Category: Living

>I can’t help but look back at the kind of year it’s been.  I’d say a good one!  I’ll try to briefly recap each month, maybe include a few pictures.

January:  Nothing too exciting happened, except that we decided to start looking for a house to buy.  We met with Greg our Real estate agent, and looked at a few houses.  One house we looked at we had put an offer on it, but our offer got rejected by the bank… here’s why I loved the house:

Now when we drive by the house, we tell people it’s our “Almost House”!

February: Ruthe turned one on February 9th!  It was an amazing first year with her, and we had her birthday party at my inlaw’s house.  And in one year, she went from looking like this:

To this:

Nothing changed too much, except that her hair grew in lighter, she got bigger and got teeth.  I love her nose.. it’s so cute and reminds me of a button mushroom, which looks like this:

See what I mean!?

Ruthie’s first birthday marked the last party we’ll ever have at my inlaws’ because five days before her birthday, we found our house! We saw the house on February 4th and fell in love.  The seller had the house listed for $175k, and the next day we put in an offer of $165k and the seller pays closing, and he countered with $167k and he’ll pay closing.  We got a FANTASTIC DEAL!  We had our house inspection on February 11th, and that went well.  Here’s my favorite picture from the inspection:

I’m such a spider monkey sometimes.  Zoe of course was screaming on the ground thinking I was going to get hurt or something.

March: The appraisal was done on the house on March 3rd, and our house was appraised at $175k.  We signed closing papers on March 12th, changed the locks on March 13th by Jeff’s dad who’s a locksmith.. and good thing we did!  The locks on the back door did not work properly and the measurements were off, so the door didn’t really even shut properly.  Then we moved in on March 14th!

April:  Nothing much happened in April, except Easter.  Zoe and I did color Easter eggs, and that’s something that’ll become a tradition I think.

Here’s a digital layout I did for Easter.  Cute eh?  The Easter Bunny left behind baskets for the girls by their bedroom doors.

May:  Again, nothing too exciting happened, except for the first Mother’s Day ever, Jeff cooked me Mother’s Day breakfast!  It was quite nice, and we even got an extra yolk in one of our eggs!

I think it’s a bit creepy knowing that the egg, if it was allowed to hatch would have had conjoined twin chicks.. or something like that.

June:  That was a month of crazy stuff… on June 8th, I suffered a corneal scratch.  I knew as soon as Ruthie’s nail came up and hit me in the eye it was NOT a poke.  Jeff initially did not want to take me to the doctor, but when he came home from work that day, my one eyed squinty glare at him forced him to cave in.  We found out that in fact, there WAS something more than just a poke, and that I couldn’t just ‘walk it off’.  I ended up getting put on loratab for the pain, plus antibiotic drops as well as local drops for pain control.  My eye ended up swelling up badly enough that the rest of the top layer of my cornea sloughed off.  Eventually it healed, and now my eye’s back to normal.

Well, that’s it for now… I’ll post the later half of the year later, as well as post pictures from Zoe’s birthday and Christmas!

>Okay, I do have to admit, I’ve done some ‘farmin’ in my time since buying our house.  I did have a garden that overall was successful this past year.  But I never expected to have to skin my own dinner!

We bought a bone-in pork roast last week, and Jeff said that’s what he wanted for dinner tonight.  So like the good wife that I am, I went up in the kitchen to start dinner, and I noticed that it had quite a bit of fat, so I decided before putting in the roast pan to trim some of the fat off.. we try to eat healthy around here!  I noticed that there was quite a bit of what I thought was fat on the bottom of the roast, and so I picked it up to trim off the fat.. and it wasn’t fat but SKIN!

Now, I do have to have to admit, I’m not ignorant enough to assume the grocery stores get the meat all cutely packaged and ready for consumers.  I know they get their meat products pretty much the same way it comes out of the slaughterhouse.. and in this case I’m sure they get the whole side of pig with the skin on it and then their butchers divide the meat up, skin it, debone it.. etc.. except this time they forgot to skin the pig.

To be quite honest, I’m not sure how I”m supposed to react here.  I’m a bit grossed out because it looks like people skin, but at the same time, I’m quite… adventurous and I’m up for doing pretty much anything that other people would NOT do under any circumstances as long as it’s not going to land me in jail.  But on the other hand, someone at the grocery store did NOT do their job properly and we PAID for this… and meat isn’t exactly cheap so there’s half a pound of what should have been meat thrown in the trash.  Granted though, we did waste some money on the bone.. but we knew it was bone in roast so that’s not a big deal.

Of course, I’m sure that I could have cooked it up into cracklins or chicharones, but we don’t have enough oil to fry that up.  And I don’t have the know-how either.  And on the other hand, I’m a bit thrilled because now I can say that I’ve skinned a pig.

Or at least a portion of it.

>I haven’t blogged about anything significant in a while, so I figured now would be a good time to sit down and do so!

Last month, around the 12th or so, we noticed we had some leakage in our laundry room.  Not knowing what it was, we tried to figure out the source of the leaking and after a week discovered it was the water heater.  What shocked us was that the water heater was only 7 years old, and when I went poking around to find the source of the leak, I discovered that there was a patch job where it had previously leaked.  At that point we knew that it was going to get replaced.  So we called a company in and for $1,000 we got a brand new water heater, an anodized rod put in the water heater to reduce mineral buildup and we also paid to extend our warranty to 11 years instead of the usual 5 or 6.  We also had to pay for the plumber to redo the duct work because it was done very improperly and was a major code violation!  So at least we’ve got a brand new water heater that’s up to code.

Then after months of waiting and having to refile our amended return, we received our First Time Home Buyer tax credit on the 8th of this month!  After going out to dinner to celebrate, we tackled the major expense that we knew about when we bought our house; replacing our furnace.  After calling around and researching and having estimates done, we finally picked a company to replace the furnace AND they also insulated the attic, which is great!  Unfortunately, due to unforeseen situations, we were not able to get our furnace last Monday as scheduled, but we’ll be getting it installed tomorrow.. I hope!  We’re very excited and happy to know that we’ll finally be getting our clunker furnace replaced and taken out and having an energy efficient one put in.  And based on the gentleman that came and did the bid, he said because our current furnace is so old, and because of all the energy rebates we’ll be receiving from not only the federal government, but our gas company, we’ll be seeing a return in the next 5 years.. and that’s something I like to hear!  Of course, with a new furnace we’ll need a duct cleaning, which won’t be done until after we get the furnace installed and when we get a referral from the HVAC company.  I’m very excited about the furnace because I know we won’t freeze AND go broke this winter, and because the biggest expense will be out of the way and we’ll most likely never have to replace the furnace as long as we own the house; and we plan on being here for a VERY long time.

Everyone’s been doing great too!  Jeff’s been working and doing his thing at work, and has recently made a ton of breakthroughs with work, and has recently made strides that have resulted in making his job much easier.  I just had my 24th birthday on Friday, and we celebrated by going to Lonestar Steakhouse for dinner.. nothing says grownup date like eating at a place that you don’t get a toy with your meal!  And then today -well yesterday seeing how it’s after midnight now- marked mine and Jeff’s 6 year anniversary as a couple.. and what a crazy, but fantastic 6 years it’s been!  I am constantly amazed and have felt blessed many times over because of him.  If I have to name his one redeeming quality, it would have to be his capacity of forgiveness and understanding.. I guess I just named two!  He’s helped me through so much, and I KNOW I would not be the person that I am today without him.

Speaking of Jeff and I, I can’t go without mentioning our two daughters!  Without US, THEY wouldn’t be here!  Zoe’s going through a stage right now that testing our patience and and nerves!  Last month, she decided that everytime she made a trip to the toilet, she would bomb the toilet with tons of TP, sometimes using the entire roll.  It was driving us up the wall, and we finally came up with a solution; we got a cheap wooden spoon, and triple bagged some grocery bags, and had her scoop the TP out of the toilet using the spoon.  She did NOT like that at all, and has not done it since then, which is a great thing.  And just for the record, we were tolerating it, but the final straw was when she did it in our downstairs bathroom and it resulted in a main sewer line clog and we had flooding all over the bathroom floor and all over the hallway carpet.  I think it was an unorthodox method, but at the same time, she needs to realize that in life there’s consequences for every action, and that there will be repercussions for those actions and sometimes it’s gross and not very fun.  However, she stepped out of this habit and has now started regressing with her potty training, something she’s done so well for the last 6 months.  However, I know this is normal, and eventually she’ll get through it, we just have to be patient and work through it!  One of her recent hobbies.. well it’s been a hoby of hers for a while, but has recently started taking off is photography!  She loves to set up these little scenarios and take pictures; her favorite place is her closet.

Zoe’s also been growing VERY well, she’s about 40-41 inches tall, and weighs in around the same in pounds, and she’s actually about to hit another growth spurt we think, since she’s starting to chub up a little, which usually happens before she starts growing again.  It’s a bit unnerving to realize my almost 4 year old is only EIGHTEEN inches shorter than me!  She’s also been slowly learning how to write her letters, but it’s something that we need to work on more.  She knows how to write A, C, D, E, M, O, R, T, Y and Z, so we need to work on the other 17 letters of the alphabet.  And of course, here are some recent pictures of her.

And of course, we can’t forget little Ruthie!  Don’t get me wrong when I say this, but I feel exceptionally blessed with her as our daughter.  She’s always been behind in terms of her milestones being met, and her size, but she just has such a wonderful demeanor and she’s got a zest for live that Zoe never really had.  She doesn’t talk much, but she still is able to communicate her point across and is able to tell us her wants and needs.  And of course she’s just so patient and rolls with whatever is tossed her way, because let’s face it; Zoe kind of bosses her around like the bigger sister she is!  And for the most part, Ruthie just takes it as it comes; however she’s got a streak in her where she will get spunky right back.  She’s also got an amazing sense of humor and finds simple joys in doing silly things like running around us in circles and saying hi every time she gets to our left or right side, or she likes to pull up our shirts and stick her finger in our belly buttons and runs off laughing.  One of the first words she started saying coherently after the monosyllabic stuff was ‘tickle’!  She’ll come up to us and start saying ‘tickle-tickle’ with a big grin on her face and start tickling herself, so you’ll know she’s ready for some tickles!  She’s learning fast now though, and is in the early stages of her vocabulary explosion that kids tend to get when they are around 18-20 months.  She does know some sentences, like “I all done!”, “I a good.” and “I don’t know.” and “I want …” which usually ends in a mumble because she’s still learning how to talk.  She did learn milk which is good!  She’s kind of a picky eater, but we’ve discovered she LOVES anything with rice and a sauce; which is usually coconut milk and curry since we love Eastern Indian curry in this family!  She also likes noodles of any kind, and her favorite fruits to eat are bananas and tomatoes.  You read that right, she LOVES tomatoes!  We’ve been getting tomatoes finally in our garden, and she loves to polish off the smaller ones we’ve been getting.  We’re still trying to introduce her to other things, and her palate has been expanding to eat other things; however she’s NOWHERE near where Zoe is with her palate.  And of course, I need to add some pictures of Ruthie as well!

>So, tonight for dinner we had a beans and rice with tomatoes and sausage dish.. it’s great because you can cook it in one pot.. although I use my rice cooker to make sure the rice cooks without scorching the beans.  Anyway, the best way to cook the sausage we decided was to grill it; we’ve done the dish a few times before and we do it with the grill everytime.. works GREAT!  It really brings out the smoky flavor in the sausage.

Anyways, Jeff doesn’t like cleaning the grill, and I guess there was a bit of grease on it.  So after he finished cooking the sausage, he decided to ‘burn the grease off’ and just left the grill on while he came inside to cut up the sausage.  BTW, our grill is propane fueled, but we buy the little canisters since they are cheaper than the huge ones.  Our friend Cooper shows up -his wife Ngaire and daughter Azzie were already here since I watch Azzie on Mondays and Fridays and Jeff brings Ngaire home with him from work since they both work at eBay- and walks in and says in a converstational tone “You know your grill is on fire right?”

Jeff responded with, “Yeah, I know, I left it on.”  And Cooper said “It’s actually on fire.”  So we go outside to see what he’s talking about.. and lo and behold.. the whole right side was engulfed in flames.  Jeff thought turning it off would solve the problem.. but it didn’t. 

Instead, the flames got larger.  So then I started getting a bit worried and said, “Jeff go get the fire extiguisher.”   He responded with “No, it’ll go down on it’s own eventually.”  And I said,  “No, Jeff go get the fire extinguisher, it’s not going down.”  So then he says “Fine!” in this.. tone of his so we go inside to get the fire extinguisher and while I cleaned up the mess I made in pulling the tab off -it went flying and hit the food and almost knocked all of our sausage on the floor- Jeff was able to quickly put it out.

Alas, we had a casualty.  The part where you cook the food on MELTED.  I guess it’s made out of aluminum or something because under normal circumstances, it should not have done that.

Jeff’s famous last words?  “Well, we know now that trying to burn off grease doesn’t work.”

I swear, Jeff’s got more redneck in him than I do!

>So, today started just like any other Monday, until 11:30 when Ruthie scratched my eye.  That’s right, she didn’t poke or jab my eye but scratched it.  And let me tell you the pain was horrible!  I thought she scratched my cornea, but I wasn’t sure.  Until I was able to stand light long enough to look at my eye, and over my iris and pupil there seemed to be a ripple in the reflection.. my eye essentially looked like there was a ‘chip’ in it so to speak, like a chipped round glass marble.  I was able to convince Jeff to take me to the doctor, which was an adventure in itself.

At first I tried to get ahold of an MD eye doctor, but unfortunately they were booked until the end of the month.  That wasn’t going to cut it, so I was able to get ahold of an OD at an eyeglasses place, but they flat out said they were unable to do anything for me.  The receptionist was nice enough to call an MD, and they said they’d be able to squeeze me in.  It’s kind of lame that they couldn’t see me when I called myself, but they were able to see me after the receptionist called.

So we get to the Doctor’s office, and Dr. R literally took a look at my eye and confirmed that in fact, I did have a corneal scratch, and that Ruthie got me; his exact words were “Wow, she got you really good.”  He gave me two different eyedrops; one is an antibiotic, and the other one was eyedrops for pain.  And to protect my cornea from even more damage, they put in a contact.  And I have to say, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be!  It feels a bit strange, but that’s probably being contributed from the fact that my eye’s got an injury.. I’m gonna have to think about doing the switch over to contacts, or at the very least part time.

I know I’m going to be alright now, but I can’t help but admit there was a feeling of panic.  Being hearing impaired for the most part does not bother me.  I’ve dealt with it my entire life, and I’ve adapted and I’ve accepted it as me being me.  I don’t resent the fact that my hearing is not whole; in fact I think it’s shaped and molded me into the person that I am now.  However, I can’t say it doesn’t leave me feeling vulerable, and in the time my eye was scratched and had to use a cold compress to help with the pain, and not being able to see as well as I normally do; well as well as I can see being nearsighted like I am, I have to admit to the underlying panic I felt not being able to see normally.  I rely so much on my eyes and sense of smell, touch -not so much taste-  and also my intuition to get around and about in life, and to have my eye temporarily out of commission, it really scared me.

I know I’m going to be fine now.. hopefully eye rest also known as sleeping will help out, and I just have to keep at it with my eye drops.

On other news, I’m happy to report my garden is really blooming and coming along nicely!  We’ve been getting a lot of rain thanks to el niño, which is really helping out the growth.  I can’t wait to partake the fruits of my labor.  And of course, I’m going to share 🙂