Category: Daily Life

That’s right, it’s time for all of you looky-loos to delurk and say hello. Schmutzie, Sweetney and Jenandtonic said so, and who are we to argue with the likes of them?

If you need a little encouragement, let me just say that there will be prizes. Three (3) lucky commenters will be drawn at random to each receive an Average Jane gift pack that includes:

• A copy of "The Five Generations Cookbook," compiled and published by my grandmother to showcase recipes from family and friends. Someday I’m going to start a blog based on this book, so you’ll be getting a sneak preview.
• A sheet of Threadless stickers
• A surprise, bonus gift.

Doesn’t that sound like fun? Even if you answered "no," speak up anyway!

The grocery store sidewalks are piled with pumpkins and their aisles are stuffed with Halloween candy. Every day, my mailbox contains a couple of catalogs full of useless gift items. The radiator repair shop sports a banner that says, "Beat the rush."

And this example of extreme niche marketing is now on sale at your local grocery or liquor store:

Yes, it’s Busch beer in a special edition hunting camouflage package. You wouldn’t want the deer to spot your brewskis while you’re out in the woods. (Note: I had a better photo from my camera phone, but for some reason T-Mobile and Flickr aren’t communicating right now. Is anyone else having trouble sending photos to Flickr from their camera phone?)

Late Sunday afternoon, I had a moment where I was convinced that it was only Saturday. It was so disappointing to be wrong.

The sad thing about my actual Saturday is that I didn’t do very much with it. I got up and went to yoga class, had breakfast with my husband, took a nap while he went to meet with a band he might join, and then we spent the late afternoon and early evening vegging in front of the TV getting caught up on "The Office," "My Name is Earl" and "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia." We eventually dragged ourselves out of the house and went to a party for a few hours, but we’re such party poopers that we were home by 10:30 p.m.

Sunday was a little better. I got up early and volunteered at the low-cost spay/neuter clinic for about four hours. My main impression: it’s definitely flea season. On my way home, I stopped at Costco and only ended up buying kitty litter because nothing else I wanted was in stock.

After that, I went to my favorite grocery store, which caters largely to an Hispanic clientele. I got the butcher to grab me a nice, big stewing hen out of the pile of ice between the chicken feet and the bowl full of gizzards. As soon as I got home, I put the chicken on the stove in a big pot of water and left it to simmer.

I completed my afternoon errands with a trip to Target that was supposed to be for Shop-Vac filters, but ended up also including a new foam thingy for the Shop-Vac, some Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies with Pecans, some Kashi TLC Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Cookies (do you see a pattern emerging here?), two boxes of Luna bars to take to work for breakfasts, and a couple of boxes of macaroni and cheese in case the cookies alone don’t carb me to death.

Around 6 o’clock, I picked the chicken off the bones and made chicken and dumplings with boiled potatoes. Tonight we’ll have chicken pot pie using about half of the leftover gravy. I’ll make the rest into chicken and noodles later in the week. I’d say that’s not too bad for $11 worth of meat.

I didn’t manage to get to the kitchen cleanup portion of the evening, but I did finally tackle our hideously filthy basement. With the newly rejuvenated Shop-Vac, I vacuumed the stairs, floors, walls, ceiling and counters. I almost filled the thing (it’s small, but still…). Then I mopped with lemon-scented Lysol while Xena watched wide-eyed from the steps.

Oh, I also worked over the weekend. There’s nothing like a Monday deadline.

How was your weekend? Did you get to enjoy the lovely fall weather or were you working, too?

I think that autumn might be my favorite season. I love the cooler air and the way the sun takes on a golden cast as it shines through the trees once they’ve turned colors. I don’t appreciate that fall is really short and quickly gives way to winter, but you can’t have everything.

One reason I like the cooler temperatures is that most of my cooking specialties are best suited for cold weather. I can hardly wait to make my first pot of chicken and dumplings for the season.

Tonight we’re having two crockpot dishes. In my smaller crockpot I’ve put two thick pork chops and a brown sugar-and-butter-stuffed apple. The larger crockpot holds a chopped head of cabbage and a ham bone. All I’ll need to do when I get home is fix some potatoes. I think I’ll roast them with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Oh, and I’d probably better make another vegetable for the hubby. He’s already balking at the cabbage, to which I say, "Fine – more for me!"

Any other fall fans out there? What do you like best about autumn?

Have you seen the trailer for Iron Man? It looks awesome! Plus, they get big points in my book for using Black Sabbath’s "Iron Man" as the theme song. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when Godzilla came out in 1998 and didn’t use Blue Oyster Cult’s "Godzilla." (That should have been my first indication that it was going to suck.)

Speaking of miscellanea, do you read Miss Cellania? She must do more web surfing than anyone else on the planet. Every day she has at least one long post on a particular subject, with all kinds of jokes, cartoons, links and stories. She also contributes to a bunch of other sites. What a fun job that must be!

It turns out that my cat, Xena, likes to play fetch. She has a shiny, crinkly ball that she’ll chase and bring back over and over if we throw it. If I’m distracted during the game, she’ll jump onto the couch, roll onto her back and push the ball in my direction as a reminder. The game ends when she gets tired and stops bringing the ball back. I’m willing to play as long as she is because she could use the exercise.

This week I’ve been taking steps to get my budget under control. I’ve discontinued my vocal lessons for the time being, and talked Time Warner into dropping my phone/cable/Internet bill by $50 a month. I had to sacrifice HBO in the process, but we’re not watching any HBO shows now anyway. Just those two cutbacks alone will save me almost $3,000 a year (although I’d really like to resume the vocal coaching if and when I can afford it – probably when I’m getting enough band gigs to cover the expense). Ooh, that reminds me that I need to discontinue my Gevalia coffee subscription. Particularly since I haven’t had a cup of coffee in months.

That’s enough rambling for today, don’t you think? Have a great weekend.

This is what my office looks like when it’s relatively clean. Right now it’s much messier than this and my goal for the coming weekend is to get it cleaned up at least back to this standard. You can tell this is an old photo by the coffee cups. Now my desk is littered with empty water glasses.

I’m hoping to get rid of the Big Tubs O’ Stuff like the one shown on the left. There are actually three of them, all of which were hastily filled with papers, software, electronics, etc. when we began our studio and office remodeling project late last winter. The fact that I haven’t needed anything from any of the tubs since then indicates that most of their contents can be thrown out.

My office is separated from our recording studio by a sliding glass door and I know my husband is embarrassed by the easily visible chaos of my office when he has clients over. Of course, the studio isn’t exactly a paragon of cleanliness either, but I have to admit that my office is worse.

Wish me luck getting it back to some semblance of tidiness.

Today is my little sister’s birthday. I was three when she was born and did not appreciate ceding my position in the household to the interloper. Somewhere I have a Super-8 movie that shows me holding her when she came home from the hospital. One of my hands is balled into a fist and I’m aiming it threateningly at the baby’s face.

As we got older, the fighting intensified. I still have some scattered scars on one arm from her fingernails. Eventually we developed an extremely elaborate system of blackmail that kept the tattling and fighting to a bare minimum, although the occasional battle still broke out over unauthorized borrowing of clothes well into our high school years.

Then a funny thing happened when we grew up and moved out on our own: we became good friends.

We discovered that we had more in common than we thought, and after a while we figured out that we travel well together, so we started taking fun trips. One of my favorites was the vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where we drank rum drinks, visited every single Ripley’s Believe It or Not attraction in town (there were at least three), went to an alligator park and the House of Blues, and basically had a good old touristy time – none of which was planned in advance.

My sister constantly impresses me with the things she manages to accomplish. She’s a shrewd businesswoman, a great mom, a creative thinker, a loyal friend, and a lot of fun to be around.

Happy Birthday, Chick-O-Stick!

I have very little to report about the past weekend. I hung out with Cagey and Pharmgirl, baked a half recipe of Banana Bread (we only had one overripe banana), watched the season finales of "Psych" and "The 4400," and clipped all of the cats’ claws. I did two loads of laundry, washed all the pots and pans and ran the dishwasher.

Probably the most involved thing I did all weekend was re-dye the blue in my hair. I made such a mess that I ended up having to scrub down both sinks and the shower afterward. Blue turns out to be a difficult color to maintain, so if you decide to go the not-found-in-nature hair color route, be warned.

I have another busy week planned, but tonight is my one free evening. Do you have any suggestions for what I should make for dinner?

A rapper that my husband has been recording lately is planning on bringing his mom with him to a session later this week. I guess that means I should use some of my evening to figure out what’s ailing the Roomba so it can tidy up the studio a bit.

And that’s all I’ve got. Have a nice Monday.

The accumulated irritants of the week have been bringing me down, so in celebration of Friday, I’m going to mention them all here and sweep them out of my consciousness for the weekend.

• Comment Spammers. One of my posts has been getting a rash of comment spam in the last week or so. I finally had to go in and close its comments, which I’ve rarely had to do before. Grrr.
• Regular Spammers. My job involves monitoring an e-mail account that’s accessed through an old SquirrelMail e-mail client. It has NO spam filtering whatsoever, so I get to watch batches of related subject lines come and go as I scroll through the junk trying to find the few legitimate e-mails that may have crept through. For the last few weeks, the most noticeable subject line trend has been "My boyfriend’s [x] is too big for my [y]. The best part is [x], which encompasses a full thesaurus’ worth of terms, many of which do not mean precisely what was intended. I think my favorite [x] of the week was "phallus." Hee! ‘Cause everybody talks like that, you know.
• My Car. I’m actually feeling favorably inclined toward my car this week in one way: ever since the weather got cool enough that I don’t need my air conditioner, my gas mileage has improved. The bad thing is that it has a burned out headlight, which got me pulled over on the way home from band practice Wednesday night (at midnight, I might add). I didn’t get a ticket and the officer actually said, "I appreciate your wearing your seatbelt," which I thought was some nice positive reinforcement, but the idea that the next guy might ticket me $80 did not make me at all happy. I have an appointment at the crack of dawn this morning to get a new headlight and also find out why the "maint. req." light is on. [Update] It turned out someone forgot to reset the light after my last oil change. I was in and out in less than 45 minutes and my headlight replacement cost $12.
• My Brain. I have been incredibly forgetful this week. For example, I left my cell phone at home two days in a row. On the second day, I made a special trip home specifically to get my phone before I went to some after-work activities. I still walked off without it.

Okay, I’m finished griping now and I’m ready to start the weekend with a clean slate. If you have something that’s been bugging you, feel free to write about it in the comments and leave it behind as you start your weekend.

I had the housework talk with my husband a couple of nights ago as I washed pretty much every pot and pan we own. Admittedly, we’re both huge slobs. That’s why I can manage to dirty a pan and leave it for so long that I can’t even remember what I cooked in it. It’s also why he can walk by that dirty pan day after day after day and have it remain completely invisible to him. SEP Field technology is alive and well at our house.

I know most couples struggle with balancing housework between them, but I think the problem gets much worse when you’re dealing with two messy people. Two neat freaks (or even one) would at least produce better results, if not more harmony.

My husband is just filled with excuses when it comes to helping out around the house. He claims he doesn’t know how to run the dishwasher or the washing machine, yet he’d be happy to take the TiVo apart to install a new hard drive. Also, he won’t do laundry because there are spiders in the basement (which is true but, I feel, irrelevant, unless you’re a big ol’ baby).

I suggested to my husband that he start washing the pots and pans now and then. There’s nothing about that task that can’t be done by a second grader. You fill the sink with water and a little dish soap, put in the pans, utensils, bowls, etc., and scrub them with your choice of a sponge or Golden Fleece. Then you rinse them and put them in the drainer that lives permanently on the right side of the sink. All done!

His suggestion was that perhaps he should start cooking and then I could wash the dishes. That would be a delightful idea if only he knew how to cook anything. Clearly he doesn’t even like his own cooking, judging by the fact that he seems to eat at Einstein Bros. every single day.

So, we’re back to where we started. Once a week, I clean out the cat boxes, he takes out the trash and I take out the recycling. I do the laundry and dishes when I get around to it. He maintains the computers and other electronic equipment. I do simple plumbing repairs and other minor home improvements. We have a cleaning lady who comes in every other week to handle the floors, bathrooms and dusting.

Thus, the house stays relatively clean, but untidy. It’s been that way for about 15 years now; I suppose it’s as good a system as we’re going to get.