Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Snickerdoodles: The Day Before Payday Cookie

It's almost like when ABC News came to the house we were just tempting fate with our budget.

Reporter: Would you say your financial situation is better since you're renting?

Me: Of course! Ha ha ha!

......two weeks later......

God: How about now?

Ho Ho! It's not that bad and we'll make it work, the nice thing is we have a lot of flexibility with our financial landscape, plus all the late night fretting I do, so everything will be fine.

Our cash flow however has run into some snags in the last month. Mainly related to lawsuits against douchey ex-landlords who have illegally held our security deposit and those types of things. That keeps coming up doesn't it? I should just grow up already.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa.

So at the end of the pay period we're sort of very careful with our money and this is my (typically) long-winded way of telling you how I decided to make Snickerdoodles today since my house has been cleared of everything except a variety of condiments, 3 eggs, some questionable hummus, and a lot of things you can mix with alcohol to make cocktails. It's what's for dinner!

I decided to try a recipe I saw at Tastespotting. Tastespotting has become my new hobby as I'm eating a really unsatisfying meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or worse, a spoonful of peanut butter. I browse and think, "Gee, I wish I was putting that in my mouth."

You can find the recipe for snickerdoodles here.

Here's why I make snickerdoodles after growing up without ever even knowing something called a snickerdoodle existed. You can make them with 7 ingredients we almost always have in our house. The only cookie more reliably made from our kitchen would be one composed of ketchup, barbeque sauce and Rose's lime juice.

Let me know if you have one!

Mutt Strut: Go Team Williams!

My brother, Scott, is 6 years older than me. Like a lot of older brothers he had a way of a) making me believe everything he said and b) enjoying my suffering.

For example, once on a bike ride past the park around the block he told me the giant bubbles over the tennis courts (so you can play in winter) were actually giant caterpillars. I didn't believe him at first, but then he pointed out the fences around the giant bubbles. "Why do you think fences are around them?" he said. "They're there to keep them in."

This made a lot of sense to me as a seven year old.

Another time, we were brushing our teeth in the bathroom at the same time. I still ate Flintstone's vitamins at the time. But Scott pulled out an orange vitamin, a vitamin I'd seen my parents and my brother take with a glass of water at least 100 times in my life.

"These are new vitamins," he said. "You can chew them."

I doubted him for a while, but when he said they tasted like orange, I was intrigued. So I chewed the vitamin.

And spent the next 20 minutes, spitting green crap out of my mouth while my brother laughed in the other room.

My brother has spent a lot of his life laughing at me. Now, I'd like my chance. You know, with love.

Settling In.

I thought today I'd share pictures of the next new house we're living in. I've come to love the house a lot more than I did when we first left our dream neighborhood to come here. It's truly fun living downtown. The house is a good size for us, it would actually be perfect if I could just tear down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Do you think the landlord would keep our security deposit for that? At least that would be reasonable. We've had a couple of parties and the house works pretty well, not as good as the last house, but on the upside, we're not being told our basement is flooding because we didn't shovel the snow away from the foundation.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the living room, because we still haven't done much of anything else!

This is the front door and stairway. Wouldn't this door look awesome painted black? Kind of like this. We're not going to because this is a rental, but still.

We created a front foyer area using our sofa and book case.

Here's the view from in the room. I love that staircase.

Did They Eat It: Sweet and Sour Chicken

I grabbed this recipe from Elise Bauer's great Simply Recipes site while I was at the grocery store deciding what to make for dinner. I take a (humorous, loving) beating from my friends and family because of my (really unbecoming) dependence on my phone. But this iPhone is a life saver in so many ways. One way being that I can be as flaky as I am and still buy the correct ingredients for dinner.

Maddie likes very few things and sauces make her fly into a wild rage, WHY DO I HAVE TO RUIN EVERYTHING WITH SAUCE!? But this Sweet and Sour Chicken has chicken, she likes, pineapple, she likes, and the sauce is like a punched up ketchup so I decided to risk it.

Here is everything you need, except an egg and the chicken that I forgot in the fridge.

Stress for me results in sleep. Logan, not so much.

Logan has this thing he does when he's a little stressed out.

He reacts to things by yelling out some minor-league expletives. Things like, "Gah, Jeez, Bless It!"

But the force with which these minor-league expletives come flinging from his gob, makes you convinced another really bad thing has happened. The truth is we're all a little on edge over here, Gary's dragging his water dish all over the place, we're dropping revenue like the Big Three and Maddie is pissed beyond belief that Logan's making her take orchestra for one more year. Max and Socks are pretty much cuddling each other for relief from the bad mood swirling around this house.

So when Logan yells, "Gah! JEEZ!!! Bless IT!!!!"

My whole body goes, "Oh God, the car's dead."

Or, "The House Is On Fire"

Or, "I just caught botulism!"

But no, these are examples of times I've heard "Gah, JEEZ!!! Bless IT!!!*" in the last month.

This afternoon: "Gah, JEEZ!!! Bless IT!!!*"
He grabbed the wrong socks for his run!

The other day: "Gah, JEEZ!!! Bless IT!!!*"
He forgot to hit cancel on the microwave when the timer ran out. Did you hear it? So Annoying!!!

A day before that: "Gah, JEEZ!!! Bless IT!!!*"
A client has minor changes, that are annoying.

I can't imagine what it's like at Wagoner's house.

*Or equivalent.

$15 Table, Found On A Run

Logan bought a table one day while on a run. It was a little water damaged and well loved, but we loved the lines of it and it fit perfectly in the front room of our last house.

We tend to buy things seeing what they *could* be. Then we get them home and it's almost like we start to see them the way we imagined they could be if only we'd commit the hours of work to the project. So we see a nicely painted desk in our dining room, you would probably see a shabby and kind of crappy desk. I think redoing our first house, has still sucked our will to work around the house.

While buying paint (around the block!) I saw this product. Howard Restor-A-Finish, it claimed to get rid of scratches and white rings on your wood surfaces by simply wiping it on.

I can wipe!

The thing I like about this table is its clean lines and the marks all over it made me think of a couple just like us who liked to have lots of people over. Lots of people who don't like to find a coaster, just like me!

But it was time to try to clean up the table a little. Logan tried the stuff in a corner, to see if it worked, we were not impressed with the results. So we bought some very fine steel wool, as directed on the container. I spent 15 minutes and ended up with a table that could still be totally sanded and refinished. But it's perfectly acceptable. More pictures. after the cut.

Another Eighth Birthday

Max turned eight on Friday, we celebrated by welcoming a few wild animals to stay in our house. Now, alone these creatures are just regular boys but my God you put them together? They become giant sticks of dynamite.

Dynamite that makes farting sounds.

Our birthday celebrations have become a lot less elaborate since my kids were babies. I should do something about it, but....enh. Maybe next year.

Going to my happy place.

We had co-worker friends over for cards last night and some of the discussion about the economy and the situation at the office left me with heartburn so bad I caught the dining room on fire.

Ha!

Then this morning, while lounging in bed, I decided to read the paper online. Oh, what's this nice human interest story about the mailman!? Oh, he's in Royal Oak? How nice, I wonder if he's my mailman.

Then, bam....it was all terrible stories about people losing their houses, their jobs, their clothes, their furniture. It was, over all, the most depressing thing I've read all day.

So I cornified it, and I feel a lot better now.

Cats are assholes.

Logan's going to seriously contemplate divorcing me for devoting two posts in one week to a cat. His divorce papers will read, "My partner wrote an entire post describing our cat's habits and idiosyncrasies. I can't abide by this. Also she always dried my jeans all the way."

But it's the weekend, so whatever.

I know there are pet fountains you can get for your cat, because a lot of cats like moving, fresh water. But there's this part of me that's thinking, "You fucking princess, just drink the water from the bowl and stop being difficult."

The bowl we have weighs over 5 pounds. It's heavy, ceramic and about as big as my head.

We tried putting the bowl on a mat, he grabs the top edge and pulls it so hard it flips over, which probably makes him more happy than just dragging it on the concrete and making my teeth grind in annoyance does.

In the past, when we had a lighter bowl we used that grippy shelf liner stuff and he caught it with his nail and yanked it so that the bowls flipped over. He also punched me in the stomach that time.

I may try the grippy liner again because the bowl is so heavy now. Maybe we'll build a stand for the cat's dishes. Maybe we'll start using the kitchen sink as the bathroom sink so Gary can have full access to his sink napping habit. And maybe we'll just sleep on the sofa and give our bedroom to Gary, The Princess.

Gary's weight. I know, it's crazy. He'd like you to know that he's big boned. His paws really are huge.

My sister in law suggested I try just feeding them all day, keeping the kibble flowing and see if he ever got to his natural weight. As though, maybe he was so afraid the food would run out, he was eating it as fast as he could.

Didn't work.

We tried light food. Nope.

The vet suggested Mature food, because it's lighter than regular food. And we've seen no change in Gary's girth.

We feed him Science Diet because cheaper brands make him smell like...death. There's enough gas passing in this house, we don't need the cat added to the chorus.

He gets 1/4 cup of food twice a day. He also eats some of the other cat's food because she's such a baby and doesn't push her way toward the bowl.

At this point Gary is going to live out his days walking from the kitchen to the living room, laying down and taking a "breather" then making the rest of the journey up the stairs, with a brief stop on the landing.

He's going to sleep on Maddie's head, and push her out of the bed and he's more than likely going to force me to buy him his very own motion activated drinking fountain.

In the shape of a fish with a mermaid (holding a bowl of food) rising out of the back.

Either that or he's finally going to figure out how to get that heavy water bowl up the stairs and in the night he's doing to drop it on my head, killing me instantly. Over my lifeless body he'll whisper in my ear, "That's for the chicken hat."

Cats are assholes

Things besides filing a lawsuit that are annoying me: Vol. 1

Can someone explain why Gary, the morbidly obese cat, insists on dragging his water bowl all over the concrete basement floor? In our first house, we kept the water bowls upstairs in the kitchen and watched him flip the little plastic bowls upside down every day.

We thought maybe he just liked fresh water so we bought one of these things. When full of water, it's a pretty heavy item so we thought at the very least we'd have our spilling water problem solved. Gary is stronger than we thought.

My next attempt to control the spilling water dish problem was to buy him the biggest bowl I could find at the pet store. It's a bowl meant to feed a Great Dane, or perhaps a pack of wolves. It's big and very heavy, Maddie has a hard time filling and carrying it.

But Gary is secretly lifting weights in the basement and has managed to drive me totally insane by dragging that stupid bowl all over the basement.

Why? Dogs don't do annoying things like this, right?

Stress Related Narcolepsy

At the end of last week I pretty much fell asleep. All the time. I'd be thinking about, say, the pay cut Logan took last week and suddenly my eyes couldn't stay open anymore. Or maybe I'd think about the pending litigation with the landlord and then I'm out. I think I slept approximately 86 hours last week.

This is not the most effective way of handling stress but it surely beats having a public anxiety attack. Of course, then again maybe I'm not harnessing the power of worry very well.

Let's see what happens this week, maybe I can sleep for 100 hours!

Remember how I started my year over at the beginning of February?

I think I'm scrapping the do-over and maybe we'll just go with this as our 2009 mantra. There are only what? Nine more months anyway.

Antique Olive Nord, says "Winner".

My husband is a design nerd.

I've actually listened to conversations around my family room that start with this sentence, "What's your favorite font?" Then I've listened to the earnest and well thought out answers.

Around the dinner table I've heard people say, condescendingly, "Did he use Comic Sans?" Uproarious laughter follows. "No, no, no...." the next person says, "It was Avante Garde!"

That's a hot one eh!?   

So it's not entirely shocking that Logan came up with this design for Max's Pinewood Derby entry this year, (here's last year's). 

The race is Monday night, this year they used legal wheels so Max is in the regular competition. Watch out Boy Scouts. I hope none of you used Comic Sans on your cars.

Things I May Have To Buy: the shoes, they're just $17!

I love these shoes.

This jacket to replace my ill fitting red spring coat.

And maybe this shirt.

Did They Eat It: Chillied Black Bean Pasta

Hey! Look! I cooked something while using a camera. The only bright side to the Spring Forward segment of daylight savings time is the extra daylight in the kitchen so food doesn't look unappealing in my dimly lit kitchen. (You remember that kitchen I was cooking in for most of the winter? The one we "trashed". Ahem.)

Last night I decided to make Chillied Black Bean Pasta, you know how we feel about black beans in this house. This is a recipe from my old neighborhood's cookbook. Logan designed it for them and we planned on getting them made into real books but that proved too difficult to get together. We ended up making the book into a PDF you could either print or use on your computer.



I like reading cookbooks while I eat something particularly unsatisfying, like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, thinking about what else I could be eating that would actually be satisfying. So I had my book printed and put into a binder.



This is a recipe from my friend Andrea's collection. We'll be eating a lot of black beans in the next few months because, hey Mandatory Paycut at Logan's office! Woooo! I am loving this economy!

Here's what you need

When we adopted him, his name was Boss

Max, Logan and Maddie are all crowded onto half the sofa. And Gary is all comfortable on the other half. 

Maddie is making that face because I've suggested maybe we move the cat so I can sit down too.

Superstar Furniture.

While I try to keep breathing through the stressful and unknown process of collecting one's security deposit from a man who is notoriously difficult to deal with, I thought I'd share my dining room armoire.

We bought this piece of furniture about 10 years ago at an antiques shop up the street from our first house. It was in the back and deeply discounted to $150. It had no shelving inside and without the inner workings, it was a little rickety.

But Logan put shelves inside, he's good at things like that. For example, since we moved in we've had to tell our guests that the bathroom door doesn't latch, so just put the little kid's step stool in front of the door so no one walks in on you. Oh quirky 1920's houses. I can't say I missed you but here we are! Anyway, Logan took the handle apart and made it work without a step stool.

The shelves in the armoire made it sturdy and it became a replacement for my dresser at the old house. Maybe you remember?

It held my (very small) wardrobe and also some office supplies when Logan's computer was kept in our room. (My wardrobe is so small, I basically have to go naked for half the week. Thankfully I work at home.)

Then we moved to the other house, (sniff sniff) and we used the armoire to store the kids crap in the family room.

And now, it's in the dining room doing duty as overflow storage for the kitchen. The kitchen in this house is very functional but is seriously lacking cupboard space. I mean, I think there are few cabinets than we had at our first house. This is fine since I don't like to buy a lot of food at one time, I have an allergy to unloading groceries. But after having a kitchen with empty cabinets, we needed some extra space.

And here's the inside!

Is it weird that this whole thing makes me feel slightly aroused?

Clearly the best money we've spent on furniture in our marriage.

Waves of Irritation

Wow so it's already Wednesday.

This keeps happening.

I feel a little tongue tied, again, because of the landlord situation. At the legally mandated 30 days after occupation he sent along a bill from his contractor for $500 more than our security deposit.

I assume, though I can't be sure, this is what he's calling an itemized list of damages we owe him for. Though maybe he was just forwarding his contractor's bill to us for fun?

From what I understand from the law we were owed more than a contractor's bill for a bunch of jobs without a cost for each item. Luckily after talking to a lawyer, he agreed. So we're on to the next step of trying to get our money back from the clutches of a man who is so "smart", when we let him know about the massive ice dams forming at his roof line (warning him of potential damage to his property, because you know we cared for his property), he responded, and I quote,

"Folks, we've talked about this before! You have to shovel the snow away from the foundation of the house."

Here's a tutorial: "What are ice dams?"

He's so lovably dim-witted. There's really nothing better than a dim-witted, wealthy, bully. A charming combination.

Anyway I'm sending a (certified) letter today explaining his failure to provide us an itemized list of the damages he is claiming we are responsible for. He has 14 days to respond, maybe he will! Maybe he'll even respond after 4 days! Maybe I'll start talking on the phone and love it so much I become a phone sex operator! (Read: Never.)

He probably won't respond so we'll end up going to small claims court. Where a judge will look at these pictures and wonder how it is that the entire house needs to be repainted and the cabinets are filthy.

I'm wondering the same thing myself.

Should have got my hair done.

The Good Morning America piece aired early this morning. After a night of karaoke and adult libations that ended for me at 1am and for Logan at.....he doesn't remember when.

It's not too cringe inducing. Except for the part where I sing "Uno" like a lunatic.

Logan told the reporter that he'd pay money if they found a way to use that in the piece. And so, they did.

Also there are a couple of times where I just want to climb into the video and fix my hair (Logan of course stopped for a cut on his way home that day....smart guy). But overall it wasn't terrible.

Here you go if you're interested in taking a look.

Watch for Choppable's appearance as they pan through my closet. Fear not Internet, he can't get you. He can get me, but let's not think about that.