(it's what makes me me)

Notice a trend?

I appreciate proper use of the word “literally”:

Here’s what happens when you have a bird feeder under the grass lawn:

Sometimes good things really do come in small packages.

I treasure a little gem of a cookbook called “French Vegetarian Cooking – A Step-by-Step Guide” by Marie-Pierre Moine. It is part of a series called “In a Nutshell” and it’s teeny tiny. Sadly, I’ve checked out the others in the series and they aren’t as good, but this French one is terrific!

I was frustrated that she kept mentioning an herb called chervil. I’d heard of chervil but never tasted it and couldn’t find it anywhere. So I got ambitious and planted some chervil myself et voila!:

It worked! Upcoming: Peas Braised with Lettuce.

We are discovering Jane’s wonderful and surprising new hobby: house cleaning. She loves it! I never stop marveling that I actually gave birth to one kid who loves math and another who loves cleaning.

Jane’s favorite thing to do is walk around with a spray bottle of cleaner and a cloth. (We use bar mops for most of our cleaning in our house. I love that I can just toss them in the washing machine with some bleach on a hot cycle to sanitize.)

We were going through Lysol for kitchen counters like it was going out of style, and unfortunately, Windex makes her lips burn and swell.

I wasn’t able to find any home cleaning recipes I liked online, so I made this one up myself. Enjoy “Jane’s (all natural!) Aromatherapy Cleaning Solution”:

2 c water
2 T white vinegar
1 drop bergamot essential oil
1 drop rosemary essential oil
1 drop lemongrass essential oil

You could customize with whatever fragrances you like. Jane’s blend has a nice citrusy aroma. Enjoy!

Okay, so I decided to stop going to the doctor who thought I was 51.  That wasn’t the reason why, though his cluelessness, confusion, and inability to fix my age in his office’s records contributed to my fear that he might not provide me with the best medical care.

Mainly, I’m a creature of habit.  Once I find a doctor/dentist/mechanic I like, I settle into a nice routine.  I get to know how they do things and feel comfortable with them.  The last thing I want from my ob/gyn is excitement or spontaneity.

During the time frame when I thought I was switching doctors, I booked a mammogram with the lab Doc51 uses.  The fact that this particular lab has a horrible, annoying, malfunctioning phone tree that never gets callers to a live human being confirmed my feeling that the switch to Doc51 was not a good thing.

So, I cancelled that mammogram, which in and of itself was a long and involved process.

“Do you want to reschedule?”

“No, I’m going to a different doctor and he uses another lab.”

I figured that was it, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t CALL HIM and TELL HIM I CANCELLED.

So I got the most awkward phone call on the face of the earth from Doc51.  He left me an extremely absentminded, rambling message during which did all of the following:

1. expressed concern/confusion over why I would switch doctors
2. wondered aloud whether I’d already HAD my mammogram and he was supposed to be calling me with results (including shuffling through papers on his desk trying vainly to find my “results”)
3. spilled a cup of coffee and hung up without saying goodbye

Needless to say I am not going to add to the awkwardness by returning his call.  He’ll probably figure I did call him back and he just forgot.

And I did follow through and actually have my mammogram.  I used the lab GoodFarAwayDoc uses.  They pick up on the second or third ring, they are warm and friendly, the mere mention of GFAD’s name elicits squeals of joy, and I was in and out of the lab with my boobs completely squashed in fifteen minutes flat.  Bingo bango.  Squisho squasho.

Plus as a bonus, Escondido (where GFAD and the lab he uses are located) has THE best unlikely combo businesses (things like “bagels and samosas.”)  On this visit I saw (drum roll please):

Moonlight Acupressure Massage now with Tax Preparation Services.  Welcome home.

Pretty nice view out the floor-to-ceiling window of our room at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas. We took a quick kid-free, pet-free, house-free, (almost) work-free getaway before Thanksgiving.

We had a great time. Our room was on the 62nd floor, and while your ears do pop in the elevator, we suspect it’s not as high as it sounds. The 40s seem to be missing and possibly the 20s too. (The elevator numbering makes it hard to tell for sure.)

We liked the Wynn and Encore. Steve Wynn became a vegan last year and every restaurant in the hotel has a solid vegan/vegetarian menu (on request.) One of the annoying things about eating out as a vegetarian is having to sift through a menu trying to find the things you can order. A strictly vegan menu, even if it’s only one page long, is fun! Fun, fun, fun! I highly recommend their Wazuzu (“Asian fusion”) restaurant.

We were sent an amazing direct-mail deal a few months ago (seriously such a good deal! I have no idea how we ended up on this particular list but I hope other offers are on their way.) It included tickets to Le Reve, Wynn’s water-based acrobatic, gymnastic show. It was amazing! I highly recommend this show. It has kind of a cheesy “storyline” but beyond that, the athleticism and beauty of the performers is incredible. (We kept hearing from Wynn and Encore staff that many of the performers are former Olympians and after watching the show, I can totally believe that.)

After two nights and three days, we headed home. On the way back to Temecula, we picked up the kids, and boy, are they loud. LOUD. I finally had to ban repetitive noises for the rest of the drive home.

When we met up (in the Del Taco parking lot that is the halfway point between our house and the inlaws’ place in Laguna Woods aka Leisure World; they watched our kids for us for three nights and four days!), Eva said, “You look younger than I remembered.”

And as we drove home, Jane got “H” in the “ABC game.”

“I’m going to say “happy,” she said, “because I’m very, very happy right now.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

A few weeks ago I went out, dressed up, at night.  As in, I left the house without a child to do something other than walk the dog, take minutes at a meeting, or run to the 24-hour drugstore for Pepto Bismol.

It was really exciting.  The occasion was a “girls’ night” for a friend’s birthday.  We headed out to Pechanga, which is an Indian casino.  Pechanga is mega.  The place is ginormous.  They have “gaming” (not gambling!  never!  Call it “gaming,” please.) They have restaurants.  They have shows.  (Scott and I saw Joel McHale there, and Kathy Griffin filmed an HBO special in their showroom.)

For girls’ night, we met at the comedy  club.  It was your typical comedy club:  stool and mike against brick wall; small tables with drink menus clustered in twos and threes; roped-off line at the door.  (?!  For the eleven people waiting to get in?  But whatever….we made it past the ropes.)

I of course ended up sitting next to the one weird friend whom nobody likes.  Why is there always that odd friend?  How does she get there, if nobody likes her?  Presumably she heard about it and invited herself.

I had never met her before but made the mistake of smiling very warmly as I met her.  One of the other women was mouthing silently to me:  ”Don’t encourage her!” and making throat-cutting gestures, but it was too late.

Our group was gently called out a couple of times during the comic warmups (“Anyone have a birthday?”) and she heckled back.  Oy vey.  Bad comedians are like chained up over-the-hill dogs.  Heckle them and they won’t leave you alone.

“You all look like the Real Housewives,” people kept saying to us.  And it’s true.  We were in our fortysomething out at girls’ night uniform of blingy jeans (IMPOSSIBLE to find stylish, well-fitting jeans without rhinestones or crosses all over the butt), heels, and shiny tank tops.  Add cell phone turned to Facebook check-in, Twitter, or camera setting in one hand and a glass of red wine or lemon/apple martini in other hand et voila!:  instant Real Housewives.

As we filed out of the comedy club, reuniting The One Weird Lady Nobody Likes with her 80 year old mother, who had been playing nickel-slots while she waited for us (mother was in a leg-revealing short kilt and tam o’shanter; she actually looked like a lot of fun), we were told everyone would be given complimentary passes to “the dance club.”

Yay!  Dancing!  The night is young for we Real Housewives of Temecula and Murrieta.

They had a rope when we walked in, but THIS was the real velvet rope.  Pechanga has Silk, their hip and happening club (where Pauly D from Jersey Shore guest DJs some nights.)  A few lucky youngsters were given passes to Silk.  Away they went, to the special elevator which would deposit them at Silk’s frosted glass doors.

What many people don’t know is that Pechanga also has the Eagle’s Nest.  We were given Eagle’s Nest passes.

I will say this:  the Eagle’s Nest is fun!  We had a great time.  We danced, we drank, we stopped approximately midway through the festivities for ten solid minutes of iphone updates and pictures.  I made sure nobody took open glasses of water.  (You need your water in a SEALED bottle so nobody tries to give you roofies.  How do people not know that?  Sure, the girls over at Silk probably need to watch their drinks more than the forty- (and fifty-)somethings at Eagle’s Nest, but you never know.)

When did I stop being Silk and start being Eagle’s Nest?  As my friends walked me back to my minivan at 2:15 a.m., I realized I don’t care.  I have my posse of wise Housewives and that’s fine by me.

I have a few projects in the hopper.  Boy, are they hopping around.  I’m at the phase where the initial excitement of “Let’s put on a show!” gives way to “Oh, my god, they seriously want me to cut out 1,000 penguin pieces?”

But my never say die attitude and I are holding out to the bitter end.

And as these projects slowly grind their way through their various systems, I ask, “Why?  Why is it so hard?”

I wonder, if I set ego aside, would I be able to find an easier way to get things done?  Because my dirty little secret, which I’ll now share with you all, is that while these projects DO benefit others, they all have their own ego component.

And it’s just when I start examining whether discarding all ego would make things roll along a little more smoothly, I become outraged all over again.  It’s just so unjust!

Lather, rinse, repeat.

injury buddies

I have never been so glad to close the page on a week. Whew! It was just like one thing after another. (Which I know is better than everything happening at the same time, but still….enough, already.)

Scott was out of town this week on business, and literally the day he left, the freezer “broke” (final diagnosis: someone didn’t shut it all the way, and I’m peeved at the shorties in the house that it cost $168 and an embarrassing visit with the Sears repairman seeing all the dust stuck in my refrigerator coils to find out.) Literally as I’m setting the phone down after calling to book the refrigerator appointment, I look over and the dog is having a seizure.

He had two more later in the week so I’m assuming our dog has epilepsy. This is my unofficial internet diagnosis so I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true. Seizures are scary, though Mo is weathering it well. Good boy.

The bigger woes of the week are business-related and totally nerve-wracking. I hate knowing something is looming, but not being able to DO anything about it. I have a situation where there is quite literally not a thing I can do right now but brace for impact. My Christian friends would probably tell me, “Pray,” (or “pray on it” as they say) but I am more action based. Nobody ever says, “Worry!” or “You should worry about this more,” but that’s my action plan.

So it was kind of comic relief when Jane “broke” her finger. We took a circuitous route (for which I haven’t received any PPO bills yet but I have a mental flash that it’s going to be $728) to find out it’s not broken. “Broken fingers….there’s nothing they can do for that, right?” That’s what people say when you tell them you have a broken finger. Apparently there’s some rare and deadly infection side effect from breaking finger bones right at the very tips (I was tired from worrying about our legal woes and the dog’s seizures and the refrigerator so I admit I didn’t listen as closely as I should have when the doctor explained it) so we had to have it x-rayed.

Jane had to miss some of the school day. Other than Rosh Hashanah, the kid has perfect attendance, and she cried (genuinely, and hard) when she learned she would be two hours late. How did I give birth to this kid?

Since I’m a Free Range parent, I was letting the kids run an unlicensed full-combat Texas ninja academy in our backyard. (Don’t ask me how they come up with this stuff. When I asked, “Why Texas?” they said, “It seemed like a good idea to have weapons.”) Jane, who is five, was teaching a level B/C sword fighting class to a third grader. You know, like those long bamboo swords? When Eva plays at Sheen Yi’s house, they can use actual bamboo, since they have it growing in their yard, but after our battle against invasive grapevines, I will never purposely plant another invasive species in my yard again, so we don’t have any bamboo here. Texas Ninja uses abandoned PVC sprinkler pipes they found around the side of the house next to the old tomato stakes and flowerpots.

When Jane got back to school, she was excited to find that another little boy hurt his exact same thumb on the exact same day! They are injury buddies. (He slammed his in the screen door, though. Ho hum.)

Doctors used to poke holes through an injured nail with a hot needle and blood would come shooting out like a geyser. Thankfully our doctor doesn’t do that anymore (too high of an infection risk.) On the downside, her nail will be very painful for a couple of days (the piercing immediately releases the pressure and relieves the pain.) On the down/plus side, depending on your perspective, her nail will probably turn black and fall off. I sold it as something cool and interesting to tell her friends. And put up on my blog of course. Stay tuned!

Okay so you know how I wrote on my other blog that our backyard is pretty bad?

Want to see something weird, possibly horrifying, and oddly fascinating?

Mo’s toy snake which got wet so now lives in the backyard somehow got some grass seed in it, and sprouted like a Chia Pet.

shudder