Pain in the Back

I've had a backache for about a week.  I first thought I'd slept wrong or pulled a muscle picking up Malachi, but it turns out I have KIDNEY STONES!  Oh, joy.  And along with the stones, a kidney infection.  I ended up giving blood, urine, being xrayed, and pumped full of water and drugs.  So after spending 3.5 hours at the doctor this evening, I come home with various drugs and devices to monitor the passage of the kidney stones from my body.  It wasn't exactly the way I'd thought I'd spend the evening.

~Jane

A New Week

First, an update on my freezer crockpot meal.  You definitely want to thaw these in the refrigerator before using.  They wouldn't have to be totally thawed, just enough to break them up to fit in your crockpot.  The recommended way to freeze is flat, so the meals stack.  I threw the one I wanted to cook for today into the freezer last night, because I wanted to taste the meal after it had been frozen.  Okay, my opinion on the Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken was that it was good.  Not outstanding, but good.  I ended up putting more meat in mine, the recipe only called for 1 pound (which was two chicken thighs), and I put an extra thigh in the meal.  It wouldn't have had enough meat without it.  The flavor was good.  It was a bit runny, so I added a tablespoon of flour into it the last 30 minutes to thicken it up.  We ate it in bowls.  We have enough left over for another meal.  It would probably be good over noodles or rice.

Next, my salads in a jar.

I didn't get around to making them yesterday, so made them today instead.  A oil and vinegar dressing at the bottom, followed by cabbage shreds, carrot shreds, green onion, tomatoes, avacado, kidney beans, green and red pepper, feta cheese, and lots of lettuce.  There are two small heads of romaine in these three jars.  Tomorrow I'll find out how they taste.  They sure look good!

~Jane

Memorial Day Weekend 2012

Malachi came to spend a couple nights this weekend.  It was so much fun having him stay over.  We had fun reading books, playing with playdough, and blowing bubbles.  I also washed my car while he washed the tricycle and we both weeded some of grandma's weeds.  This is a cute picture of Malachi and Papa.  Note:  I couldn't get either one of them to actually look at me.  They were having too much fun tickling.

Then Malachi decided to take pictures.  This is his picture of me in my nightgown. 

After church on Sunday, I decided to try a new freezer meal.  I've been doing once-a-month cooking since 1989.  I long ago settled on my usual method of doing multiples of one freezer meal a week, using one of them for dinner and freezing the other two or three.  It works better for me than trying to do a whole month's worth at once.  By picking a different meal each week I end up with a pretty large variety of meals that are ready to reheat.  I also love my crockpot.  I discovered a new method via Pinterest that combines freezer and crockpot meals.  You prepare your crockpot meal in multiples and freeze them until you want to cook them, then empty the whole bag in the crockpot and cook it.  Today I tried it out with the Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken meal from http://mamaandbabylove.com/ .  I made two meals for myself and two meals for Elsie.  She can add them to the stash of freezer meals she's collecting to use after the new baby arrives.  I'm going to try one of them out tomorrow so we can see how it tastes.  It took me just a little over an hour to prepare and assemble four meals. I know everything in them, and they have lots of vegies.  This meal has sweet potato, zucchini, onions, and red and green peppers.  It should taste yummy! 

The other thing I'm doing this weekend is making all my lunch salads for the week in quart jars using the "salad in a jar" method.  This was another thing I discovered on Pinterest.  You make all your salads for the week in quart jars and just grab one and go each morning.  There are four cups of vegies in each jar.  Another healthy thing I can do (lunchtime salad) and an easy method to do it.

~Jane

Malachi Sweater

Here's a picture of Malachi in the sweater I knit him.  It turned out  cute except the sleeves are a little long.  One of my co-workers commented on sweaters and shorts being a Northwest style, also rolled sleeves.  I stole the picture and caption from my daughter's blog.  :)

~Jane

Estate Progress

A lot has been accomplished this week on my mom's house.  I meant to get over there every evening this week, but some other things took priority a couple days.  Monday night was Bunco night - couldn't miss that!  Tuesday night I went over and sorted through things in a chest of drawers.  These were things I found way back a couple years ago, so I couldn't really remember what I had put in there.  I wanted to make sure there weren't any family items, and sure enough, found my mom's baby book in one of the drawers.  Then Wednesday, my daughter, grandson, and I went up to Tacoma to do some shopping.  We ended up getting a couple things for everyone and some Krispy Kreme doughnuts to eat on the way home.  That night I baked a cake for one of my co-workers for their birthday.  Thursday, my daughter and I went through the cupboards in my mom's utility area and cleaned it all up.  I moved all the furniture around and we vacummed everywhere.  We still have one large walk-in closet to go through.  My brother is supposed to have taken some dead electronic things to the dump today:  an old console TV, an old non-working console stereo, and my dad's old lift chair.  Then he is supposed to be moving some of the furniture we do want to sell into the living room.  Hopefully by the end of the week it will be ready for the Estate Sale ladies to start doing their thing.

~Jane

Endings

I met with a couple ladies yesterday about having an estate sale at my mother's house.  I've gone through just about everything and taken what I wanted, mostly fabrics and trims for dolls and a few dolls and accessories.  But there is so much more that needs to be sold.  We had a nice chat.  I showed them what was there and they agreed to hold a sale.  They will organize and sort and hold the sale for a percentage of the profits.  I will get the job done.  I have been anticipating this for quite a while and thought I would be elated that the task was passing to someone else.  But instead I just felt profound sadness.  First, a panicky thought that I would be turning everything over to these ladies and no longer able to keep any of it.  Then, just an overwhelming sense of the end of an era.  That these things are my last tangible connection with my mother.  I said goodbye to the women after promising to get back to them next week and went back in the house and cried.

A number of years ago a good friend passed away.  Before she died, she had invited me over to her home to pick out a doll as a remembrance of her.  She was selling the doll, not giving it away, but selling it to me at a very low cost.  I'm sure she knew I couldn't afford much at the time and wanted me to have it.  After her funeral her daughter called me demanding the doll back.  I was rather shocked, but since I had paid for it (maybe that was the reason her mother "sold" it rather than just giving it away) I refused.  The friend's husband called explaining his daughter was trying to hold on to her mother by keeping all her things and to ignore the request since she would eventually figure out that the things were not her mother and that his wife had specifically wanted me to have the doll.  I couldn't really understand it all at the time, but I certainly did last night. 

I can't keep everything of my mother's, nor would I want to.  Most of the things I have no emotional attachment to.  But it's easier to forget for a little while that she's gone when you can go to her house and handle all her things and wonder why she bought this or that.  In a couple weeks everything will be gone.  I can see that I need to sort things out a little more.  That I need to go through a few more chests and boxes to make sure that everything we want to keep we have.  My brothers need to make a pass through everything also.  We need to get rid of the non-working TV and the lift chair and bring in the furniture we want to sell.  But within a few weeks this task will be finished.  I will be both happy and sad.

~Jane

Finally Finished on Friday #4

I finished Malachi's brown hoodie sweater yesterday.  It's blocked and drying.  I hope it fits.  The sleeves look a little long but I guess they can be turned up. 

I finished the set of 9 printed diapers this week and started on 8 plain white ones.  I think my daughter will have 18 or 19 larges and that should be enough.  I am still planning on making some extra-small diapers for the new baby.  When he outgrows those, we will reuse the smalls and mediums I made for Malachi. 

I cast on the fronts of my sweater today.  Now is when it will get more complicated as there is a cabled panel up each front piece.  I am excited!

I found a lady to come look at my mother's things.  The things that I have sorted out from the junk as being collectible and hopefully having some value.  I want to see if she would be interested in holding an estate sale.  Hopefully she is or can point me in the direction of someone else who might be.  I am so ready to get this project done.

~Jane