Snow Day, Take...(What is it Now?)...7

Yep.  The School Super called another Snow Day today.  J was staying home anyway, since she still had a fever last night, but she is feeling MUCH better this afternoon.  Hopefully both girls are heading back to school tomorrow.

We are running out of things to do indoors.  I had to escape to the Study today while the girls were watching "Grease" for the 4th time.  (I'm ambivalent about "Grease", as I'm pretty sure it doesn't send the best message about relationships.)  I closed the doors and watched Downton Abby episodes.

One of the positive things that came out of my re-arranging the pantry this week was that I found the cupcake kit that Lauren received for her Birthday about 2 years ago.  So...today she baked and decorated cupcakes.

We played board games for awhile, until the episodes of "Sorry"-ing began getting vindictive and the fighting erupted...again.

 

We need a break in the weather.  It is wearing me quite thin.

Polar Hysteria

The girls are home for another Snow Day today.  I've lost count how many we have had lately.  Most of us are sick today with coughs and fever, and one of the girls is holding a barf bucket.

The weekend was snow filled - we got 6 or 8 inches.  The tractor wouldn't start until it warmed up to 22 degrees, and then my Dad had to make laps plowing:  down the driveway, up the road, up through our neighbor's field, and back down again.

This cold weather is taking a toll on all of us - we are finding our sanity becoming more and more of a vague and misty cloud instead of the solid rock it should be.  My friend is sorting Lego's by color and throwing boiling water outside into the below 0 air.  The dogs eat hickory nut husks every time they go outside, and lie listless indoors, or gnaw on their toenails.  I am providing small slivers of dry toast and sips of Sprite to my oldest child, and have been amused by the "sculptures" of frozen chicken poo in the chicken barge.

My Dad has been productive.  He is working on Phase 3 of the pantry re-model.  Phase 1 was where half of the things from the pantry were sitting on shelves in the dining room.  Phase 2 is mostly complete, where I re-organize everything on the newly installed built in shelving in the pantry.  In Phase 3, I will finally get a door on my pantry.

 

Thank goodness for the glimmer of hope that is the forecast for Thursday:  33 degrees by 3 PM!  If it really happens, it will be the first time the thermometer has risen above the freezing mark (during the day) since the 20th.

I'm going to go cut pictures out of Christmas cards and stick them in a book (it's only a little bit crazy), and then nap until Spring.

Big House in the Little Woods

Winter very nearly kicked my butt yesterday.  The elation that I experienced from getting out of the house the other day was short lived.  Last night I was crying.

Our wood pile has become dangerously low.  Yesterday morning, when I went out to put 4 of the last 10 pieces of wood in, what was left were the heaviest, most odd shaped pieces.  It was a struggle just to get them into the wood burner, but they didn't land in the right place.  I tried to move them with the poker and a shovel with no luck.  Finally I had to hold my breath, stick my entire upper body into the wood burner, and manually move them...3 times.  I cried then too, when I wasn't coughing, the smoke stung my eyes terribly!

We had another 2 hour delay yesterday, which has become our norm.  I managed to get Mom to the Physical Therapist, the girls to school, clean pants to JP (who noticed they got soiled only AFTER he arrived at work) AND get to work on time!

Amazingly, JP beat me home from work last night, since J had voice lessons.  We arrived home, to find the tractor stalled out in the driveway in front of the garage.  Apparently our 50 gal barrel of diesel fuel is not winter treated, and it gelled in the engine AFTER it got several hundred yards out of the barn.  I had to drive the van through the field and through the barn to get to the garage!

JP had intended to get some of the logs cut that were delivered a couple of weeks ago in the mud, however, we now did not have the tractor to use to lift them down off the 8 foot stack.  Since the remaining 6 pieces of wood were not going to last more than 12 hours, he ended up cutting the ends off of several of the logs.  I stacked them on a plastic toboggan, and we pulled them over the barn where we could stack them.

We have been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books to the girls again.  I am so impressed with Pa - that he could build a house out of trees he cut (no chainsaw, mind you), including the furniture, roof shakes, and stone fireplace, then go out and cut a garden out of the prairie...and ultimately close the door and walk away from it all.  I definitely felt like we had stepped back in time (but WITH a chainsaw) to keep the homestead running last night.

The kicker was when I was doing a load of wash last night, and JP called up that the guest bathroom was full of water.  Long story short, it ends up our grey water drainage pipe on that side of the house is frozen.  So...giant mess to clean up last night, and I drove through the lawn (around the stalled tractor) to take the dirty towels and bathroom rugs to Mom and Dad's to wash...thank goodness for neighbors!

This morning I have distracted myself by baking an Apple Pie with Cheddar Cheese Crust, and emptying out half of my pantry in anticipation of Dad putting up the first half of the built-in shelving there soon.  The girls have a friend over to play.  JP went out and started the tractor and headed down the hill with the plow.  I'm happily blogging.

He just texted me that he can't get back up the driveway.  The saga continues...

The pie, however, looks lovely.

Getting the Heck Outa Dodge

When my friend asked what I was planning on doing today, I told her "Gettin the heck outa Dodge!"  I wasn't really sure where that quote came from, just vaguely that it means "getting as far as possible away from the present location as quickly as feasible."  Some internet research verified that was generally true, and now I also know that the quote came from old "Gunsmoke" episodes.  Hmmm.

Anyhoo, I had not been off Poplar Ridge since Friday morning when I went to work last week.  In the meantime, we had a snowy, cold weekend, a sick child on Monday, more snow, more cold, and 2 snow days.  As of now, we are looking at a 2 hour delay in the morning, and another 3-5 inches of snow tomorrow night.  (My brother in TX says that they have already called off school for tomorrow in Austin, with expected snow accumulation of .25 inches!)  I was ready to do something, ANYTHING, that was NOT HERE!

Apparently my friend felt similarly, so we joined forces and hit Sam's Club and the grocery store in the next big city.  It was nice to be out, and to be with a buddy, even though Sam's Club was the most exciting thing we could come up with!  The most stimulating part of our trip was a toss up between buying enemas and running out of windshield wiper fluid on the interstate with salty slush spraying all over the van.  Our lives are overwhelmingly interesting.

One reason that I wanted to visit Sam's Club was to buy ground turkey so that I could make Thai Basil Chicken...one of our favorite (easy) Thai dishes.  I'll share the recipe too, it takes a bucket full of basil, so you may want to grow it in your window sill all winter long, like we do.

Here are my 2 basil bushes, having already been
trimmed of 4 cups worth of leaves
(I made a double recipe!)

 

Thai Chicken with Basil

 

Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

 

2 c fresh basil leaves, tightly packed

3 med garlic cloves, peeled

1 med jalapeno

3 T fish sauce

1 T rice wine vinegar

1 T sugar

1 lb ground turkey

3/4 cup shallots, thinly sliced (about 3)

2 T vegetable oil

 

Process half of basil along with garlic and jalapeno in food processor until finely chopped.  Remove 1 T of mixture to a small bowl, and mix with 2 T of fish sauce, vinegar and sugar.  Scrape remaining basil mixture to a 12 inch skillet, and add vegetable oil and shallots.  Cook and stir until shallots are softened.  Add ground turkey and remaining fish sauce and cook until only traces of pink remain.  Add basil/fish sauce mixture and cook until completely browned.  Roughly chop remaining basil, and add to meat mixture, cooking until wilted.  Serve over rice, and season with Thai Dipping Sauce if desired.

 

Thai Dipping Sauce

 

Adapted from The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook

 

3 T fish sauce

1 1/2 tsp rice wine vinegar

1 T lime juice

1 tsp sugar

2 T warm water

sliced jalapeno & shallot (about 1 of each, we slice them with a mandolin)

 

Mix well and adjust ingredients to taste.

The Thai Basil was enjoyed by all.  JP and I felt warmed nose to toes with the spicy sauce.  I feel renewed from my morning out, and ready to face my one and only day of work this week!  Take that, Winter!  You can't keep us down!

Hot Chocolate

Another Snow Day, only today the temperature (which was -5* F when I got up this morning) is still -3* F.  The bad news is I've got a bad case of cabin fever - haven't been off the hill since I went to work Friday morning.  The rest of the bad news is that we now have 2 more snow days to make up during our Spring Break!  The good news is that L gets one more day to recover before going back to school - no more vomiting since yesterday morning, but now she's coughing like crazy!  The other good news is that I don't have to spend my Birthday alone.

I was still pretty cranky when I got the call this morning about no school due to "blistering cold weather", I mean, what the heck?  Don't the schools have heat?  So, while I was sweating away on the elliptical, I decided to make the best of it.  After all, it's my birthday, so I'm entitled to do all kinds of things that I normally wouldn't do, right?

We started off with Double Chocolate Pancakes for breakfast...yummy!  It was like an entire plateful of warm brownies to start the day.  I'm not sure what is next, but I'm sure that chocolate will have feature appearances throughout the day. 

Double Chocolate Pancakes

 

Adapted from the Betty Crocker website

 

2 cups Bisquick

1/4 cup sugar     

2 T cocoa powder

1 cup chocolate milk

1 tsp vanilla     

2 eggs 

mini milk chocolate chips 

 

Whisk all ingredients except for chocolate chips together until well mixed.  Pour batter onto buttered griddle heated to 300*.  Sprinkle with mini chocolate chips while batter is still uncooked.  Flip when bubbles rise along the edges and the holes do not close.

 

 

Happy below zero snow day to everyone!

Totoro Therapy

Actually my strikethough function wasn't working for the title, the REAL title should be:

I  HEART  Snow Days

 

The phone call for a 2 hour school delay came at 5:15 this morning.  I ran downstairs and tried to remember the code to turn off the alarm on J's phone, the redundant call to my cell phone came through on my way upstairs.  A few minutes later, JP got paged.  Not long after that, a call came through changing the delay to a full on Snow Day, followed by the redundant cell phone call.  Soon after, JP's alarm and then mine went off.

 

Suffice it to say, I didn't get enough sleep last night.  Combine that with the fact that L is vomiting for the 2nd morning in a row, and it does not make me relish this (un)expected day off.

 

One way to round up the warm fuzzies on a cold and miserable day:  Watch Totoro!

 

This is one of my favorite scenes from this charming anime:  taking a family bath.  A huge tub like this is one of the things we struck from our blueprints to make our house affordable.

 

 

Then there's this one, I mean, who wouldn't want to take a nap on a giant, furry Totoro?

 

 

 

And I love this one, where they are making the acorns grow in the middle of the night...makes me long for Spring!

 

Oh my goodness, the entire film is simply delightful!  Go and get yourselves a good dose of Totoro...STAT!

 

**All Totoro photos snatched from the internet...sorry and thanks!**



We got into the Totoro mood and made Soot Sprites, too!

The Passage of Time

This weekend, we stayed in most of the time due to the abundance of snow and lack of degrees of temperature on the thermometer.  We decided to finally take on the gargantuan task of converting our box of home videos to DVD.

What struck me the most while watching our wedding video, taken over 22 years ago, was not the little girl that grew up to be my niece who is teaching school in Bulgaria, or the little guy - her brother who is now a soldier helping to protect our country, but the people there who are now no longer with us.  Both of JP's parents, 3 of my grandparents, JP's best buddy from college, and one of my college friends were there to celebrate the beginning of our life together, and now are absent from our lives.

Moving on, we watched the recording of JP's commencement from Medical School, which was held outdoors in the pouring rain.  I had managed to repress that memory until watching again.  JP's 85 year old mother was thoroughly soaked and chilled to the bone.  We abandoned our plans of picnicking in the park afterwards, to breaking into the home of our friends to dry off and eat in relative warmth.  JP's diploma had to be replaced as it was completely waterlogged, etc, etc.  What a fiasco!

We re-watched the film from the week JP and I were certified in SCUBA, and went snorkeling with manatees in Florida.  J used to watch this video as a toddler, and would ask time and again to see "the Mommy-T's and the Daddy-T's too!"

Next up was video of J's birth and first year, where we caught glimpses of our beloved dog, Zach, and JP's sister's dog, DD, both of whom have succumbed to age and illness.  And that little baby...where did she go?

We are still working through these home movies, and should get to L's birth very soon.  It was much less dramatic, but just as precious.

Along the way, we found video that JP took of several houses (both in Wheeling and here) that at separate times we were considering buying.  I marvelled at my young, slim self in a mini skirt.  We chuckled at the film of JP home alone, recording extreme close ups of his ears and eyeball.  Not all of these moments will make the cut to DVD, but there are so many precious moments that we will be able to look back on with mixed emotions.

The strange thing is that I really don't feel like 22 years have passed since my wedding.  I am more achy and slow when I wake up in the morning, I am countless pounds heavier, and it involves boxes of hair color every 4 months to keep my hair that color, but in my soul, I'm still 21.