Daily Dose

Mmmm, Pie

Daily Dose, Family Funk, Foodie, Memories /

Funny title, coming from me, isn’t it? I don’t like pie. At least that’s what I usually say.

The only real pie that I love is pumpkin pie and I can eat a whole pumpkin pie all by myself, in just a few days. In fact, I prefer it if I’m the only one eating the pumpkin pie. Let the other people eat the other desserts and just leave me the pumpkin pie.

I’ll eat the bottom crust but I never eat the side crust. Ever. Blech.

Which is why I don’t like pie. I don’t like crust.

I will eat a cherry pie but will leave as much of the crust on the plate as possible, which means I really just like the cherry filling. And please. Do not ever put a top crust on a pie. That just pisses me the hell off.

I’ll actually eat all sorts of pie FILLING. Key lime, lemon meringue, banana cream, apple, peach. I just kind of wish people would make crustless pies more often. That would be wonderful.

But…

Today we went to Bakers Square to pick up a holiday silk pie that I ordered for TW’s mom to take to some social event or another (and I ordered a banana cream pie for me and TW… I’ll eat the filling and leave the crust, duh) and all of the pies in the case looked really appealing. But I know I won’t like them. I’ll just like the filling. Seems dumb to buy a pie just for the filling, doesn’t it?

That visit to Bakers Square reminded me of going to Shoney’s when I was a kid and picking up a Strawberry Pie, on special occasions. It didn’t happen often but when it did, oh boy was that awesome. I miss those pies.

Well the filling. And the whipped cream on top.

I’d give pretty much anything for a good ole’ Shoney’s Strawberry Pie right now. Hell, as nostalgic as I’m feeling, I might even eat the crust.

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We Don’t Like Change, The Dogs and I

1 Comment / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Family Funk, Personality /

When Buster joined our family, it threw the Skeeter poodle into a tizzy. At night, when TW said “Off” and turned off the light, Skeeter poodle couldn’t figure out what to do because Buster butt was on HER bed by the door.

It didn’t matter that there was a perfectly nice dog bed by the bathroom door. That. Was. Her. Spot.

So I tried switching the dog beds. No go. She didn’t just want her spot or her bed, she wanted HER BED IN HER SPOT and Buster butt had somehow claimed that for himself.

Then we bought new dog beds on Black Friday because the dog beds we had were in BAD shape. I threw the old dog beds into the office and into the family room and TW carefully rearranged the bedroom furniture so that all dog beds were in one place and none of them were in Skeeter’s old spot by the door.

None of the dogs are thrilled with this. None of them want to sleep on the new fancy dog beds. I keep finding Skeeter laying on her old bed in the office (at least until we caught her tearing her old dog bed apart yesterday. Sigh.)

The only real success we’ve had with the new dog beds is the fancy pink dog bed for Lola’s crate. But even that hasn’t been foolproof. I put her old crate liners into Buster’s crate and every now and then Lola gets confused and tries to go into Buster’s crate because THAT IS WHERE HER (old) BED IS.

It’s all crazy making stuff around here, I swear.

But then again. I’m kind of the same way.

After sleeping on a mattress on the floor in SC for a year, I had a hard time adjusting to a real bed. (TW still teases me about complaining that the bed was too close to the ceiling.)

When TW makes me a new quilt, I long for my old quilt for weeks (months, even.)

Change sucks. Even if that change brings fancy new beds or quilts.

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Come On Skeeter! Come on Lola!

Daily Dose, Pet Peeves, Pets /

As I’ve mentioned before, Lola sleeps in her crate in the kitchen – most nights, sort of.

She usually goes right in, all by herself, a good hour before we’re ready to lock her in for the night. Once she’s had her evening cookie and is locked in, six nights out of seven she’ll stay there for exactly four hours and then she’ll bark to be let out.

When it was warm and she barked to be let out, I thought she wanted to go OUTSIDE so I’d get up and take her out. Now that it’s cold, she doesn’t want anything to do with going outside — she wants to go in our room, so I let her in and she lays down on a dog bed and goes to sleep.

Until sunrise. Within two minutes of official sunrise, she’s on the bed licking my face. So — I get up. When it was warm, she got up with me. Now that it’s cold, as soon as I get out of bed, she jumps into my spot and stays there til TW gets up (which can be up to two hours later!)

So yea, Lola sleeps in her crate except when she doesn’t and she forces me out of bed long before I’m ready to get out of bed — most days.

Last night, Lola did not bark to be let out of her crate. I woke up at sunrise myself and realizes there was no Lola. So I rolled over and was just going back to sleep when what do I hear?

Come on Skeeter! Come on Lola!

TW was calling the dogs IN HER SLEEP.

And then what happened? Lola barked to be let out of her damn crate.

So I let her out of her damn crate and what happened?

She jumped on the bed and licked my face so I would get up and she could have MY spot. AGAIN.

I might have pictured someone (or several someones) dead… and thought that on the moon, this would never happen… silly, Merricat. Hmph.

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Little Blue Car

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Kid Talk /

I’m very very thankful for TW’s little blue car. It has carried Christopher safely to Charleston and back again. I will admit to being worried. It’s an old car with a lot of miles and has not been well taken care of since we moved to Chicagoland.

TW wasn’t worried, even when I reminded her that the little blue car didn’t make it to Charleston a few years ago when they attempted the same trip. I guess she knew something I didn’t, it was her car after all.

That little blue Subaru Forester is a great car. I miss it but I’m glad it’s taking care of Chris.

(Pst! I did it — not only did I post for the entire month, I’ve posted at least one post a day about things or people I’m thankful for. Yippee! Now I can go back to being my normal, bitchy self?)

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Yummy Food Cooked In the Ninja

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Foodie /

I’m thankful for grilled cheese sandwiches with cranberry grape sauce, cooked in the Ninja.

Yummy. Very yummy.

And, the clean up took like 2 minutes.

Win, win, win, win, WIN!

If you don’t have a Ninja, you need one. If you don’t have cranberry grape sauce… well… I don’t know what to tell you since we bought our jar in Beloit and I dunno if you can find it anywhere else or how one might make such a thing. Surf the internet — maybe you’ll get lucky and find a recipe you can make IN the Ninja?

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Thanksgiving Shopping

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Holidays /

I’m thankful for stores and restaurants that are open on Thanksgiving — very thankful.

Jenn, Ted and JMP are in Hawaii. Chris is in Charleston. Michelle is in Philadelphia (and worked today.) The little kids are with their dad. Which means, today was not our Thanksgiving in the traditional sense of the word.

It was our traditional Christmas shopping day, though, and I’m very thankful for all of the stores that were open today.

We hit Starbucks for holiday coffee — where I put my traditional $40 into the tip jar (and we gave one of our favorite baristas a holiday gift.)

We dropped TW’s mom off at the nursing home so that she could spend the day with TW’s sister.

We went to Kmart, as usual. It’s not nearly as much fun to shop at Kmart now that our kids are grown up. There’s just not much there that any of them want or need. We bought some things, though nothing “fun” by TW’s definition.

Then we went to Walgreens for our traditional Thursday freebies run — the most exciting purchases there were cheap toilet paper and laundry detergent. Nothing fun, again — but we have a ton of RRs that TW can use this weekend to buy alllllll of the fun stuff she wants.

Next stop CVS where we bought more cheap laundry detergent and used all of our ECBs on holiday candy and a few holiday things.

Then we went home where I talked to Jenn and Facetimed with JMP while he opened his Elf on the Shelf present.

We were going to take a nap but we’d forgotten to put the quilt in the dryer so… hard to nap in this freezing house with no quilt… we went off to Big Lots where we thought we might find a trunk for RJ, but did not. Instead we found a ton of Bob’s Red Mill stuff at about half the price we normally pay for it. That was a big, unexpected win.

And, we drove through Burger King for lunch — mistake. The awesome fries we had from the BK in front of our neighborhood were not to be found at the BK on Golf Rd. Blech. I think we may never go to BK again… blech.

Then it was home for a nap before we headed back to pick up TW’s mom.

Dinner was a nice chicken breast with some cranberry something or other while we fought over the advertisements from today’s newspaper and joked about camping out in front of the Petsmart tonight so we were first in the door tomorrow morning. Hah.

I talked to Michelle on the phone for a bit and I’ve cleaned the kitchen. If I was a little more motivated, I might wrap a few gifts but I’m not, so I won’t. We’ll watch a little TV and read for the rest of the night and call this non-Thanksgiving a success.

Because it was. Even with the bad BK for lunch.

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A (somewhat) Clean House

Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I really am thankful for my cleaning ladies — and the child(ren) who gifted me with the cleaning ladies this fall. I’ve missed them and it’s been really nice to have a (somewhat) clean house every couple of weeks, even if it only lasts a few hours before the dogs track in dirt and drag fluff and chewed up stuff all over the house.

It’s really really nice to be able to walk barefoot in my bedroom without feeling like someone had shook out a beach towel on the floor. It’s really nice to not have a dusty tv when we’re watching Survivor. It’s really really nice to have a clean sink.

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Mmmm, Chicken & Waffles

Daily Dose, Foodie /

Is there any better combo than chicken & waffles? I don’t think so unless you toss in the exactly right sweet tea and one of the best biscuits on the planet.

And that’s what happens when you go to Chicago’s Home ofChicken and Waffles, in Evanston.

This has become our favorite restaurant and as TW said today — we’ll miss it when we move away. That’s saying something because there’s not much we’ll miss when we leave here.

The people are nice, the atmosphere of the restaurant is wonderful, the patrons always look like they’re enjoying their meal (and the company they’re with) as much as we do. And, there’s always a diverse crowd. That’s our favorite kind of restaurant and we’re thankful that they opened this branch in Evanston.

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Thank You, Coupon Bloggers

Daily Dose, Money Talks /

Seriously. I cannot imagine shopping without coupon bloggers. Mostly Rachel, at Mashup Mom, but I do still look at Southern Savers and Totally Target once a week or so, too.

Without them I wouldn’t have bought $75 worth of gift cards for $55 on Sunday. Not to mention the $45 in free products from CVS. Or the 2 bags of DeLallo pasta from Whole Foods today for $1.75. Or the deals coming to me for Christmas gifts from all over the darn place (including new laptops we desperately needed.) And the $40 of free food we’ll be buying at Jewel to finish off the shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. Or… the list goes on, really.

Yay for coupon bloggers!

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You Don’t Suck

1 Comment / Community Chest, Daily Dose, Family Funk, Kid Talk /

I took the girls to Michaels today — a little Christmas shopping, just the three of us. If I hadn’t had to force the child to get out of bed at 1:45 and hadn’t had to listen to her gripe about having to SEE PEOPLE when she didn’t want to SEE PEOPLE, I’d have turned around and gone right back home when I saw the parking lot. MADHOUSE, just in the parking lot. I’m not used to that. Normally when we go to Michaels, it’s pretty much empty. Darn holiday season.

But no, I braved it and by the third aisle I was pretty sure they were going to kick us out. The girls were… wound UP. They were those kids people talk about. The out of control, loud, touching everything, getting in everyone’s way kind of kids. And they’re TEENAGERS. Hell, one of them is an actual ADULT who can VOTE for godsake.

Some people glared. Some people stared. Some people grumbled. I couldn’t really blame them because OMG they were out of control.

But some people were nice. Particularly the man and woman in front of us in line. And we were in line for a really long time because there were cash register problems. I really appreciate nice people who don’t suck. Elly calls that woman my new BFF because she was so nice.

I sure hope I see more nice people who don’t suck this holiday season — she made my day. Go out there and be the nice person who doesn’t suck and make someone’s day!

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