Patience and the Nitrogen Cycle

This weekend was the "big weekend" for Wausau. Each year they have hot air balloons from all over the country come and set up their balloons. It coincides with the Rib Fest and the annual fireworks. I must say that Wausau fireworks are some of the best I've seen ever. Not only are you right underneath them, so close that ash comes down around you, but they tend to spend some dough on getting good ones. I thought a small town would skimp on the show, but they were impressive.

I also managed to clean out my closet this weekend. It's been full of boxes. There are still boxes in our house from our last move, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were boxes still from before we came to Chicago. Some stuff I'm just shuttling from place to place, and I don't have a clue what's inside of it.

Over the weekend I baked what I craved. Peanut butter cookies and homemade pizza. In my baking past I have made peanut butter cookies a bunch of times. This time I had to do it because I was dealing with an unfulfilled month-long craving. Each time I would buy a peanut butter cookie, thinking that I would be satisfied at last, it would be terrible. One particular bakery I had high hopes for, but the cookie was dry and not sweet. The peanut butter was very light, almost nonexistent. So I went home and made some. These were much better. Sugary, with a definite peanut butter taste. And now I can rest. We ate half of them and I froze the rest for Robbie's lunches.

I also made pizza. I was inspired by an episode where the Barefoot Countessa grilled pizza and all of her good looking gay friends came over. I wanted that. I wanted to have scads of good looking gay friends to come over to my house on a moments notice for pizza and chit chat. This dream would become a reality.

I had never seen anyone make pizza dough before. It looked easy, and I had a dough hook on my kitchenaid. Why not!? The first try was a disaster, since I read the recipe wrong and put in 1.5 cups of water instead of .5 cup. I had flour soup. So I pitched it and tried again. This time I had dough. I kneaded it to the best of my ability and lack of knowledge (must look up on youtube). I let it rise. I kneaded it again. I let it rise again. I kneaded it again a bit and then rolled it out and put some olive oil, fresh tomatoes, red onions, fresh motz, sea salt and basil from our garden. The next time I try it, I will let the dough sit for longer, and I will cook it for maybe 5 more minutes. But the experiment was a success and we ate the entire thing, yeast and all.

My parents were initially concerned when I told them that my husband and I bought a house that didn't have air conditioning. They were skeptical. But what they didn't know is that hot June days in Ohio, equal chilly June days in Wisconsin. We haven't turned off our heat yet. We even had a fire in our fireplace this weekend to deal with the uncommon chill in the air.

The truth is that we don't need air conditioning in the north woods very often. Generally, summer highs are in the 60's and 70's. Occasionally we'll get an 80's, but it is a day here and there, nothing much to speak about.

The few days I spent in Ohio recently in May we had hotter weather than I ever experienced in Wausau.

Last night I was having lovely dreams about what it would be like to own a yarn store. It was great and I was having a fantastic time until I woke up drastically with the realization that something was crawling on my face. My face people! It was a spider. So I freaked out. I knocked it off my face and then turned on the light to locate it. My husband ushered it outside by putting it in a jar and it was all done.
But it didn't feel done.
I spent a long time getting back to sleep because what if there are more bugs just waiting for me to fall asleep and then jump on my face? Why does our house have an unusual number of spiders? We have to move a spider outside about twice a week. That seems high to me.
Not only that, but it seems like we have a variety of spider species in our house. The one last night was small and brown and had a big bulbous body. We see small black ones a lot with long legs, and occasionally a large black one with white stripes that eyeballs us menacingly until the cats bat it into a ball.
And I wouldn't mind it so much, if they didn't invade my bed, my private and most vulnerable space.

Thefinalgirl tagged me, so I am responding. Feel free to consider yourself tagged if you like such things.

The rules :
1. Respond and rework; answer the question on your blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your invention, add more one question of your own.
2. Tag eight other people. (Uhhhh, I think that only 2 actually look at my blog)

What is your current obsession?
Knitting and spinning my own yarn. This has actually been an obsession for many years and it doesn't seem to be letting up. I really enjoy it.

What is your weirdest obsession?
Vampire books, movies, etc. (Buffy, True Blood, the Twilight series...even though I didn't love the books), maybe I should say "the paranormal" is my weirdest obsession, because I make my husband go on all these ghost tours and I watch paranormal research shows and stuff

What are you wearing today?
My gray suit with blue pinstripes

What's for dinner?
I think we're going to have omelettes

What would you eat for your last meal?
Steak from Prime with all the mustards, spagetti with meat and veggie sauce, fudgy chocolate cake

What's the last thing you bought?
fruits and diet foods from the grocery (I'm trying to avoid the delicious foods in the question above)

What are you listening to right now?
Typing, coworkers talking on the phone, papers rustling, someone speaking Hmong to a patient

What is your favorite ice-cream flavour?
It used to be the Salty Caramel icecream from Haagen Das, but I think my allegiance lies with Jeni's version.

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
New Zealand, and it would be really cool and woodsy, but with a contemporary undertone

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
New York, I've never been there and it sounds fun

Which language do you want to learn?
Spanish.

What's your favorite quote (for now)?
"When a man has to prove to a woman..." Tobias talking about the facts of life with George Michael from Arrested Development

What is your favorite colour?
Dark teal.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
Probably my sweater that I knitted from Briar Rose fiber. It's my go-to sweater and I love it.

What is your dream job?
Independently wealthy philanthropist

What's your favourite magazine?
Real Simple

If you had $100 now, what would you spend it on?
An iphone, but I'd still need another 100

Favorite designer?
Ack, I don't really have one. Ann Taylor?

Do you admire any one's style?
Kate Winslet

Describe your personal style?
Business suits, business shirts, and then pajamas

What are you going to do after this?
Go home for lunch

What are your favourite movies?
Groundhog's Day, Clue, The Jerk

What's your favourite fruit?
(Is this meme British?) A good orange. Not the dry ones, but a really good one.

What inspires you?
I think that's my problem lately. I'm not inspired to do much of anything after work is done. I use up all of my energy.

Your favorite book ?
Just one? This is too hard.

Do you collect something ?
Yarn, gobs of it

Robbie's birthday is today. His big 3-0. We celebrated it yesterday with chicken wings, the Star Trek movie (which we loved), and chocolate cake. The cake was a soda can cake with the addition of peanut butter chips and fat free cool whip for frosting. It was his pick.

I decorated the kitchen with streamers and shiny signs that said "30." Even though we're not having a party, I think it was fun to wake up early and create the surprise.

The Sims 3 comes out sometime in June. I hesitate to get it right away, because classically EA/Maxis games have been so buggy that they completely ruin game play. I have had lots of Maxis experiences where I really liked the game, but couldn't play it because of some bug or another. Plus there was the DRM fiasco, and that really alienated much of their fan base, not to mention that they delayed the launch of the Sims 3 the day that it was supposed to come out. (Let's not even begin to talk about Spore, because it just hurts.)

In order to get the Sims 3 also means that I would have to upgrade to a completely new system. So if it sucks, (and it might suck) I will be out a lot more money than just the software cost. But really, I need a new computer anyway. It's been years and I could use a new system. Maybe this time I'll actually get one with the intent to play games on it.

Next week is the Great Lakes Fiber Show, which I go to every year with my Mom. We stay at a B and B and shop the barns full of yarn and fiber. This will be our fourth year of going and I'm excited for the break. The same women come every year to the B and B and we swap knitting stories and they show us stuff on the wheel or talk about their farms. Sometimes they do shots of bourbon and sometimes we go out with them for steaks and have a bitch session about the lady claiming to sell buffalo fiber, when really the fiber only has 5% buffalo content. Last year I bought a year's worth of yarn for really cheap, and spent the entire year knitting it into shawls and socks or spinning yarn up and not having a clue on what to do with it (yet).

Last week I had a terrible week. So this week seems like a breeze in comparison. I'm happy not to have revisit last week.

At work I'm currently dealing with a catch-22. I can provide mental health services only if I get medicaid certification and get background checks on my counselors. But I can't hire my counselors unless they can bill under medicaid and they need medicaid certification to do that. Bureaucracy. I know this paragraph only really makes sense to me, but let me just say it like this: I'm stuck and I need to get unstuck and it is unclear how to do it. And patients need mental health services and they can't get them until I get unstuck.

Today I had sushi for lunch, which was fun and unexpected. I thought I was going to have to heat up the secret stash of soup I have hidden in my bottom desk drawer. Southwestern vegetable.

Over the weekend we acquired a crock pot. My husband was able to procure it from a garage sale for $2.00 and it is bright orange. I've always wanted to use a crock pot, because the idea is so nice. Set it up, go to work, come home to a made dinner. But I never purchased one, because it just never came up.
So yesterday, with the help of a recipe book on loan from my mother-in-law, I decided to go on my maiden crock pot voyage.
Why I chose a recipe with sauerkraut is a bit of a mystery. I never really had a whole lot of sauerkraut growing up, and it was a gamble about whether I would like it now, not to mention having it cook in my house for hours on end with chicken, mustard, and russian dressing. Sauerkraut just sounded good to me. It sounded tangy and pickley and German. I was in.
I set the whole thing up during my lunch time, because chicken crockpot recipes tend to only take around 4 hours, and I fully expected to see flames engulfing my house as I came home in the afternoon.
When there were no firetrucks, and the crockpot seemed to be unharmed, I went to survey the progress.
Much to my surprise the chicken had cooked and was very tender, the drained sauerkraut was hot but not burnt and it smelled nice.
I dished it out and it was very good. Crockpot chicken has that homey tenderness that is so comforting. And I couldn't get enough sauerkraut. I could eat a whole jar.

Thinking of my next crockpot adventure, I've been reading this blog, A Year of Crockpotting, of a woman who is cooking a new crockpot recipe every day. It's pretty fun to read. And I really want some hot buttered rum right around now.

Make your Stick Figure Family at FreeFlashToys.com

Planting things. In a warm sunny spot. With a margarita. And a gigantic sun hat with a wide black brim. With my husband. Lounging on our deck. Talking about our future. Letting go of the small betrayals and hassles of our daily work life. Remembering those who love us.