My Family is Unreasonable

My family is so demanding

• Whats for dinner
• Will you wash my pants 
• My tummy hurts
• Look at my picture
• Help with my project

Its so annoying don't they know I just got a new book in the mail?

A book I have been waiting and waiting and waiting to arrive.

A book that is the 4th book in a series I love. A series that is a spin-off of a different favorite series.

I am dying to read this book but I had to cook dinner first and have family time....what the hell is that all about. I'm sure to much family time is bad for us.

What am I doing telling you all about this? I should be reading.

Short Courtship? I Don't Think So

The other day a friend made the comment that whirl wind relationships like mine don't always turn out as well as mine. I gave her a blank stare and asked on what planet was my relationship a "whirl wind". She elaborated by saying it all happened so fast.

And I guess compared to the life span of an oak tree it happened fast but in reality it was a slow courtship that happened over months...I just kept part of it to myself. After all I was talking and flirting with my friends ex-husband it was a weird situation at first.

Here is how it all happened.

1. September 2, 2009: The BF texted me for the first time after getting my number from Ex-Wife/Friend.
2. September 2009: - December 2009: Lots of texts and flirting. No phone conversations.
3. January 2, 2010: - First phone conversation.
4. January 8, 2010:  Went on first date. Ended up at bookstore, this may be why there was a second date.
5. January 17, 2010: Second date watching Football playoffs.
6. January - March 2010: Starting hanging out every other weekend.
7. March 2010: Meet the "pseudo" step-kids and families.
8. May 2010: Spending every weekend together.
9. June 2011: Moved in together.
10. June 2011 - present: Living in dysfunctional family bliss.

No matter what you think about living together I know people who have dated, been engaged and married in less time then we decided to live together. It was 21 months before we moved in together. It wasn't really all that fast. At least not fast in Utah...the rest of the world may have longer courtships.

My friend later amended her statement by saying it all seemed to happen fast.

I think it was the perfect length for us.

Did you have a long or short courtship?

Dear Frustrated at Home

Dear Advice Columnist,

Sometimes I wish I was still single, like last night. It was not a good night for my family. Teenagers were angry, tempers soared, words were spoken in frustration. It is not always like this we are not a well oiled machine but we have a nightly routine that works very well and last night it all fell apart in glorious fashion and I thought to myself, "this kind of thing never happened when I was single". Everything that could go wrong did go wrong...including the dog eating our dinner. I don't know what to do my family is making me crazy and I am thinking of running away.

Sincerely,
Frustrated at Home


Dear Frustrated at Home,

Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Family life is not always easy. There will always be times when things go wrong but try and remember the times when everything goes absolutely right. Running away wont make it better. Family life can be hard but also very rewarding....and in 6 months you will look back on last night and laugh about the dog eating dinner because lets face it that is pretty damn funny.

Sincererly,  
Advice Columnist

Peachy Kean Jelly Bean

Part of the canning adventures my family and I have been on recently involved lots and lots of peaches. In part because in this part of Utah we have a lot of peach trees (did you know that) and because my sister has 2 peach trees.

So in addition to canning A LOT of peaches, we made a variety (4) of peach jam. 

I thought I would share some of the different peach jam recipes we tried. They are basically all the same recipe with a slight variation. 

The following recipes will make 7-9 pint jars of jam.

Basic Peach Jam 

• 8 cups peeled and diced peaches (we diced them into large chunks to make more of a preserve)
• 4 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 boxes of pectin
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 11 cups sugar

Low Sugar Peach Jam

• 8 cups peeled and diced peaches
• 4 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 boxes of low/no sugar pectin
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 4 cups sugar

Raspberry Peach Jam

• 6 cups peeled and diced peaches
• 2 cups whole raspberries
• 4 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 boxes of pectin
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 11 cups sugar

Lavender Raspberry Peach Jam

• 6 cups peeled and diced peaches
• 2 cups whole raspberries
  
• 4 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 cup "lavender tea"*
• 2 boxes of pectin
• 1 teaspoon butter
• 11 cups sugar

Directions

1. Put peaches, raspberries, lemon juice, pectin, butter and "lavender tea" into a large stock pan over medium heat
2. Bring to a hard boil stirring continuously (resist the urge to cook on high you don't want to burn your fruit)
   
3. Add sugar and bring back to a hard boil.
4. Once you reach a hard boil cook for 1 minute.
5. Remove from heat and skim off foam.
6. Ladle into prepared canning jars, filling within 1/8 of an inch from top. 
7. Wipe of jar rims and threads.
8. Process for 20 minutes (check your altitude for processing time it may be less or more than ours) using a hot water canning method.)
   
9. Remove cans from water bath and let cool at least 24 hours.
10. If lids did not seal reprocess or store in refrigerator. 

*"Lavender Tea"

• 2 Tablespoons dried lavender 
• 1 cup boiling water

 Directions

1. Add lavender to tea ball and place in a glass mug
2. Pour boilng water over lavender
3. Seep for 20 minutes
4. Discard lavender in tea ball and add the "tea" to fruit.

You Can't Blame Me For Everything

My Health Nut Sister has this bad habit of blaming her kids (my nieces) bad behavior on me. I admit that I can be a less then stellar example but its not all my fault.

In the last two days she has blamed me twice for things her kids have done or said.

Text conversation with my sister

• Sister: I'm running late your niece has been fighting me every step of the way
• Me: Okay (look at me being nice)
• Sister: And this shit is your fault! (do you see her blaming me I am not even with her)
• Me: Why
• Sister: Because if your Damn Fashion talks!

Then just this morning she called me and the conversation went something like this:

• Sister: Do you know what your oldest niece just told me she wanted to be for Halloween?
• Me: I thought she was going to be a zombie.
• Sister: She wants to be Pennywise.*
• Me:  The creepy clown from It?
• Sister: Yes and I was calling to blame you but she just informed me that you are not the one who showed her the picture of Pennywise.
• Me: I hate that clown
• Sister: Well I was mad at you but not anymore.

See other people influence them its not all my fault.

*I was going to include a picture of Pennywise the Clown but that is just to creepy.  I credit Pennywise and Ronald McDonald with intense dislike of clowns.

Sometimes A Girl Just Needs To Eat Pizza. Yum.

I don't always write about pizza but when I do its usually funny. Well...the one other post I wrote about pizza was funny. This post is not funny, I am not having a good relationship with pizza.

Don't get me wrong I still LOVE pizza as much as the next girl but it seems we have been eating it A LOT at my house.

It may be criminal and some form of child abuse as often as we have had pizza for dinner. I don't know what happened to me, not that long ago I had a weekly menu full of healthy and good foods for my family and now we get greasy pizza once a week.

I don't mean to speak badly of pizza, like I said I LOVE pizza, but it can't be good that I am at this moment feeding it to my family A LOT.

I think I am feeling guilty. It has to be guilt otherwise why would I think the people at Papa Murphy's would be judging me. Seriously any day know I am going to walk in and they are going to shout "MICHAEL". just like they yelled Norm on Cheers.

I could blame it on being sick during the busiest time at work but that would only explain the last two weeks. I need to think of a different excuse for the three weeks before that...because even when I broke my wrist I cooked more than I have been.

Of course the "pseudo" step-kids are beyond happy that we are having pizza so often. This may have been the best month or so of their life. You should see there little faces when I walk in the pizza and bread sticks. They didn't even get upset when one of the dogs ate all the bread sticks one night...because we have it so often its no longer a treat.

I just need to....I don't know what I need to do.  I wonder what we should have for dinner tonight? Tacos?

We Know Mother, We Read the Book

The two books we liked best.

Despite have grown up in rural America my Health Nut Sister and I are lacking in some very basic rural America skill. One of those skills is food preservation, mostly canning because I can freeze the hell out of things. So when my Health Nut Sister and I decided we wanted to start canning, I did what I always do...I read a lot of books on the topic.

I now believe I am an expert canner even though I have only spent two days doing it, but I read 4 books and several blog posts about canning. You may be thinking to yourself. "Girl Named Michael, I don't think that makes you an expert." And you would probably be right but heck I read a book so I am good.

So a canning we will go, and it was surprisingly easy and time consuming. Tomorrow I will share the process, what we canned and our recipes. Right now I want to share the experience we had with our new adventure.

After a late start (my niece got a ring stuck on her finger and it was starting to swell...she is okay now) we started washing all the vegetables for tomato sauce...there was an air of excitement and energy in my Health Nut Sister poorly laid out kitchen. This was our grand adventure and after all our planning it was finally happening.

After cooking our sauce we get down to the business of canning. The steps are not the hard its just takes a long time. And for every step we referenced one of the books we read to make sure we were doing it right. You would think my Health Nut Sister and were striking gold the way we were acting.

After we processed the first batch every time we heard the "pop" we would get excited and giggle. Like a bunch of tweens about to meet which ever teen star is in vogue this week. It was very exciting to be creating something and to REALLY be in control of  what you eat. It is a very freeing feeling.

On the second day we canned Nectarines and despite being tired we were still excited to be canning. On this day our mom joined us. And while we were canning she keep saying different stuff about canning and giving us advice. My sister and I just looked at her and said over and over, "We know mom, we read the book" or occasionally, "That's not what the book said." My mom's response was, "If you would have asked me you would't have to read the book." My eye rolling and sarcastic answer to that was, "I would have read the book anyway. It's what I do."

Please come back tomorrow and I will share the steps to canning and Wednesday the recipes.

Thank Goodness Thanksgiving is Over...I am Exhausted

I know I know its a week after Thanksgiving and I am finally writing a post about it...but I have been busy.

Thanksgiving is not my favorite time of year.

Don't get me wrong I love the time I get to spend with family, the days of from work and of course the food...I really love the food.

But for me Thanksgiving is a mad dash to the finish line with a flurry of activities and events, by the end I need a few more days off to recover from my vacation.

Grandma's house

This year like every year (except last year stupid appendix) I drive to Idaho and have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at grandmas house. Luckily I didn't have to help cook because my job was to make the pies. I was suppose to make 3 pumpkin pie and 1 banana cream. But then Grandma heard (not from me) that The BF likes lemon meriting pie so she told me to make that also. So now I am making 5 pies and I still have to work every day up to the big day. Be awesome I made them 2 at a time spread out over a week. As I neared the big day I realized I don't like any of those pies so I decided to make one more pie for me...oatmeal. I know what you are thinking but you need to try it first. I will be posting the recipe try it then judge me.

So as you can see I am already tired and its not even Thanksgiving.

Then I drive two hours to grandmas house (why does that always make me want to sing Over the river and through the woods to Grandmothers house we go). I spend a few hours laughing talking and of course eating, but soon its time to pack up and head back to Utah. You see my sister has decided that she is going black Friday shopping and I let her talk me into it and as you may have heard black Friday shopping started on Thursday this year. So after I wrestle and wait I finally make it home around 1145PM. More on this later.

On black Friday I venture out to get a few more things for the kids (I am almost dome with the Christmas shopping, woot woot). Then came home and got pressured into cleaning out my side of the bedroom closet. To be honest it looked like a victim of a natural disaster but now its nice and organized and I cant find a freaking thing...The BF is beyond happy and sometimes that's more important than finding your favorite jeans. Seriously cant find them anywhere.

Baby sister and niece making candy

Saturday is candy making day...its something we do every year in my family it takes all day and we end up with a lot of candy. Its very tiring work. It doesn't sound like it but it really is exhausting.

Then on Sunday its doing all the chores that didn't get done because I was making pies and gone all weekend.

The worse part of all this is I didn't get any good pictures because I left my camera at home...every day. I apologize for my blurry shots. Happy Late Thanksgiving.

Is it Really Thankful Thursday Already?

I am not a spring chicken anymore. I'm not exactly on my death bed either. Although I do feel like I am today.

I am going to have a busy busy day. Its is going to be a very full work day and then at some point I have to drive to Salt Lake City to go pick my uncle up from the airport, after that its back home for quality time with The BF and the "pseudo" step-kids...this is not helping me feel any more energetic.

In fact I am more tired than ever. Especially now that I am looking at my work to do list. When did it get so LONG???

To be honest I have no idea why I wrote some of these things down. I really need to start writing down complete sentences rather than just a few key words. I cant make sense of what I was thinking about 5 minutes ago let alone what I was thinking about 24 hours ago.

Enough of the pity party....its Thursday and its time to be Thankful. 

Uncle Willie

1. My Uncle Willie is coming to visit (hence the trip to the airport).....YEAH!!!! 
2. I have had a lot of work place validation this week from the those who make the big decisions.
3. My wrist is starting to feel better.
4. My hair looks amazing today (which is good I am getting my picture taken for my ID badge).
5. I'm wearing pink and that always makes me happy. 
6. I lost 2lbs.

Wish me luck!!!!

All I Need is Some Milk

I hate going to the grocery store.

That's a strange way to start a thought but I want to make it perfectly clear that I hate it. You may be thinking hate is a strong word but in this moment its completely accurate. So I will say it again...

I hate going to the grocery store.

I hate everything about it. I hate how they are sneaky and put the milk in the back of the store. I hate all the goodies in the checkout line taunting me. And I really hate how they keep moving things around. You just get use to an item being in one place and they move it across the store.

As a single I ate out a lot not because I couldn't cook but because I often didn't have any food in my house to cook. Rarely going to the store except for coffee and beer. Once when I was really sick a friend came by to check on me. She, because she is a good person, decided to make me something to eat. She opened my fridge then walked away disgusted that she only found filtered water, cocktail olives, maraschino cherries and beer (I'm sure I had some condiments also). She left (with my debit card) went to the store and bought me food then cooked me some soup.

But with all that being said I have come to enjoy my time at the grocery store. I still hate it but its a time for me to have some quite.

Yeah that,s right I said it...its time for quite time at the grocery store.

I leave The BF and the "pseudo" stepkids behind, take my list and meander around the grocery store on Sunday morning. (There are always less people at the store early on Sunday).

I have found since moving in with The BF that I never have quite moments.

And I am use to my escape from reality time, its been one of the hardest adjustments for me until I discovered the secret jewel of grocery shopping by myself.

I still hate going to the grocery store but at least I can have some me time while I am there.

The Sky is Falling

I like to think of myself as a strong independent woman. I think that this means I am able to shoulder my responsibilities and I support my friends and families by letting them lean on me when they have times of crisis. I also think being a strong independent woman means that I lean on the people in my life when I need to do so. I use them as my support and sounding board. Recently my parents hit a wall and instead of making chooses and planning a way over around or through the wall they stopped functioning. When asked what are you going to do my mother said "I'm letting Michael deal with this." When did I become the fixer/saver. I didn't ask to be put in charge and my life is enough of a mess that I don't want it. I release that they need help but I'm frustrated that the whole thing was dropped in my lap. I want to help them make decisions not make the decisions for them. I'm lucky that I have great friends and family that are helping me shoulder the responsibility.

Ding Dong the Bitch is dead....or Not!!!!!

I have a very big dog...I have a beautiful sweet Rottweiler named Tashi. I love big dogs the bigger the better. I am not a fan of little dogs. I find them yappy and mean. My mom loves small dogs. She has a pain in the ass Yorkshire Terrier, named Zoe, that has a sweet personality but is a horrible dog.

I also have cat named Tigger who only understands she is a cat 50% of the time. The rest of the time she thinks she is a dog. Zoe and Tigger DO NOT like each other. To be honest Tigger could care less about Zoe but Zoe is very concerned with Tigger.

 Last night, in what was, I hope, the turning point in the epic Zoe vs Tigger war, Tigger almost killed Zoe.I am not kidding. Last night as everyone was peacefully watching the news or playing on Facebook (me) Zoe and Tigger got in another skirmish in the kitchen. Shortly after hearing the fight I hear my step-dad saying Zoe is bleeding. My 1st thought was 'I hope Tigger really nailed Zoe. That will teach the dumb ass dog'. I immediately heard my step-dad say again Zoe is bleeding. Immediately followed by my mom "Zoe". I ran into the kitchen to find blood every where (it was a scene any horror movie would be proud to claim) and my mom running in to the bathroom with Zoe. Tigger was sitting under the table licking her paws.

At this point my moms in the bathroom saying shes bleeding from her jugular, my step-dad is looking up the number for the vet and my 7 yr old niece is holding on to me crying. I told my mom get in the car I'll call the vet. At this point my sister shows up and my mom yells at her to move her car. Instead everyone but my niece and I get in my sister's car to go to the vets. After much confusion in which I thought the dumb dog was actually dead they make it to the vets office and call me to meet them there.

I load up my very upset niece and go to the vets office. Were the vet, Dr. Johnson, told us that he has never seen anything like that before and its amazing Zoe is still alive. He said its like a vampire bite Zoe (which is really funny since its my cat that bite her and I do love a good vampire story) and my moms quick thinking saved Zoes life. I use to think my life is dull but weird stuff like this happens to me all the time.