Wishful Slacker

My Olympic Moment

Yikes it's been a while since I posted here!  It's been a busy past week, folding into another busy two weeks ahead as I am now on call at work!  Ugh.  Too much.

This does not mean that I haven't been thinking of good things to post here.  Oh no, I've accumulated several ideas, but these may end up slowly dribbling out over the next couple weeks as I find time.  Recipes and wishful slacker thoughts will soon be back in gear.

With all this craziness, at least there's the Olympics!  Haven't you all loved it?  For me, it is so refreshing to go through a hectic work day and know that you have some terrific television to catch up on at night!  I love it.

From the train, Jackson Michigan
             
I took a dreamy train ride home to Michigan this past weekend.  As the trees whizzed by, my mind did an awful lot of blissful wandering.  I got to thinking about the Olympic athletes who, over time, molded their identity around a particular skill and pursued their dream to make it to the Olympic games.  Then I began thinking of the violinists and other musicians that we saw from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a couple weekends ago.  Their story is quite similar- what first started as a hobby then developed into a part of themselves.  I think we always look as these individuals with awe, but forget that we too are filled with dreams and talents, people like you and me.  We are not decorated athletes or musicians playing in a world-renowned orchestra, but rather ordinary folks going about their 9-5 jobs.   Don't you think that everyone has Olympic-sized passions that shape and enrich the essence of their being?  What activities and interests helped to create who you are today?  Feel free to comment on what yours are at the end of this post, I think that'd be pretty cool!  Cooking, scrapbooking, traveling, swimming, working, whatever!  I'll post mine in the comments section too. 

I'll leave you with my own Olympic moment.  It was not on the world stage, but rather my grandmother's kitchen.  The clip below is taken from a Peanuts cartoon that I just loved as a little girl.  My grandma, who had a gift for whistling, used to stand in the doorway and whistle "O Mio Babbino Caro" while I "ice skated" on her linoleum flooring in my socks.  It was not broadcast to millions over the television and didn't score full points with the judges, but in these little slices of time I felt on top of the world.  Now all I have to say is thank goodness for YouTube for allowing me to watch it again!  Watching Snoopy get all frustrated out on the ice with the broken tape really makes me laugh too :-)

 

 

Food Certainty

I am starting another writing class tomorrow, and over the past couple weeks I've gotten back to doing some writing warm ups.  One of the resources I've consulted is Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones.  In it, she strongly encourages making "writing practice" a part of one's writing regimen.  "Writing practice" involves sitting down with pen and paper and just writing about WHATEVER.  The pen should never stop and there should be little thought to proper form or punctuation.  It should be almost meditative.  And if your mind is full of self-deprecating thoughts, she recommends starting your writing practice by getting it all out.  So I sat down tonight with my notebook and started writing about how no matter how much I would love to become a writer, all my work will come to nothing and I will be burned out forever (again- Natalie says the more we get all this crap out, the more we learn to just ignore it.  So I decided to go all out with Sunday night negativity). 

Then, as my pen flowed across the paper, I started writing about my typical day of work.  Not work as I know it now, but work as I would love it to be.  Without going into much detail, let's just say that it involved coffee, a cozy home office, midday cucumber sandwiches, and sprints to the local coffee shop for a change in scenery.

Sha-right.  As if.  We know life does not just align itself the way we desire (there's that whole issue of money and health insurance and groceries and rent), and even our "dream" situation would come with its own list of pros and cons.  I think this is why I love to cook.  Whoa- change of subject, yes?  But hear me out- food and cooking creates for us a constant.  It is stable and inviting.  You don't cook because you HAVE to.  While we HAVE to work, none of us HAVE to cook- we could just stock up on tator tots and frozen meals if we wanted.  And if a meal causes us a lot of stress because the garlic burns while our backs are turned, well there is always the option to pitch it and call for a pizza.  No matter how sucky my day is, no matter how drained I am, I can always look forward to cooking a good meal.  And I know I just posted a similar sentiment last week, but it's just a thought I've been considering a lot recently.  We cooked some great meals last week, and looking back, I felt happier as the week progressed, even though I had a lot on my plate at work.  It probably also helped that I had last Monday off.  Curses! 

So, speaking of food, here's a great meal we had TWICE this week, three-cheese broccoli lasagna.  This is another Real Simple recipe, and it was great.  The recipe does not make a huge tray of lasagna, though you could of course easily double the size.  I ended up with a large amount of the broccoli-cheese mixture left over from when we had the dish last week.  I used the leftover mixture tonight for an encore lasagna, which we had with my brother- and sister-in-law and nephew.  Just like last week, it tasted good tonight.  As our 4 year nephew exclaimed after he took his first bite, "THIS IS SUPER!"  What greater endorsement do you need than that?

Broccoli and Three-Cheese Lasagna
From Real Simple magazine, December 2009

Serves 4Hands-On Time: 15m

Total Time: 1hr 10m

Ingredients

• 1 15-ounce container ricotta (about 1 3/4 cups)
• 1 pound frozen broccoli florets—thawed, patted dry, and chopped
• 2 1/4 cups grated mozzarella (9 ounces)
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan (2 ounces)
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 1 16-ounce jar marinara sauce (we used a 24 oz jar and 2/3 c cream)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 no-boil lasagna noodles
• 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the foil
• 4 cups mixed greens
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400º F. In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, broccoli, 2 cups of the mozzarella, ¼ cup of the Parmesan,½  teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper. In a small bowl, combine the marinara sauce and cream.
2. Spoon a thin layer of the sauce into the bottom of an 8-inch square baking dish. Top with 2 noodles, a quarter of the remaining sauce, and a third of the broccoli mixture; repeat twice. Top with the remaining 2 noodles and sauce. Sprinkle with the remaining ¼ cup of mozzarella and ¼ cup of Parmesan.
3. Cover tightly with an oiled piece of foil and bake until the noodles are tender, 35 to 40 minutes. Uncover and bake until the top is golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes.
4. Toss the greens with the olive oil, lemon juice, and ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Serve with the lasagna.

Minds of their own

Certain objects in our house are becoming possessed.  

At 1 am Thursday morning, I am awakened by the blazing light of my blackberry shining on my face in the darkness from my nightstand.  In my hazy stupor, I see the screen quickly drafting a reply to a Netflix email in my inbox.  Then another compose email screen pops up and is sent.  And another. 

Doesn't really seem normal for one's cell phone to instantly start emailing out without being touched, DOES IT?! 

I scroll through my email list and all I see is line after line of emails my blackberry has tried sending Netflix.  Odd, yes?  It is as though the trackball is stuck.  I am just thankful that none of the email replies ended up going through to Netflix.  It would have been a shame if Netflix cancelled our subscription because my phone went ape shit.  Thank goodness it happened that way though- had anyone else been the last to email me the night before, they would have gotten up the next day to find 20 blank emails sent from me at 1 am.  If this does happen to any of you,  I hope you will remember this blog entry and not think I've gone mad.  I shut my phone off, but the problem is that we use my phone for our morning alarm.  I acquire the superpower ability to remember this while half asleep and stumble into our living room to grab Jim's fancy new blackberry to set that alarm.  But my joker husband makes it so that you have to enter a fancy password just to look at the screen.  It probably would have shot squid ink at my face had I tried figuring out this code myself (not to mention the extreme disappointment I would have felt after "Lindsayisthebest" wouldn't let me in).  By this time, the cat is awake and is just over the moon that I chose to get up and play with him in the dark.  His fur is puffed out and he keeps running in front of me and flopping on his side for me to pet him. With no choice, I pick up the vibrating animal and the top secret blackberry and stumble back to the bedroom to wake my husband so he can set the alarm.     

Now, ever since then, that ridiculous trackball won't work at all!  I hit the damn thing and nothing happens.  My alarm went off on my phone this morning (I decided to give it another chance) and I couldn't hit snooze.  It was horrible!  Then this evening, I was fiddling with the trackball and it seemed to get stuck again, almost calling someone I haven't spoken to in years.  I quickly turned it off, as it is becoming a huge liability! 

Freaky incident #2 occurred this morning when my husband discovered that our emergency gallon of water mysteriously sprung a leak and dripped water all over our closet.  Remember back in the day, when everyone was like, "Defend yourself with duct tape!  Buy extra water! Fill your bathtubs!!!!"???  Well, we purchased our comfort water supply (btw, who are we kidding?  In any real emergency, all the water will end up going to the cat.  Our children are our future), and that gallon was securely placed on a top shelf in our main storage closet.  Our unit is small, but it has some killer closet organizers.  Each time we have looked into the possibility of moving, we've found some lovely places with increased square footage, but no place has ever matched the storage capabilities of our current dwelling.  In this picture, I've only opened one half of the closet.  The other half is too messy to share.  But believe me, it holds a lot of stuff. 

So anyways, back to my story.  Jim goes to get a dust rag today (what a guy) only to find all of them sopping wet.  And then he notices that everything is wet.  And lo and behold, up there on the top shelf is our half full emergency gallon of water.  What could prompt a plastic gallon jug to suddenly spring a leak when it has not been touched or disturbed in months?  It just figures that our efforts to safeguard ourselves in the event of a crisis has instead created its own mess.  Wine bottles don't leak like that, so lesson learned.  In the future, if the water cribs we see offshore are ever compromised, we will rely upon inebriation to the happy end, especially since my phone will likely choose that precise moment of need to fully self-destruct anyways!

Mr. "Breaking News"

One of my husband's and my shared themes is that we both had grandmothers with avid interests in current events and breaking news.  I remember huddling around the radio with my grandma, grandpa, and sister, listening to live coverage from Norway of Tonya Harding's 1994 Olympic skate.  There was no way my grandmother was waiting until NBC's coverage at 7pm.  "Wait, she's stopped skating and is in tears.  She's trying to tell the judge there's something wrong with her skate lace," reported the announcer.  It was thrilling, and when we watched the American tv broadcast that evening we all felt special for knowing the outcome in advance of everyone else. 

 My grandmother recorded every single day of the OJ Simpson trial.  As we went through her house after she passed away, we encountered boxes and boxes of these videotapes.  Not only that, but we came across every cheesy pop news novel that was ever written.  If it was about JonBenet Ramsey, the Menendez Brothers, or Princess Diana, my grandmother could have been a key consultant.  

As my grandmother's daughter, my mother also shares this passion.  During the goofy court hearings following Anna Nicole Smith's death, my mom and I almost didn't know what to do with ourselves.  "There is no circus here my friends" may be one of the greatest quotes in the history of American entertainment.  A few years ago a man near my parents' home in Michigan went nuts and killed his wife.  If that wasn't enough, his arrest took place after he fled to northern Michigan and was chased through the snowy woods barefoot by a helicopter, cameras rolling.  My mother tivo'd every news story documenting his trial, and sat us down in front of the tv each time we traveled home so we could get caught up.      

My husband reports having had similar experiences in his childhood.  His upbringing allowed him to develop "breaking news" superpowers.  He has this unnatural ability to know every major headline the second before the rest of us learn of it.  My mother has it as a personal goal to surprise my husband with a breaking news story prior to him discovering it for himself.  So far she hasn't won.  After news of Michael Jackson's death on Thursday she scrambled to send him a text message, only to receive my husband's response a few seconds later-"I know."  Between the two of them, at least I know that I'll never be left in the dark!