Distasteful

My daughter has taken to "reading" books while I change her diaper. It skeezes me out; it's like the adult equivalent of reading while in the loo.

Overkill

On Sunday I fractured the fifth metatarsal in my right foot, which is a fancy way of saying I broke my foot. It was rather lame as I slipped on the last step/carpet and careened into a baby gate. Yes, a baby gate which is suppose to protect people (well little people) from injury, was the thing that injured me. Had the gate not been there the only thing hurt would have been my pride. Instead, after several hour at the ER, I ended up with a splint, a walker, and hurt pride.



The ER referred me to an orthopedist who looked exactly like Elvis Costello. Two days after visiting the ER, I saw Elvis and he decided that considering my lifestyle, swinger and celebrity extraordinaire (or pregnant mother of a toddler), and the type and location of the fracture, I could make do with a fracture shoe and stock in Tylenol. I could go on and on about how great the shoe is compared to the walker, which I still use when my monkey, I mean my daughter isn't around. But in reality, the shoe and situation still kind of suck since I can't drive and the monkey and I are trapped in our house, alone together, for hours and hours. We can't even go out in the yard because if she decided to bolt, well, I couldn't catch her. But I am not going to complain about the foot (for now), because this post is not about the injury, it is about adding insult to the injury.



Yes, not only is my foot broken, SO ARE MY PLANTS! We had a few storms over the last two days which seem to have knocked over or broken my poor little plants. And, since I am gimpy, I can't do squat to fix 'em! Okay, maybe it's not because I am gimpy, maybe it is because I am Plant Plague. For whatever reason, the plants are giving up. I tried to prop them back upright but every single last one fell right back over. Not only that, the tomato plant that I cut way back to save is still going belly up, with two unripe tomatoes on the vine no less. I'm not sure what to do now, and even if there was some solution, I actually am somewhat encumbered by the fact that I am gimpy. So instead of doing anything I am throwing my hands in the air and giving Mother Nature the double fisted, digital salute. It's just not right, my foot AND my plants? Really?

I Should Be Packing

We're off to Joisey to spend a long weekend with my MiL. If visions of crazy, baby-free marital nights danced in your head with that sentence, then you probably are unaware that my MiL needs knee replacement surgery and is unable to lug twenty-five pounds of baby around, and thus, unable to watch said twenty-five pounds so that we could have crazy, baby-free marital nights. It is all good though because I plan to have crazy fun nonetheless. Assuming, of course, that I quit Facebooking and blogging and instead start packing. Gah. Packing. Boo. One thing I need to remember to pack are my Jaywalkers. All that ripping paid off and I have two properly fitting feet. I still had to reconnoiter things a bit which meant that my heel flaps are a tad bit short, but I am not alarmed. I just need to knit up the legs and badda bing, badda bam, done! I plan to accomplish all of this knitting while sitting on the beach. Which, unbeknownst to my husband, means he will also be sitting on the beach, only instead of relaxing he will be entertaining the aforementioned twenty-five pounds and making sure it doesn't run or float off into the sea. This arrangement seems totally fair. We each get a kid. He watches one and I grow the other.

Lycopersicon Esculentum L

Sometimes I look out at my "garden" and I feel quite pleased, other times I look out and think that I am an idiot. Most often, if I ignore the prolific plantings of my friends, I feel like a smug idiot, which is a nice blending of the two. Yesterday, I was leaning more towards smugness than idiot when I spied this here tomato.



It is beautiful! Properly tomato shaped. Pretty red color. How could I not feel smug? Now, this isn't exactly something I've grown from scratch. This was the plant I bought that already had one baby tomato on it (which subsequently died) and I figured this would be a good bar ... it had one tomato so if it grew no more, well then it was because I am cursed, not because the plant was defective. So, my point as convoluted as it is, is that I can't really say I grew this tomato (though it wasn't even a flower when I got the plant) since the plant was kind of doing it on its own but even so, I still felt awesome about my tomato growing skills. Well, until I took a step back and looked at the actual plant.


In case you can't tell, 99% of the leaves are brown, yellow and dying. Awesome, eh? Now the plant has been in this sad state for some time now and still managed to make that one beauty, so I am cautiously hopeful that the others will ripen and not wither and die. Otherwise I will have paid $11 for one, albeit pretty, tomato, which is kind of lame.

The tomato plant that I actually did buy as a squirt, and didn't cheat on at all is, well, doing squat. Actually, that is not totally true. The topsy turvy tomato that I have babied and given lots of love is giving me squat, but the one that I had in its original pot for months and months and only a week ago planted in a proper pot, well it is showing potential.



It has one lonely, unripe,cherry tomato on it ... I am keeping my fingers crossed!

Ribbit!

So I've been plugging away on my Jaywalkers and I finished both toes and both feet and was on to the gusset and heel of the first sock when I remembered the tragedy that befell my green Jaywalkers (where the the gusset and heel were longer than the foot and I had to cut the toe off and perform some knittery magic) and I got a little nervous. Well one thing led to another and I got out the green Jaywalkers and I compared and then I hemmed and then I hawed and then I hemmed and hawed and then I decided to not do as many gusset increases and then I compared some more and then I hemmed and hawed again and then I put on the socks and said MUTHERFUCKER!



I had done exactly one row of the heel turn and there were like five million left which meant it was going to be WAY TOO BIG and how did I not learn this painful lesson from the last go around? Needless to say there was a whole bunch of ripping. And by whole bunch I mean inches. Yes, inches. Plural. As in I wasted precious nap time on knitting shit that I had to unknit. MUTHERFUKER!



I had to rip back through that dark plummy purple stripe. That is over four inches of knitting. GAHHHH. And? And. And I had to do it twice. Because I had to do it to the other sock. Have I said mutherfuker yet?

And We Shall Call Her Jatrick

Because Joan so sweetly asked ...

The Deuce, having not wanted to give up it's gender at our previous ultrasound, took pity on us this time and splayed her legs so wide that she won't need to see a gynecologist until she is thirty; she can just refer the doctor to her ultrasound picture.


I seriously can never make heads or tails of the ultrasound photos, and I swear this child is messing with us a little extra because she likes to move around constantly; thus, ensuring all pictures look like storm fronts. Nonetheless, when it came time to peak at her lady bits, she went all Showgirls so that even I said, "Hey look! Three lines!" Which is, in case you are curious, ultrasound speak for the vagina.

Not only is the Deuce a girl, she is a thumb-sucking girl. Well, at least that is what I was told that we see in this picture ... a human, on her back, sucking her thumb.


Um, okay, if you say so.

Bubble

I had a dream (stories that start like this ALWAYS suck, I KNOW. Do you care about my dream? No. Oh well.) about Twitter. And in my dream, I set up a Twitter page/account/thingamajig and then added it to my blog and I said to my dream self, "You should do this in real life." So, of course, I did. But here's the thing, what in the hell does one do on Twitter and who do you follow (well other than Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore)? Those are serious questions for which I'd love someone, anyone, you, to answer.

In the meantime, I am thinking that maybe I should delete my Twitter account and set one up for the Bean or for Dogbert. They'd probably be a lot more interesting. But this is something I will have to ponder later as I must now go stop the Bean from chasing the dog while carrying a (full) plug-in air freshener and a bottle of white-out. I can't see it ending well.

Presto! Pesto! Oh Boy!

Four semi-packed cups of home grown basil + one Mark Bittman pesto recipe = A Happy Girl! Actually, I exaggerate, all of the basil didn't go into the pesto, the leftover was for bruschetta, but this t'aint about no bruschetta, it's about the pesto, my very first experience with my homegrown herb. Homegrown herb, heh, wonder how many stray google hits that is gonna bring me.

First I took my freshly plucked basil and hand washed each individual leaf, cleaning all dirt off. Idiotically I am MUCH MORE relaxed when I buy fresh basil at the store; no individual leaf washing, the whole package gets a quick douse under the faucet (I just spelled that Fawcet, as in Farrah, as in I see too much pop culture on tv and the internet and it is rotting my brain). But then again, I know what lurks in my yard (i.e., psycho deer that try to attack my pooch and the turkey mafia) and it ain't pretty. So right, I washed the hell out of the basil and then, and only then did I give it a spin in the salad spinner.




It sure looks pretty! Well maybe it doesn't. Maybe it is some sense of farmer pride that makes me find this to be the most beautiful basil in the whole wide world. Maybe I am deluded. Or, maybe it really is the most beautiful basil ever. Once the basil was clean and drying, I gathered the rest of my pesto making goodies.


Note that neither the coffee maker nor the pink little girl socks are crucial to this recipe.

You may also want to grab slave labor, uh, I mean a sous-chef. The sous-chef, if under-aged, may turn out to be a hindrance as all she will want to do is sit on the floor and play with raw pasta noodles. But if she is cute, she can provide comic relief if your pesto goes to shit.



So I followed Bittman's basic pesto recipe, except that I added a dash of Romano cheese because I have crappy reading comprehension skills and randomly added it in my head. Also, I detoured from the recipe when it came to adding the oil. I like my pesto thick and after adding half the oil I was worried it was going to be a watery mess. Granted, you don't add the cheese (well the Parmesan, a/k/a the cheese called for in the recipe) into the food processor, you mix it in by hand after the oil and other ingredients are processed, but still, I was scared.

                   
This one has no cheese.                                                 This one has lots of cheese.

It turns out that the full amount of oil probably would have been fine (hell, it is a Bittman recipe after all), but I can only say probably because I just started mixing cheese in with no thought or care to measuring. I was just going for what looked right. I may have used less cheese to compensate for less oil, or maybe I am just a cheese loving fool, or maybe both.



It really doesn't matter though because in the end, I had some DELICIOUS pesto!

Ostentatious

Summer is here and I was thinking ... limos have pools in the back, why can't our Accord?



If you look closely, you can tell that Honda was thinking the same thing ... there is a hook for your towel off to the right.

Identification

There is this show called Better Off Ted that the world's best invention (electricity schmectricity), the DVR, records for me. I do believe I am the only person that watches this show as I have never seen a commercial for it, nor have I heard anyone talk about it. Which is a shame because I really enjoy it and my history indicates that even if people were talking about it or there were commericals for it, it would probably be on the verge of cancellation anyway. So. The whole reason I mention Ted is that there was a great seen where Veronica (played by I-Have-Gorgeous-Hair-Portia-de-Rossi) blows off stress in her office by pulling out some big ass hand gun, attaching a silencer, and then shooting the shit out of a throw pillow. Dudes. I totally get it. I, many a time, both as a lawyer and as a mom, have totally wanted to shoot the shit out of a pillow.

Farmer

So I mentioned that I harvested some of my basil and first and foremost, I want to share some photographic evidence of the befores and afters so that if my short, but potent, contact with the basil causes instantaneous death, well, there will be photographic evidence of it.

  
Before                                    After

It looks, at least here, like I didn't take much. In fact, it kind of looks like the only difference is in the time of day during which the pictures were taken. But looks, my friends, looks are deceiving. I plucked four semi-packed cups of leaves off of those babies!



A trusted friend, one of two people I know with a decent amount of gardening experience who doesn't laugh at my inept yard questions, well at least to my face, said that I could take about a third of the leaves. The internet said, "it’s important to make your pinch directly above a set of leaves whenever you’re harvesting." It said this a lot. Like every single google article on harvesting basil said this more than once. GEEZ PEOPLE! I GET IT. Ironically, there were a couple of fuck ups where my man-hands snapped all the leaves in their region. Whoops. Guess I shouldn't have gotten feisty with the internets, huh? Karma!

Anyway, I took my harvest (snort, snort) and I made me some pesto and I took pictures of the process because BeFri likes the food shots. Assuming I keep this blogging mojo going, I'll share the pics and tell you all about the yumminess that is giving me the garlic burps, even now, a day later! Maybe I will even photograph and share my bruschetta making experience as I have THAT. MUCH. BASIL. and I plan to make some bruschetta with it.

I also harvested some dill weed, with the approval of my friend. The internet, interestingly, was much less useful on what to actually do here so I kind of winged it. My stuff didn't look like the stuff people were describing so I just plucked the limp bits off. Since most of my dill is limp (think there is any dill Viagra?), I had to restrain myself and not pluck the whole dang thing.

  
Before                                    After

It looks, again, like I didn't take much, and that the only difference is in the time of day during which the pictures were taken. Here, looks are a little less deceiving.



I have a nice pile of dill, but it is not four cups. I am not certain what I want to do with this yet, I can only think of a cucumber sauce (yawn) or salmon (which I love but don't have handy). I'm open to dill suggestions if anyone has some ....

Wakefulness

Remember back in the day when I was a knitter and use to blog about my works in progress? Ahhhh, the days of yore. As of late I haven't even managed to blog my finished projects, let alone current ones. But is a new leaf turning? Is this all about to change?



Probably not. Nonetheless, today instead of spending naptime passed out on the couch (a superior way to spend naptime if you ask me), I knit and photographed, and I harvested basil and photographed. More on the basil tomorrow. For today, you get a couple of picky-pic (WTF? Picky-pic? Am I seven years old?) of my current project, as in the one I am actually working on. Jaywalkers in a luscious Kaffe Fassett colorway.



Yes, the Jaywalkers are a tired old pattern that I have done, over and over. But I do like what it does to striping yarn and it is brainless; hence, the ability to do it during naptime!

Dreamy

Dozing in lala land.

Is there anything cuter than your puppy curled up next to you on the couch, sleeping, dreaming puppy dreams and kicking her paws and letting out little itty bitty barks? I think not.

Jarred awake. And confused.

Good Times

Happy Fourth of July! Well to the Americans. And maybe to the Brits, since you know, they got rid of us which, considering the high level of idiocy amongst my countrymen, is a valid reason for the Brits to celebrate our Independence Day. Everyone who doesn't celebrate, well you can suck it.

And speaking of sucking, yesterday, for the first, and how I totally hope last, time, LB puked. It was a somewhat surreal experience, which I probably shouldn't share, but I will anyway. I had spent the day curled up on the floor with stomach ailments of my own, using my prone position to block LB into the play area and prevent her from escaping while at the same time, allowing myself to doze. When she tried to escape, it woke me up. Also, getting hit with a book because some unsympathetic little wench wanted attention, that woke me up too. I am a considerate sick parent so I had the television on and LB watched Horton Hears a Who. Which was a bit of luck - I had lowered my girth to the floor and then thought the television might be a great distraction. Not wanting to actually get up, I manually (heh) turned on the tube, which meant I had no channel control unless I got up. Apparently Boo had been watching HBO the night before and fortunately Horton, and not say Natural Born Killers, was what was on. After Horton, I did manage to move and get the kid some Sesame Street and Barney. I am not proud of my parenting, but I am somewhat feeling better and figure the rest did me well.

So I felt crappy and LB felt fine. Those were the reports I was sending to Boo when I was asking him if he was sure he couldn't get home from work at you know, now. Later in the afternoon, all seemed well, or at least status quo as I just wanted to lay down and LB wanted to play or eat. LB asked for a snack so I brought her some crackers and Cheerios. I returned to the couch, and LB ate a cracker. Then she coughed. Then she burped. And then she opened the vomit flood gates. Honestly, it was insane. First I saw the crackers come up and thought, huh, isn't she a little old for spit up? Then I saw lunch come up and thought, uh oh. Then I saw her pre-lunch snack come up and thought, hell. Then I saw breakfast come up and though, HOLY FUCK! Seriously, you could watch each course come up. And for the records, shouldn't breakfast have been digested by late afternoon? I mean, really.

The entire time I watched the puke-movieathon of her meals, she just stood there, puking down her front and on the floor without seeming the least bit upset. When she was done she wiped her hand across her face, smearing puke into her hair and eyebrows, and smiled. It was ... the opposite of awesome.

Now I am not down with the puke, or rather the clean up of puke, as every time I puke, it is in the toilet or garbage or sink, you know, someplace where I don't have to scrub it up. I don't really like kids, and I was never the babysitting type, and even if I had been, you bet your butt that if some kid I was babysitting started puking, I would have been on the phone with the parents STAT. Ten bucks an hour soooo does not cover that type of hazardous duty. In any event, I am unfamiliar with the clean up of the puke and I had no idea that puke it somewhat slimy and a general fuking menace. Holy crap, cleaning up puke stinks (bad pun totally intended, though apologized for). I have scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and my nostrils have been singed by the smell of stomach bile and toxic chemicals. It has been delightful. I see a date with Stanley Steamer in my future.

And did I mention BiL5 was showing up about two hours after LB's pukefest? Yah. I had forgotten he was coming and the house was trashed and Boo called to remind me about three hours before BiL5 was arriving. Had I been feeling good, I could have cleaned but I wasn't and so I didn't. LB just solidified the frat house atmosphere by adding the scents to go along with the dirty laundry and pet fur.

Inane

Recent song lyrics that made me say, WHAT?

• I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.
  
• Birthday sex ... Birthday sex ... It feels like, feels like... lemme hit that...g-spot g-spot.

Things I've said that made the me think, WHAT?

• Please don't pet the cat on his butthole.
  
• Spit out the dog food. Now!
  
• Don't put the plug in your mouth.
  
• Oh, I thought it was because you smelled like a stripper.

Facebook status updates I've thought but not published.
sub-category: scatological

• I smell poop.
  
• I need to poop.
  
• My kid is trying to kill me with the smell of her poop.
  
• A diet of 100% blueberries will give you navy/violet poop.

sub-category: I'm a bitch

• People who post scripture as their status are unoriginal sheep.
  
• I don't give a fuck about your weather.
  
• You are not half as funny as you think you are.
  
• I still don't give a fuck about your weather.