have been watering for the past four years decided to bloom:
What I did today: a photoessay
After getting out of bed grumpy (kitten hopped in the bathroom sink at 0330 and knocked some things off the counter, waking me up), I put on my big girl pants (long underwear and Ear Pops) and stood outside for about 40 minutes in near-freezing temperatures to pick up curbside donations for the Gently Used Book Sale. 75 books arrived in two donations. After I took them inside and helped log the donations and count books into boxes, I set off toward Starbucks (used another bit of my prepaid gift card on a Cinnamon Dolce Latte) and the dollar store, where I picked up some fuzzy socks and some office supplies.
Crossing the parking lot toward the road, the sun looked sad and cold hidden behind clouds:
Partway down the block, I enjoyed some exotic glyphs:
Not really, but it was fun to read them aloud complete with words for symbols ("locate, right arrow, right arrow, what is that red thing?"):
Saw some creepy bare toes in the grocery store:
And had a very relaxing seat after I checked out while waiting for Kevin, who offered to pick me up if I bought some sparkling water:
After getting home I did boring early spring cleaning stuff like scrubbing the kitchen floor and kick plates under the cupboards (which was fascinating and grubby), weeding children's DVDs to donate, and eating some ranch Quakes I'd bought at the dollar store.
About a quarter after two, I put my warm outerwear back on, took my golf umbrella and the DVDs, tied neatly in two grocery bags, and squeezed through the gap in the fence to save a few minutes on my walk back to school. I met up with the lady organizing the book drive to get a clipboard and log sheets, then stood out in front of the school in case anyone brought curbside donations in the afternoon.
Some buses kept me company before classes let out:
And I unintentionally took an okay photo of myself, other than looking rather yellow because my coat and accessories are really, really pink:
There were no afternoon curbside donations, but there were some carry-in ones including the DVDs I brought over. Tomorrow I will take over the books the girls weeded, a couple of kids' CDs she hasn't listened to in ages (like the Dora the Explorer soundtrack) and a board game she never really got into but will thrill some younger children.
And now I think I will take a nap while everyone else is asleep. Phew.
Brief Kevin update:
64 hours into the week (from midnight Sunday), Kevin has gotten a total of 4.5 hours sleep and eaten two meals. The bulk of that sleep occurred today after he took a 5-HTP with a meal. At the end of two weeks of data collection, we're going to the family doctor and hoping whatever she refers us to see isn't too expensive.
We could go through VA to get a sleep study, but if our recent experience is any indication it will take at least three months of weekly visits and hoping Dr. Shutup has been reassigned somewhere else. (Dr. Shutup's demeanor during his vesting-in consultation made me think she'd be happier in pathology, bless her heart.)
Sleepover, fluffball, and a dolphin in my ear.
Last-minute sleepover. Girls are thrilled. I am a little "augh!" but will roll with it because really, what else is there to do? They are currently dinking around on the recorder (they just started recorder karate) and reading bits aloud from The Daring Book for Girls. Apparently it includes a bit on how to summon Bloody Mary.
Operation Kindness had no room for the fluffball, so he's staying with us. I dubbed him Doolittle. He's much more consistent with litter box use but I've been using pet wipes (dollar store find) on him because I don't think he's too fastidious about cleaning yet. (I was using a blacklight to look for the source of a mystery smell and shined it on his belly, which lit up. Ew.) He likes to bait Squeaky and hide in an empty box. He also constantly chirps like a busted low-battery beep, but it's not a particular word like Squeaky's discernible 'words' for water, food, and various people.
I am coming down with a cold, surprisingly only my first one this month. I am not particularly bothered by it since it's a change from the probable ear infection that's made popping and clicking sounds in my left ear for a few weeks. Perhaps I merely have a dolphin in there and not an ear infection.
Wikipedia rambling (new page patrolling, editing for quality instead of quantity)
New page patrolling has been interesting -- I get to do a lot of research on schools and whatever catches my eye -- but challenging in dealing with new editors. I find it tricky to diplomatically word things like "I see that you recently published a book on local history, but in the interest of verifiable sources it would be appreciated if you could add references to the cartload of article stubs you are creating with no references other than your book."
...
I still enjoy categorizing uncategorized pages the most, but new page patrolling finds them before the handful of Wikipedians who put broad categories on articles in order to increase the quantity of their edits see them in the uncategorized section. It sounds petty typed out, but an automated script could apply broad categories without improving the page and it'd be about as accurate as some of the aforementioned handful. (I was mildly annoyed the other day by someone categorizing a school district article in the wrong state because their skimming stopped at "Town" instead of "Town, State". I understand the error, but that's lazy editing.)
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