No more planes for a while

I’m back and we survived. Barely.

Messy boy did amazingly well on the way down to Sacramento. His little eyelids shut themselves on takeoff and didn’t open until about an hour into the flight. When he woke up, he played with pretzels and drank watered down orange juice. Not too shabby for a 14 month old!

My ma ma and fashion-savy brother picked us up from the Airport and we were off to my Grandparents house. Now my Grandparents have lived in the same house for as long as I can remember. I spent summers tanning myself on their back lawn and sleeping in the same hard twin bed, it hasn’t changed. Now I love my grandmother to bits, but let’s put some things out into open, just to clear some things up. According to grandma, Donovan is super cute because all mixed marriage children are. My brother needs to get married before she dies. And I look pregnant.

Yes you did read that last according-to-grandma-factoid correctly. I guess I need to start running again, stop eating junk food, and stop eating PW recipes. Yes to the first, yes to the second, and a HELL NO to the third. I’ll suffer with being fat. Hopefully one of these days I will actually be expecting and therefore looking pregnant would be acceptable. But until then, I’m simply going to work out to compensate for eating good food. I’m not 18 anymore with the stamina of a college soccer player AND I pushed a watermelon out last year. The cutest watermelon you will ever see, so my tiger striped, saggy belly is worth it. Maybe when I’m finished carrying babies in my womb, I’ll work on the getting back to my 18 year old’s body. Yeah right.

Oh yeah, back to the California trip.

We ate dinner with the family at my uncle’s house, consumed calories equal to Bill Gate’s bank account, and drove home with one VERY VERY tired messy boy. He didn’t go to sleep until 11:00, I believe this was the beginning of the end.

We woke up the next day, power showered and went back to my uncle’s for my grandmother’s 3 year service. The minister came to the house and gave a service right in the living room, chanting and all. When I was small, I didn’t understand Buddhist beliefs, what was all this crap about enlightenment and suffering? Now that I am older, I appreciate the traditions and beliefs of Buddhism, even if I don’t practice on a regular basis.

So after some more food with the family, pictures, and feeding my child an entire slice of apple time, it was nearly time to go home.

The plane ride home was HELL.

I mean that in the nicest possible fashion. I love my little man and I am so happy that he charmed up the passengers before getting on the plane because he would have likely ended up tied to the wing otherwise. I’m not going to go into details because it will just make my anxiety rise again, lets just say it took everything in me to remain calm and patient. 1 ½ hour flight and 2 temper tantrums later, we landed in Seattle where Xbox man picked us up and whisked myself and bawling, cranky messy boy home.

I think when we travel to Texas in October, Xbox man gets to deal with Messy boy and I’m going to sit in first class and drink my champagne.

I'm going to need a valium

Its Wednesday. Its not even the end of the week yet. I’m exhausted.

Its not like there is anything stressful going on in our lives, work is still work, home is still home. Messy Boy woke up three time last night. Teething I think. I made caramelized onion and prosciutto pizza last night, ode to Pioneer Woman. I also went to sleep around ten, I think it’s the earliest I’ve gone to bed in the past year.

I don’t know why I am so tired, but gosh darn it, I feel like I could sleep for the next decade! I need to snap out of it, drink some more Starbucks and jump start my ass. This coming Saturday I am going to attempt to take Messy Boy to California with me, a trip consisting of 2-2 hour plane rides. I must be nuts. I must be out of my horse-loving mind. I’m gonna need some coffee. I need suggestions on how to keep Messy Boy entertained on the plane, I REALLY don’t want to be tarred and feathered by my fellow passengers. Preferably these suggestions will not include tying the boy up and gagging him for the duration of the trip; I don’t want CPS called on me either. Messy Boy really is the sweetest boy imaginable. If you haven’t met him yet, he is an angel with liquid brown eyes with eyelashes as thick as a winter storm. I love him with all my heart, but as with all children, he does get loud and he does cry. Both things which are not kosher to most passengers on planes.

Did I mention the TWO hour flight? It could be worse, but with my current level of exhaustion, it still is daunting.

Someone help me. Please. I’m begging.

Ode to Pioneer woman

I am going to take a break from our regularly scheduled blogging to rave about someone who I have come to idolize over the past few weeks: Pioneer Woman.

This woman is fricking genius.

Seriously.

I aspire to be just like her in a couple of years…with a little Asian flavor of course. Though I don’t know if I can quite pull off the fabulous red hair and I’m quite sure that Justin would not appreciate being called Marlboro man. With all that aside, I can rock the stick straight brown hair and call him “Xbox man”.

Sounds kind of geeky you say?

Too bad, I can’t think of anything better. From here on out, Justin will formally be known as Xbox man.

Donovan will hence forth be called “Messy boy”. Simply because he is always in some state of a mess, peanut butter and jelly are the usual suspect. I find things in his hair at bath time that I don’t even remember feeding him. I don’t know where that boy gets his genes from….I’m going to go with Xbox man.

I can’t think of some trendy, catchy name like “Pioneer Woman” for myself. I’ll need suggestions. Until then, I will just sign everything “Sleep deprived, coffee loving, overworked, underpaid, mother of one; formally known as “OH NO!” Please someone give me some suggestions, that’s a pain the patootie to type all of that.

And while I don’t live on some fabulous cattle ranch with horses and dogs, I do live on a quarter acre behind Barnes and Nobles. As for the cattle, I will settle on trying to corral bipolar horse (aka: Sailor), one 14 month old boy, fat cat (Maui), and crazy (Pele). So in my own suburban fashion, I do kind of live on a ranch.

Not really. But I do aspire to be like her. In all her awesomeness.

I’m making red onion and prosciutto pizza tomorrow, for messy boy and Xbox man.

See, its already started.

Signing off,
Sleep deprived, coffee loving, overworked, underpaid, mother of one; formally known as “OH NO!”

Brrrr! its cold in here!

Wow, the last week or so has been crazy, I don’t know what more to say about it. This is just a short recap:
Last Wednesday, I woke up with soot in my nose, was planning on calling Justin later on in the day to call a repairman to look at our furnace. I got a call in the morning at work from Justin saying that our house was full of black smoke and that he was woken up by the carbon monoxide alarm. SCARY! Justin is a heavy sleeper and I don’t even want to think about what could have happened to the two of them, had the alarm not gone off. Long story short, everyone is ok but now we need to replace our furnace. Not so good, especially since I just filled the oil tank! We are going to convert to gas as it is actually less inexpensive than replacing our old oil furnace.
So as of right now, our house is an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit with two oil space heaters running in the bedrooms, ITS COLD. If you would like to donate firewood to our cause, please let me know! ;) I am very thankful that no one got sick or hurt AND that we don’t live in a place where the snow is lingering.
Donovan and I were supposed to go to Vancouver with my parents on Saturday but with traveling restrictions we were unable to go. I had to have had a signed and notarized letter from Justin saying that I was not abducting my child. I know these things actually occur, but really? Next time I go across the border with Donovan, I’m going to wear a ninja outfit just because I feel like it!
Donovan and Justin have little cold, complete with runny noses and constant hacking. I, on the other hand, am still healthy. Weird, usually I am the first person in the house to get sick! I really hope that the temperature of the house has nothing to do with the sickness, but I have a nagging feeling that it does.
Well I’m off to do some actual work at my job, wish me luck in finding some!

Cooking with Julia

Last night I spent almost four hours creating Beouf Bourguignon, a famous Julia Child creation that was immortalized in the movie Julia and Julia.

A few lessons that I learned while cooking this legendary dish:
1. Read the recipe ALL the way through before even thinking about turning on the burner. If I had followed this elementary rule of cooking, I would have saved myself some tense moments and realized that I was missing half of the recipe! (I enlisted Justin to search the interwebz for the missing half of the recipe). This simple step would have also brought to light that I didn’t have enough beef stock, nor did I have a bay leaf. This was solved by substituting more red wine (I used a whole bottle!) and sprinkling Italian seasoning on top of the stew. Shameful I know.

2. Browning stew meat in bacon fat smells amazing but leaves a mess that is a hassle to clean up later. I think I still have bacon grease on my kitchen FLOOR!

3. Do not try to make two meals at the same time. I made filet mignon for dinner at the same time as the Beouf Bourguignon and it was difficult to coordinate the two, not to mention a hungry, whiney toddler in the high chair next to me!

The ingredients seemed basic, the instructions looked simple. However, while I was standing in Safeway’s meat aisle, I suddenly realized that I had no clue what in the heck a bacon rind was. I suppose I could have gone to an actual butcher’s shop to find proper bacon for the recipe, but seeing as I am a full time working mother, a half of slab of bacon from my freezer was deemed appropriate.

In light of my bacon discovery, I decided to take a few short cuts during the cooking process, hopefully Julia didn’t mind. Instead of boiling the bacon first, I just decided to brown it in a pan as I usually would. The reality is, I’m not a complete foodie and have no clue what boiling the bacon first is supposed to accomplish. Someone, please tell me. I also ignored the instructions on how to sauté the onions, I just used a little butter and actually lost count of how many onions I used. The recipe calls for 15-18 small onions and that just seemed like a lot to me. Instead of bringing the stock, wine, and meat to a simmer on the stove, I just shoveled it into my borrow Rachel Ray casserole dish and placed it in the oven; the extra step seemed superfluous.
So 2 ½ hours later, after eating the neglected filet mignon and putting my sleepy child to bed, the Beouf Bourguignon was finally done. It smelled amazing and after a tiny portioned taste test, I finally left it to cool (and later be put in the refrigerator by Justin) and went to bed.

In hindsight, although Julia had good intentions to help housewives learn to cook French recipes, I don’t think this recipe was intended for today’s housewives. You know, the ones that work 40-50 hours a week, come home, take care of the children, cook dinner, and try to have a life. We just don’t have 4 hours a day to cook dinner for our husbands. All in all, this was a good experience, but maybe better left to an occasion that is special in meaning or when I have the need to impress someone with my “Skillz”.
Tomorrow nights dinner? Takeout!

Stir fry made easy!

Food is life. This simple statement summarizes my upbringing. My mother is an amazing cook and I owe her everything for teaching me to be a good cook (and to not chop off my fingers). Stir fry is my fall back dish. When I'm exhausted and burnt out from 8 hours of work and a little boy that just won't quit, this is the dish I make to save myself a lot of trouble. Its easy, I swear.

By the way, I don't use recipes. I tend to cook by taste and whatever meat and vegetables I have in my refrigerator.

1. Use garlic and lots of it! A couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil and chopped or sliced garlic. Easy no?

2. Brown your favorite meat, sliced thinly. Here I use boneless chicken breast that I defrosted out of our freezer.

3. After the meat is thoroughly cooked, add your favorite vegetables. I always like to use any combination of onions, bok choi, bell peppers, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, celery, and cabbage. Use whatever you happen to have, remember, we are keeping this dish simple! Here is my favorite mushroom to use, bunashimeji. You can find these in Asian food marts and are simple to use. Simply wash, cut off the bottom that connects all the mushrooms and voila!

4. I use three seasonings to flavor my stir fry: Soy sauce(shoyu), oyster sauce, and sesame oil. All these are added to taste, but go easy, you can always add more but you can't take them out!

5. Finish cooking vegetables and your done! Seriously easy? You betcha! Just serve over steamed rice or cooked noodles and enjoy! I hope you have a chance to try this out, you will be surprised over how simple and delicious this dish is!

This will be my second attempt to document all the craziness that is my life. We have survived our first year with a child, purchased our first home, and have two new jobs. Our lives change every day and I hope that I can use this blog as a tool to help document everything from daily life to new recipes to crazy adventures! With a toddler and two adults just along for the ride, there should not be a lack of entertainment! Thank you for following my blog and keep tuned in for updates!