I’ve made submissions in the past. I think it was 2003 and 2004, but forgot to do it the last couple of years. It’s fun trying to think of just 24 words to sum up a whole year.

Here’s my submission to Mayfly 2007.

“Pregnant. Little girl’s a teenager now. Baby’s a boy! Postpartum’d SAHM. So much love. Visited the fam. Learned to knit. He’s growing so fast! “

That’s my 2007 in a nutshell! Looking at it next to some of the other entries, it’s not all that clever or exciting. I think that’s because there aren’t enough words to describe the complexities of new motherhood (even if I’m not technically a new mom).

Wii got some nice things this year…most have something to do with home improvements, like a stove, dishwasher, new bathroom amenities…things like that. Even with all of that going on, Wii managed to get a little something for the people on our lists. I got what might as well be the knitting encyclopedia, as well as another knitting book that looks good, a couple of fun cookbooks…and you may have guessed by now that Wii may have gotten a certain very hard to find game console. It was a gift for all of us from all of us…sort of a “family gift”. It’s so much fun! And it’s exercise at the same time! I’ve never really cared for console games because consoles are static…they only do one thing (well most of them), whereas a PC can do lots of stuff. I know xbox and ps3 are starting to change all of that but I’d rather keep the $$$ it costs for those for now and play the Wii.

So that’s basically what’s been happening for the last few days. I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get new underwear, but I suppose there’s always my birthday coming up.

In knitting news, I finished a hat for Travis a couple of weeks ago. It turned out really cute.

I also started on my first pair of socks. I am using size 2 DPN’s and Trekking XXL sock yarn. I have about 2 inches of the cuff done. The going is slow because this yarn is more like a thick thread than yarn, but I’ll get them done eventually and hopefully learn a lot in the process!

Ever wanted to clear out some of your old stuff but felt bad about throwing it away? Or, how about stuff that’s “too good” to give to Good Will for free, but not quite “good enough” to sell on eBay?

Elfster is the answer. They have a new gift exchange called Green Gifting where you sign up for one or more gift exchanges and they pair you with someone else who might want to exchange gifts. It’s like a secret santa, but with a perfect stranger.

What happened to the days when I came up with blog posts in my sleep? There was a time when I usually had 2 or 3 posts in draft form waiting for the right day to post them. I can’t seem to pull a coherent thought out of my arse lately though. It couldn’t have anything to do with the sleep deprivation…of course not.

Today I will scrub my kitchen in order to prepare it for all of the baking and cooking over the next 2 days. Sure, I wipe things down daily and keep it half way decent, but I figured I’m going to be making 6 mini pies, a turkey, potatoes, rolls, and all of the other fixin’s and since I can’t make anything without a huge mess, I had better get things sorted out ahead of time. You might be wondering why a household with only 3 people and a baby needs that many pies. I’d be happy to bake the traditional pumpkin and call it a day, but if I did that I would be eating pumpkin pie for the next week or so because I’m the only person who likes it around here. Thus, I will be making 2 mini chocolate cream pies, 2 mini lemon meringue pies, and 2 butternut squash pies. I decided to go with the butternut because it sounded good and I have a butternut squash to get rid of before it goes moldy and gross.

Here’s the recipe that I plan on using (from Suite101.com)…

Butternut Squash Pie

Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 cups crushed gingersnaps
20 oz butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed (about 3 cups)
1-1/4 cups nonfat greek yogurt
5 egg yolks
3/4 cup brown sugar
1-1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

Preparation
Toss gingersnaps with melted butter in a bowl. Spread into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch pie plate. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Take out of the refrigerator and bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes until lightly browned. Cool.

Turn oven temperature up to 400 degrees.

Put butternut squash in a roasting pan and bake for 40 minutes, or until fork tender and lightly browned. Alternately, place in microwave-safe bowl and microwave for 5-6 minutes, until fork-tender. Puree squash and remaining ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth.

Pour into crust. Bake in 400-degree oven for 15 minutes. Lower oven temperature to 350 and bake another 40-50 minutes until set.

The best part is (besides the crust made of crushed gingersnaps…yum), it’s low(-ish) fat! I’m thinking this will probably make more than 2 mini pies, but I’m going to freeze whatever is left and use it later.

Finished

Originally uploaded by Ja-nelle

I managed to do this in just over a day. It was so easy and quick! Great practice as well. I will be giving it as a gift I think. It fit’s me, but I really don’t have a use for it because I think it’s meant for people with long hair.
I must say, it’s very satisfying to make something useful with your hands.

Today is the first day since I got my teeth out that I haven’t needed to take ibuprofen. I had been taking the 800mg horse pill ibuprofen for a while and even after it ran out I found that I still needed 4 regular ibuprofens to take away the pain. I weaned myself off gradually though and today there was none. I still have the annoying holes in my mouth though where the teeth were…bring on the prescription mouth wash, which tastes like rinsing with rubbing alcohol. Yuck!

Today Travis had yogurt for the first time and he loved it. It was just plain with no flavor. Tomorrow I’m going to add some of his pureed apples to it and mix it with cereal. I wish I ate as well as this kid does. I have more motivation to cook veggies and things for him than for the rest of us. Not that anyone but me would eat them, but cooking them for myself would be a start.

This weekend we will be remodeling the bathroom. I’ll be sure to put up the before and afters. I’m excited to get it DONE because Elyse’s bathroom is hideous.

Off to finish dinner…

I had mine taken out this morning. I was soooo nervous going in that I was shaking. The doctor and the nurses were so nice and understanding. They put all kinds of pulse monitors and stuff on me and then gave me an IV in my hand. It was about 2 minutes after that that I was looking to the nurse on my left and she smiled at me. That’s the last thing I remember until I was home. I don’t remember being wheeled out on a wheelchair. I don’t remember asking my husband repeatedly if they had in fact taken them out…since it seemed like only about 5 minutes. I don’t remember asking him over and over why there was a loaf of bread on the dashboard of the car (there was nothing on the dash…). I took my percocet when I got home and crashed for several hours. I never understood what all the fuss about pain killers is. They always make me go to sleep. Right now, it’s between pain med doses so I’m feeling fine, just a little tender on my lower jaw. I’ve managed to eat applesauce, pureed pears, pureed peaces, and I think I may have a smoothy for dinner. I’m pleasantly surprised by the experience, wlthough I had no idea what to expect going in.
So anyone out there who’s going the conscience sedation route with wisdom teeth extraction…I highly recommend it.I didn’t want to remember anything from the procedure and I don’t! It’s great.
The funny thing is, I mangaged to have a baby without pain meds, but on this I was a total wuss. Different kind of pain I guess.

See more progress on: have my wisdom teeth out

She’s THE un-funny. I actually feel embarrassed for her. If you were to look up un-funny, I bet there’d be a picture of her in the dictionary picking her nose and giving you the finger or some other ridiculous vulgar thing (actually, that would probably be too tame for her). I get it, you’re a woman comic and you feel like you have to be rude and gross like all of the men and that you like to make fun of stuff that other people think is important and you like to be all controversial and you have a potty mouth. Yawn! That does not mean everything out of it is funny. Joking about abortions is not funny, pretending to be a black person is not funny, joking about AIDS is not funny, joking about being raped IS NOT FREAKING FUNNY! My husband seems to really like her show (I assume since it’s always on the DVR) so I asked him why it’s funny. The other people on her show are funny, but for some reason we’re forced to listen to her nonsense through the whole thing. How un-funny is something when you actually have to ask other people why it’s funny? I’m really trying to see the appeal. I think I have a very open mind and a pretty decent sense of humor. I’m no prude in any sense of the word. Why don’t I get it? Jeff says it’s because she’s ironic and she’s totally anti-Politically Correct (like that’s a new thing). Carlos Mencia is anti-Politically Correct and I laugh my ass off when I watch his show. I don’t even crack a smile when I watch The Sara Silverman Program. Worse yet, it made me feel uncomfortable and unclean and I wanted to change the channel (but Jeff was watching it so I just did something else). Now that I think of it, Jeff doesn’t laugh either. I’ve said it before…Why is everything that’s considered hilarious always more like trying to come up with the most shocking, crude, disgusting thing? It’s unimaginative and obvious and boring.

I thought maybe I am just getting old and crotchety so I Google’d “Sara Silverman is not funny” and came up with all of these people who seem to be writing the same thing. If so many people think her show is crap, why is it still on? Why didn’t they cancel it and put on more South Park or something like that? As much as I dislike South Park (at times…I’m rather bored and tired of jokes about poo), I’d rather watch that than 5 minutes of un-funny, un-talented, un-witty Sara Silverman.

It’s a washcloth!

10…number of days it took to finish
15…number of times I cast-on and then started over.(yes 15)
3…number of HUGE mistakes that I had to teach myself how to fix without ripping out rows and rows.
1…the number of days it SHOULD HAVE taken me to finish this. My hands kept getting crampy and going numb. Damn you carpel tunnels…

I used Sugar ‘n Cream 100% cotton yarn in Country Side Ombre. It comes in all kinds of nifty colors and stuff…and it was cheap. The pattern came on the package, which was handy. It was good practice anyway.

Now what am I going to DO with it??

I’m going to attempt to knit Elyse a scarf next. I should be done with it by the time the weather gets warm…

Not much new has been going on. I’ve been battling Travis about naps. He doesn’t seem to want to take them. I know I personally would love to take a nap…I don’t know what the problem is. This week we started Travis on peas. So far he’s eaten brown rice, acorn squash, sweet potatoes, and bananas. He seemed to really like the peas so that was promising. I don’t know why anyone would want to start their baby on solids sooner than now. It’s so much easier just to pop the boob in and be done with it. I’m enjoying making the food for him though so that’s kind of fun and I guess it’s sort of fun to see his reaction to different foods. I’ve started giving him baby food puffs as well. He gums away on them. They’re pretty tasty! I would eat these as a snack myself.

We bought a new laptop last night. The hard drive on our old one finally bit the dust after threatening to for about a month. This new one will be good enough for us to play our games on. This will be good when I get my wisdom teeth out in a couple of weeks. Here’s a piece of advice for you…get your wisdom teeth out as soon as your dentist tells you to. Even if, like me, your dentist doesn’t tell you to, do it anyway. The oral surgeon (yikes…scary saying that) says there’s a 30% chance that I will have permanent nerve damage in my jaw from getting my wisdom teeth out at my age (all of 32!). That plus the insurance company has to have special proof that you “really” need your teeth out and then they take their sweet time in approving it…blah blah blah. I should have had this procedure done back in August, but I couldn’t because of the stupid insurance company.

In other news, I’m learning how to be a gramma…
…by teaching myself how to knit! I figure why shell out close to $100 for a pair of wool pants for my baby boy, when I’m perfectly capable of making them myself with a little a lot of practice? Plus my family will have a life time supply of hats and scarfs when I’m done.

It’s so not gramma-like though! There’s a ton of people “my age” that are doing this sort of thing. It’s actually fun. I found myself thinking about knitting while I was playing LOTRO earlier this evening….weird huh? The web site I was looking at to figure all of this out was instrumental in my pseudo success.

Here are a few pics…

Wool (100% merino)

First cast-on (double cast-on)

I’m now working on a washcloth (it’s not quite finished…yeah I’m that slow) and after that I’m going to make a scarf for Elyse. It might be done by the time the weather gets warm again…we’ll see.

My husband was playing around with our pictures the other day and this is the result.

Don’t they look like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?