Daily Dose

Letter to My…

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Memes and Quizzes, Personality, Questions and Answers /

I was reading Adela’s post again, Advice to My Younger Self, and realized I’ve never written one of these types of letters. Or if I have, it was when I was a child and forced to write one in school (and then promptly forgot about it.)

I thought I might be the only person in the world who’s never written such a letter because they’re so common online but TW says she’s never written one either.

Interesting.

Are we the only ones?

And did you write these kinds of letters to yourself when you were a kid? Michelle Belle did that and then read them when she was… I don’t remember… 18 maybe? But she’s very much a time capsule, look back on my life, look ahead to my life sort of person.

I am not.

Maybe I should be?

I’m considering writing a letter to my 60 year old self. Or at least attempting it. Is that dumb? It feels kind of dumb. But if the rest of the world can write letters like this, why can’t I?

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Changes Feel Weird

3 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

Two weeks into … changes.

Work and life changes.

Two weeks… and it still feels weird.

I still feel like I should be doing something … else. Something… different. Something… differently.

I always feel like I’m forgetting something.

I have to force myself not to do ALL – OF – THE – THINGS and just do the things I can do, in the time allotted to do them.

None of this means that I’m complaining. Or unhappy with the way things are going.

I mean, I am. In some respects. Unhappy with the way things are. The ones I can’t really talk about and try not to think much about lest I think too much or say too much.

In other respects, it’s good. Good for me. Good for others.

It still feels weird, though.

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Doodling

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

So weird to be doodling every day. It’s been forever since I did anything arty or crafty on a regular basis — even the five, ten, fifteen minutes I’m spending on doodles seems like a lot.

And, ordering a box of gel pens for myself seemed … decadent.

So weird.

Next thing you know, I might actually start cooking or baking or something like that.

Scary, right?

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Lessons Learned or Something Like That.

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

– I need to figure out how to blog via email, to this blog. I’m pretty sure I set it up so that I could do it, but I don’t have the email addy handy to actually do it. (This is why it was so much easier to have posterous around, sigh.)

– The internet always goes out when you can least handle it going out.

– I’m not very good at writing blog posts when I’m “offline”. This makes no sense but there you have it. I can’t write when I’m flying. I can’t write when the internet is down. I’m too distracted by the lack of connectivity to string any words together.

– AT&T’s service is a zillion times better than any other internet/cable provider I’ve used (Everything from Charter to Comcast to Cox to I don’t even know what else.)

– White noise machines are weird. Do they work better than the white noise app on your iPhone/iPad?

– People really like to talk about their dogs.

– Gel pens make me happy.

– I need to clean out my desk top thingy so I have more photos of JMP and fewer stray pieces of paper tucked under the glass.

– There are too many interesting books to read and not enough time to read them.

– There are an awful lot of movies I wanted to see but never got around to seeing.

– Prairie Dogs don’t get less messy as they get older.

– When you work 10 hour days instead of 12-14-16 hour days, you get more done. And maybe have more fun getting things done.

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I Cooked!

Daily Dose, Foodie /

I know, you’re shocked and excited. I understand. I’m shocked and excited, too — which is why I’m blogging about it. (Well actually, I’m blogging about it because I thought I’d already blogged today and so I have no topic and it seems this is the most interesting thing I’ve got, that I feel like blogging about.)

So, back to me cooking.

It’s not like I have never, in my life, cooked. I used to cook all of the time — I have three grown kids and they did not starve ya know.

It’s just that I’ve cooked less and less as the years have gone by, particularly since we moved to Chicagoland and TW’s mom moved in. And, as the small kids have gotten older, they’re more able to fend for themselves so when TW doesn’t feel like cooking, I don’t have to jump in and pick up the slack. So. I don’t cook much.

When I DO cook, some children feel the need to make a damn production of it. This usually causes me to roll my eyes. Then they spend the rest of the evening listing the “things Denise cooks” which causes me to not want to ever cook anything again.

So annoying.

I wasn’t planning on cooking today. TW made a meal plan for the week. We shopped for that meal plan. And, so far, we’re sticking to it. Tonight we were roasting two chickens and having a nice pasta/veggie/cheese salad. When I couldn’t nap, TW asked if I’d start the pasta, since I was getting up. So I did that.

While it was boiling, I made egg salad out of the last of the deviled eggs. And then, I did some other stuff. Time passed and I decided I’d get up and cut the veggies/cheese for the pasta salad. I did that (with input from TW) and I added a little lemon olive oil and a little cherry vinegar and yum. Then I realized I should just go ahead and put the chickens in, since it was time to do that. So I did.

And poof, there you have it.

I cooked and the small children were not here to comment upon the shock and awe of DENISE! COOKING!

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It’s Not Just Like Lowe’s or Home Depot, Damn It

Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I’ve always wanted to go to Menards (and The Crafty Beaver, but that’s another post entirely), even before I started couponing seriously and learned about the couponing opportunities, but have never managed to go. It’s so big and not as close as Lowe’s and Home Depot, so I always put it off. Until today.

I took an early morning work break and we headed to CVS for TW’s meds and some peeps, stopped by Starbucks to get our morning coffee (where a nice barista informed me that Menards is JUST LIKE HOME DEPOT OR LOWE’s) — he’s full of shit.

Yea, it’s a home improvement store similar to Lowe’s and Home Depot but it’s not the same at all. They sell food at Menards. And books, (novels and kids books and stuff), and greeting cards. They sell health & beauty items like toothpaste and deodorant, for goodness sakes.

They also have a whole lot of cool stuff — like this recycled tin flamingo and this recycled tin taxi. I want them both! (I actually want pretty much all of their recycled tin yard art, sigh.)

I even liked these little frogs and turtles. How cute, right?

Instead, we went home with the peat moss, mulch and gravel on our list (as well as a toilet flusher thingy, a bag of hot dog flavored potato chips for Elly and a big of cinnamon jelly hearts for me.)

We might have to go back for a backyard fence for Skeeter andthat flamingo might jump into my cart on our next trip… maybe.

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It’s Official. I Prefer the Empty Nest

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Holidays /

I’ve decided to cancel all holidays unless we have three or more of the six kids (and/or their friends and/or JMP) in attendance. I much prefer the empty nest and let’s just skip all of the traditional stuff over the a couple kids are here so we’ll do the whole thing stuff.

With just the two little girls here, it was far too quiet. The kitchen never got messy. Never. Not once. I barely had enough dishes this morning to run the load. I don’t have enough dinner dishes to run a load tonight. That’s madness. Really.

And everything just feels off without a house-full.

It wasn’t a bad Easter, not at all. We laughed a lot. We ate great food, (including asparagus that the girls and I fought over…RJ doesn’t even LIKE asparagus and I think she had three helpings.) But… yea.

No Prince J. No Michelle-Belle. No Chris. No Jenn. No JMP. No stray kids showing help. Hell, even TW’s mom was gone.

Bah humbug. Some people had better show up for the next holiday or I’m cancelling it.

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Vacations Are Exhausting

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Travel Log /

I took a nap this morning, at like 9am — and I didn’t wake up til Noon. Seriously. I was snoring and everything, TW said so.

That’s just crazysauce, isn’t it? Me? Napping in the morning? for HOURS? Madness.

After my little nap, we threw on our clothes and headed for Peninsula Park, with a stop for lunch at Village Cafe, in Egg Harbor.

Village Cafe is a cute little cafe, with lots of fun things to look at (and buy, though we didn’t buy any — we were tempted by painted cats, birdhouses and robots.) We had NO cell service while we were there, which we’re slowly getting used to. So funny to see 20-something girls with iPhones pull out PAPER planners to talk to their friends about planing visits and trips and parties. When you live (or visit often) Door County, your life can’t be in your iPhone. (Now that’s scary.)

My only real goal for our Peninsula State Park visit was to climb Eagle Tower. I could have thought of some other things to do but some people made fun of me for suggesting we might do OUTDOOR things in WINTER. So, whatever. We climbed the tower and that was cool. Also cold, because of the wind. But very cool.

Then we climbed down and started walking the Sentinel Trail. TW said she didn’t want to walk the whole thing, so we walked up to a snowman and then cut back — and then off-trail to backtrack to Eagle Point. We saw no eagles, just a lot of snow and ice. It was pretty, in a snowy and icy sort of way. And really quiet. There were others there — some snowshoers and hikers and families climbing Eagle Tower but still, very quiet.

Then we headed for the farthest end of Door County: Sister Bay, Gills Rock and then all the way to the Washington Island (car) Ferry landing. It was quiet up there — not very much open and not a lot of traffic or people around. We stopped at Bea’s Ho-made and bought pickles and more cherry things and then drive back via Bailey’s Harbor.

We tried to stop at the Motorcycle Memorial but nobody had cleared the parking lot of snow, in forever, so there was no way to stop and look around. Too bad, I was looking forward to that.

Then, back to Sturgeon Bay where we stopped at a toy store on Jefferson and bought a ton of presents for JMP and then dinner at The Neighborhood Pub & Grill (great artichoke dip & pita chip appetizer!)

Thank goodness for a super-hot whirlpool tub — my body is tired!

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Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

Daily Dose, Travel Log /

I have no idea why The Go-Gos are running through my head, but they are. I sure hope that doesn’t happen for my entire vacation. Then again, there are worse earworms to have.

And, day one of vacation was fabulous, (except for that leaving Skeeter in the kennel part.)

TW really wanted to go to Kohler so we did and I have to admit, it was totally fun and we realized we both really like pink bathrooms. So weird since neither of us really loves pink, just in general. Also weird because we’re in a very pink room at a B&B (and oh boy is it pink, lol.) The Shell Collector’s Bathroom is amazing (though neither of us love the pebbles on the far wall.) This pink bathroom was also fabulous, though the photos here don’t do it justice. We also love the spice drawers in this kitchen.

After our visit to the Kohler Design Center, we went into Sheboygan to the Kohler Art Center. It’s a nice little museum. The drawing room was fabulous. You can check out a drawing kit and sit in a little solarium type room and sketch. Totally awesome. The Emery Blagdon exhibit was amazing and the kids’ art was fantastic.

I decided we needed food and was very happy when I realized Field to Fork was just a couple of blocks away and was even happier once the food started arriving. The peach smoothie was excellent. The fried cheese curds were A-Freaking-Mazing. I’ve eaten a lot of fried cheese curds and none compare to these. I ordered the veggie sandwich and, holy hell it was good. TW ordered the grilled cheese and… it was good but it was over-shadowed by the cheese curds and the veggie sandwich. Amazing. I want to go back and order more of the things on their menu. And more fried cheese curds.

We made it to Sturgeon Bay around 4pm and promptly filled the double jacuzzi tub and lit the fireplace. We’d have taken a nap after that but it was too warm in the room… TOO WARM. I haven’t been TOO WARM in four and a half years! So, we went out for a walk and a visit to the Kick Coffee, just a block away.

It’s been an awesome first day.

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