Bachin' it up - Days 2-3

In the middle of the day on Friday, I got to jonesin' for a banana split. So, as I was talking to a couple of my friends at the time, we decided to go get ice cream after work.  Being the kind of person that loves to cook, I made dinner.  I'm also the kind of weird person that has to eat a normal meal before dessert or I get a stomach ache.  (Didn't used to be that way...but getting older has weakened my stomach). After dinner we went to Oberweis and my friend Aaron treated us to ice cream.

Aaron: "This is my treat guys.  (points at me) You made dinner.  (points at Steph) And, you're poor." 

LOL.  We loved that the first thing he came up with to make the excuse that he should pay for Steph's ice cream was that she was poor. Not because she drove us to Oberweis, or that she had a bad day at work, or that she got stuck in traffic on the way home...nope, it was her financial disability.  She may be on a budget, but we all are this year and I'm sure she would have declined to get overly priced (yet tasty) ice cream if she hadn't allowed for some treats.

We had a fantastic evening, with wine, ice cream, and the brilliance of My Sassy Gay Friend.

Saturday Morning:
The puppy decided he wanted to wake me up at 3:30am because his bladder told him it was time to go potty.  I really need to keep him from drinking a ton of water after 10pm...  But I got up to let him out and then came back to sleep.  7am rolls around and he's up again.  This time he's hungry.  Understandable...breakfast time is 6:30 for him most days.  I made myself french toast and oatmeal and started on the chores...only to fall asleep again until my mom called me at noon to tell me she and dad were going to be home all day if I wanted to come over.  (Read:  Come over, I want to see you)

I ended up going over to my parents' house for dinner, but I cleaned the house and went to the mall with Steph first.  I wanted to get new jeans...damn this ever-widening butt.  Somehow I came away with not only 2 new pairs of jeans, but also yet another purple work shirt and a "dress" that's almost too short to wear on its own.  I will have to go back to exchange the dress though as I purchased one 1.5 sizes too small.  The outer chiffon part of the dress would fit me perfectly, but the attached slip barely fit over my shoulders.

Superbowl Sunday:
I don't watch many sports, and I hardly give a damn about which team wins, yet I hosted my own Superbowl party...without my husband, the sports fanatic.  Yesterday morning, I woke up to 2 more inches of snow, once again cursing my husband for not being here to do the brunt of the physical labor involved in shoveling.  By the time I was done and showered clean, the snow plow so graciously came by and dumped more crap snow at the end of the driveway.  I decided to just leave it... (Side note: I'm so done with snow... while the husband has been playing in it, I have been shoveling it. I'm done)

Since my friends were coming over that afternoon for the game/superbowl commercials (which by the way...I was sorely disappointed in the complete lack of interesting commercials...what happened to all the good Bud commercials?), I cooked up a storm.  Chili, chicken tenders, shrimp fried rice, guacamole, cheesecake, and chocolate pie.  There are so much leftovers I don't know how it's going to all get eaten.  My friends claimed to love my cooking yet they refrained from eating much of the food.  Oh well...at least I didn't run out of food. I could never...it's in my genes.  My mother always orders too much food, and I have a tendency to make too much for a party.

I spent a good part of the game playing with my friends 7 month old baby - Robert.  We made fun of X-tina for messing up the National Anthem, made fun of the Black Eyed Peas for sucking live (or delayed recorded in our case), got disappointed when Usher only came out for one song, and cracked Cutler jokes every time a player left the field because of an injury. 

I've left the kitchen in shambles because by the end of the game I was passing out on the floor and just too tired to clean the whole mess.  Hell, even now I'm still tired.  Somehow I still woke up at 3:30am and it wasn't even the dogs fault this time.  Or maybe it is...since he'd been getting me up at 3:30 almost every day for the past week, my body naturally thought it needed to get up.  There will be much cleaning when I get home from work today.  Sigh...somehow not what I envisioned for my great Bachin' experience.

Edit:  I totally missed the best part about Superbowl Sunday.  In the morning, I ventured to the grocery store to pick up some miscellaneous ingredients.  At the checkout line the cashier started chatting me up...now we refer to our grocery store in a completely non-P.C. manner as "the mexican store".  If you shopped there you'd know why.  But we love that grocery store because it actually has MORE than your everyday Dominicks/Jewel etc.  So the cashier was talking to me and I was in a good mood so I was chatting back, telling him about my ski tags on my jacket as he monotonously swiped my items across the laser scanner.  As I was swiping my credit card and signing the transaction pad, he caught a glimpse of my ring and you could see his eyes double in size and the gears turning as he blurted out "You're married?!" as if he were in complete shock that I'd be an old married hag.  I simply replied "yup," snatching my receipt from his fingers, "thanks have a good day!" (smile)  and walked away.

Skip a couple hours, and I'm home cooking chili and dancing in the kitchen as I blare BSB/Bruno Mars from the laptop/TV hook up.  The doorbell rings, and I try to wrangle the puppy to keep him from charging the door...gotta work on that front door etiquette.  There stands a representative from WOW Cable and the first thing out of his mouth is... "Hi, are your parents home?"  Now, I know I'm standing there in jeans and my college hoodie, without makeup, or my hair done, probably covered in flour...but, really?  So, I gently break it to him that I'm actually the owner of the house and you can literally see his face drop.  He starts to point at my sweater, opens his mouth, decides he's fucked up already and closes his mouth.  Classic 'open mouth, insert foot' moment. Then he proceeds to insist we had an online inquiry about the WOW service, and I try to tell him that we indeed did NOT have any kind of inquiry and asked if he got the address right.  Yet he again insisted that someone must have sent it from this house, and I'm thinking...didn't I just say I OWNED this house? Wouldn't I be the one (or my husband, who was too preoccupied with his trip for the past month to even think about looking around for another cable service) to do an online inquiry?  LMAO. I just wanted to laugh in his face. But that would have been rude. :-P

Bachin' it up... Day 1

The first time I heard the phrase "bachin' it up" my husband was detailing a conversation he had with one of our neighbors.  His wife and daughter were going somewhere for the weekend, I can't recall where, leaving him and his son home alone for a few days.  As he boasted about the house being left to the boys he made the comment that he and his son were going to be bachin' it up that weekend. For a second, I had no idea what that meant.  Then, slowly, as the synapses started firing properly...men, no women, bachelors...click. Ah, that's clever.

If it works for the men, it's only proper that it works regardless what sex you are. Therefore, since I have the house to myself (with the dogs of course)...I am officially bachin' it up.  The husband has gone to Montana on a man-trip with 2 of his co-workers to go snowboarding in the mountains.  They're going to be "roughing it" in the wilderness in a house with no cable, no internet, and spotty cell reception. 

He hasn't been gone for 24 hours yet and I've already cursed him for leaving me.  The snowpocalypse left the cities scrambling to plow the roads and unfortunately they didn't do a final pass on my street until yesterday while I was at work.  I came home to 2 feet of chunky, wet plow snow blocking my last 100 feet to what I was hoping would be a relaxing evening.  I paused...thinking, "how the hell am I going to get over that?"  Then remembering I was in the jeep...gunned it over the top.  Vroom!

I figured I probably should shovel that crap out of the way...otherwise it'll freeze and I'll never get out with my own car, a POS Civic Coupe, until summer.  So after letting the dogs out to do their business, I bundled up and got to work.  The sun had been long gone, having set just before I got home, and the temperature had plummeted to a bitter -10°F (with windchill).  I quickly discovered how packed the snow was and spent the next 40 mins hacking away at it until there was just enough space to get one car through at a time.  I was huffing, really wishing I had a snowblower, cursing my husband for leaving me with this catastrophe. 

On Tuesday, the first time I'd gone out to shovel, I'd left the puppy running rampant through the house. After I came in an hour later, I found my nice, warm, fluffy pink slippers all torn up. I was upset that the puppy had eaten my slippers but I still learned my lesson.  So, yesterday on my way home I stopped at the pet store to get him some new things to chew on...rawhides, bully sticks, biscuits, and a squeaker stuffing-free raccoon toy.  I gave him the raccoon before I went out to shovel.  By the end of the night, the raccoon was missing his tail and lost it's squeak.  Kona had mashed the squeaker flat.  He loves it though.  He carried it around this morning while I was getting ready for work. 

So, I have a few more days to myself...I'm taking suggestions on things to do. 

snOw My God!

Snowpocalypse 2011: 

The official snowfall for Feb 1-2 is 20.2 inches. (3rd largest snowfall in Chicago history) And boy was it every bit of that, more in some spots where the snow drifts were up maybe even 4-5 feet.  It was incredible...

Luckily, I was able to leave work on Tuesday before the storm blew in.  I made it home just as it started getting heavy.  I managed to shovel the driveway on my own when I got home and again a couple hours later.  By the time the husband finally got home, he had been on the commute for 3+ hours.  But we came to find out later that others who had left before him, but were driving home vs taking public transportation, that didn't make it home until after 3am making their commute 12+ hours.  I'm glad he didn't get stuck on the train somewhere.

We managed to shovel the driveway once more before going to bed but it may have not made any difference.  The wind was brutally strong, whipping snow around, blowing what we've shoveled right back where it came from...by the time we got to the end of the driveway there was already another 1-2" at the other end. 

Wednesday morning:  We woke up to the storm still dumping snow, and decided to sleep in a little longer.  No way we were going anywhere at that time, even though technically both of our offices were claiming to be open.  Only the moronic and desperate would be crazy enough to drive anywhere in the condition the roads were in on Wednesday morning. 

Picture chronicles:

7am and still snowing...

Back door can't even open past this point

Snow nearly up to the mailbox...

We started the seemingly endless task of shoveling the driveway around 8am, only to tire out and quit an hour later only about a quarter of the way down the driveway.  Making the executive decision to break for breakfast was positively genius at the time.  It worked out well too because as we sat down to enjoy our eggs and toast, the skies cleared and the sun came out to say hello. 

12:30pm and we reached the end of the driveway!

1/2 of the sidewalk was cleared by a neighbor with a snowblower, thanks John!

The other half we had to do ourselves

Done shoveling finally.

Got done about 12:30pm, counting a total of 3 hours to shovel about 1 and a half feet of snow.  I'd like to think that our efforts the previous night helped, but as you can see in the first picture...there's not much of a dent at all. 

hubby taking a break in the snow mountain.

Husband tried to make a snow angel in the middle of the yard, only to ruin it as he tried to climb out of the hole.  After the backbreaking task of shoveling, and quite literally our backs are still extremely sore...(Santa's gonna get us a nice new snowblower next year I think)...Playtime!

we shoveled an area in the backyard for Hunter, who can't leap over the snow banks anymore

deck covered in snow...insanity

neat swirl between our house and the neighbors

Hunter exploring

Kona chasing daddy...loving the snow...

Tackled!

sniffing the snow...

I found out my cousins, who have quite the sledding hill behind their houses, built up a ramp they could do jumps off it with their snowboards.  I seriously debated going over there to sled/snowboard.  It looked like they had a lot of fun so I do partly regret not going over there...  but we had fun in our backyard as well. 

The streets are still being cleared today, and cars finally getting towed/dug out, but there are still quite a few people stuck at home because their associations/apartments have not cleared their lots.  Lucky for me, I have 4 wheel drive. 

Fabulous Friday

21 days into the new year and I've had 4 people at work insist I have lost weight.  Yet I unfortunately have to insist in return that I have not lost a pound and have in fact gained at least 5 lbs since before the holidays...so says the scale at my doctors office.  Although, I must admit I don't put in that much effort in explaining that there is no possible way I have lost weight after eating the way I did for about 2 and a half months.  (My holiday diet starts mid-October when all the candy starts rollin' in and ends mid-January when I finally get a grip on reality)  Anyway, I suppose I will just have to accept these compliments despite the fact they are false.  Thanks for the ego boost.  It makes me feel better about the piece of cake I cut for myself sitting on my desk tempting me with it's chocolatey goodness.

I have noticed no one has asked me what my new years resolution is this year...and good thing because I  have decided NOT to have a new years resolution this year.  Instead I am attempting a series of short burst health goals that hopefully, with any luck, will eventually turn into longer term habitual activities that will benefit me overall.  For instance, I am trying to get myself to drink less soda.  I went almost a whole week drinking water and kool-aid with my meals.  Unfortunately I'm highly addicted to the fizzy syrup drink and have revised this goal to be a little more flexible.  Clear sodas are unlimited, and colas are for special occasions or when I'm at my parents' where there is an abundant supply of Pepsi, even flat my dad will drink a small glass.  I would do the same, but unlike my father unfortunately, my addiction doesn't allow for just one small glass of soda.  I usually need 2 or 3...or 4... oh just give me the whole 2 liter and a pitcher of ice.  Thanks. Lucky I hardly buy soda for myself anymore so at home it's Kool-aid. Yes, its still a highly sugary drink, far from healthy of course but as someone who religiously drank soda...it's a step in the right direction.


Another goal I have recently in the past 2 weeks began is to take my vitamins at/around/after dinnertime at least twice a week until the end of January.  Fortunately, that one is going well so far.  The past 5 days I have taken my vitamins.  Now, if I keep it up, I'm looking to do this until the end of February...and we'll take it from there. 


Well, after a whole week of seeing gray clouds blanketing the skies, I finally get to see the sun.  If I'm inside tucked snuggly in my sweater, heater blasting, I can almost forget that with wind chill the outside temperature is -13°F.  Almost. The moment I get too close to the window as my body yearns to be outside in the sun, I get a stabbing cold reminder of the time of year.  Oh right, that's why there's still icy snow on the ground.  (o.o )...( o.o). Sigh...

Next week my parents are going on vacation to Costa Rica. Lucky ducks.  They're debating the canopy zipline adventures or the jungle walk and whether or not to wear shorts on their ATV adventure...I'm debating which sweater will keep me warmer and whether or not to wear my long underwear.

In a week and a half my hubby goes to Big Sky on a week long snowboarding adventure...  Now, it's not quite my cup of tea to vacation in a place that has more snow than here, I'm still jealous.  It's a week away from responsibility.  He's been counting down the days I'm sure.  I wish I had a vacation to look forward to.  There has been discussion of Mexico in 2012, so if that happens I'll have something to look forward to...except it'd be a year away!  But if that happens...I'll be ecstatic, which, by the way, is way more than excited. 

Well, time to eat that cake that's been staring at me. :-D Yum.

I heart space heaters

In a world, where half the planet tilts away from the sun for a quarter of the year and people inhabit areas outside of the Tropic lines, there exists the space heater.  It comes in widely varying sizes and designs, with anywhere from a simple on button to multiple settings and programs.  It can be electric powered or gas powered, but either way, its use is the same.  To bring the joy of the sun to those wrapped in the darkness of the bitter cold.  When the sun disappears at 4pm, so does the it's warm, loving rays.  Oh, curse the short, icy cold days...  My gladness during these hibernation inducing months comes from hot chocolate, cuddly sweaters, fluffy throw blankets, and space heaters. 

Huddled under the patio heater, and still cold.

As we rapidly approach the shortest day of the year, I can't help but notice it's somewhat abnormally colder than I seem to remember in my many 20some odd years of Decembers.  At least, sub-zero temperatures with the wind chill certainly feel colder than normal this winter.  Not that 30°F is warm when compared to other locales only several hundred miles south of home but for winter here, it could, in fact, be considered rather balmy. On the bright side, no need to dream of a white Christmas...there's snow on the ground, more snow to come, and freezing temperatures all through until Christmas. 

*For some reason I noticed I had started rhyming in my next paragraph, so I edited it and it became a poem...*  Cold Winter Untitled

I gaze out the window, and what do I see?
Sun and skies of blue, but it's not yet 3. 
The ground covered in a blanket of white. 
The sun reflecting off it, making things bright. 
But don't be fooled, it's ever so cold. 
To venture out there you'd have to be bold. 
Winter's grip around folks, all bundled and grim.
Chimneys smoking, as lights cling to roof trims. 
Just next to this window, it's abundantly clear,
The bitter cold is something to fear.
So the space heater is on, and warming my feet.
Christmas songs are playing, and I rock to the beat.
With my cubicle all toasty and warm
The Christmas cheer here is all in good form.
So Merry Christmas, I'll say to your ear,
And have a full and Happy New Year!

I love you space heater, you keep me warm in this cold cold office.  When I leave work I will dread that short bitter walk to my car in the frozen wasteland of a parking lot, but while I'm working, I am comfortable.  Thanks.

Preparations for Santa

It's officially Christmas music time.  Some people don't care for Holiday music before Thanksgiving, but as the weather cools and the leaves are piled up it's hard to forget the holidays are just around the corner.  Personally I include Thanksgiving as part of the holiday season, and I seriously have no problem blaring "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" in the beginning of November.  Usually, the holidays don't have the ability sneak up on me...but this year I'm having a difficult time believing it's already halfway through November.  It's been officially 1 year since we bought our house, and unfortunately not much has changed from just after Christmas...LAST year. I'm hoping to accomplish something before the year is out...maybe?  My motivation is shot since there's hardly an available budget for home upgrades.  Not to mention things keep pushing it back.  Like having one broken television set and one broken washing machine which will either have to be repaired or replaced.  Having to dip into our extra cash to pay for those will not necessarily set us back but it will prevent us from going forward.  Not getting a raise this year has prevented any extra cash flow savings postponing future renovations. 

I started off this morning in a rather bright and cheery mood, not unexpected as I did get ample sleep last night and drove to work absorbed in the joyous Christmas music playing on the radio.  That feeling though has managed to plummet into a blend of restlessness and moodiness.  Though I have been listening to the same, normally cheer inducing, holiday tunes, it's somehow been tainted by the slow taunting creep of a sore throat only indicating yet another viral attack on my body.  So they want to play dirty do they?  Sneaky bastards. So time to wage an all out attack.  OJ, vitamins, sleep, the whole shebang. Hopefully its not that bad, but considering I'm practically falling asleep here at the computer, I'd say the outlook looks shady.