2009

2009 is going out the same way it came in…like a kick in the crotch. I wanted to do a cool photo montage of the past year, but what should have been easy has turned into a Herculean task. So instead you get a generic recap… Moved to Washington Snowiest winter in WA in 15 years Saw the Space Needle Lost my health insurance Lost my job Start looking for job Watched the Mariners play baseball inside Will it ever stop raining Abe and Christy got engaged Went to El Paso to visit family Went to Denver to visit friends Got engaged Got to see the Blue Angles Ate some salmon that didn’t make me gag Still no job Tracy came to visit It stopped raining…driest summer in WA in 60 years Hottest summer on record in WA Got to sail on a Naval Destroyer My sister and niece came to visit and we… Drove Forks and… Saw Depeche Mode My mom and aunt came to visit Job…nope Jenn came to visit Got to play with Jenn’s fancy cameras Saw orcas in the wild Saw the Broncos play the Seahawks Got my own fancy camera Developed an iPhone addiction Went to Colorado for Jeff and Nicole’s wedding Eloped while we where there Met Elena in person It started raining again Got health insurance Still haven’t found a job Ran out of money Changed my last name Spent my first holidays away from family Found out Husband is deploying 3 months earlier Saw Avatar Drove to Oregon Saw where Goonies was filmed Had a warm sunny day at the beach in December Went to Tillamook and ate cheese and ice cream Still unemployed and living in Washington I am not sad to see the year end and am optimistic that next year will be better. But in the mean time I would just like to say that 2009 can suck it.

so much more than just a candy cane

One of my favorite things to find in my stocking Christmas morning were those huge candy cane sticks. It has been years since I had one...or thought about them for that matter. I came across them in the store the other day and all the childhood memories of running down the stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought flooded back. And because I needed to keep my sugar buzz going I would work on this thing the whole day. It was important to get it into just the right shape...you know just in case I had to shank a certain sister for getting too close to my new Barbie. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Adventures in Tamale Making ~ Part II

And now I know why one gets a team together to make tamales. They are a pain is the ass to make…but so worth it. I ended up throwing the recipes out the window and winged it. I spent a good 10 hours in our tiny kitchen mixing, chopping, spreading, filling, and rolling and I got the technique down. I am glad that I don’t have to do this again until next year…the experience has left me feeling a little tired and stabby. We are now going to watch Christmas Vacation (a Christmas Eve tradition) and I am going to drink this... ...while Husband eats these. Oh…and I nailed Abeula Carmen’s sweet tamales. It's a Christmas Miracle!

PRESENTS!!!

I just received a box full of beautifully wrapped Christmas presents from my mom. As much as I would love to tear into them now I decided to let the anticipation build…which is hard for me. So instead I stacked them in a neat pile where I would have put the tree had I put one up. Husband and I decided against gifts this year but thanks to our parents we will still have something to look forward to Christmas morning. It took me a long time to learn to appreciate not knowing exactly what was under the tree. I like to know what is coming to me and always have to know the who, what, where, and when. You can ask Husband and Jenn about the months of planning and covert ops that go into surprising me with anything. It is like I have a sixth sense about when a present is brought into the house. I must then sniff it out and find out what it is. As a child I learned to peel the tape away from the wrapping paper so I could pull it back a bit to see what goodies were hiding underneath. My early attempts were sloppy. So sloppy that my mom could easily see that the presents had been tampered with. In fact there was one year that she had to completely rewrap all of my presents to throw me off on Christmas morning. But in time I got better at covering my tracks. I would say that between the ages of 6-13 I always knew exactly what I was getting. Now you may say that this takes all the fun out of Christmas...but for me half the fun was the thrill of the hunt. I recently posted this photo of us three kids sitting in front of the tree Christmas morning as my Facebook profile picture. You can see I have a present in my lap and an evil grin on my face. It is because I know that in that box is Dallas the palomino Barbie horse. And below this photo are a few of the comments made by my sister, brother, and mom. I can see that the wounds of my “detective work” are still a little fresh for my mom. P.S. I did get over the whole snooping thing...eventually

Adventures in Tamale Making ~ Part I

Tamales. Every year around Christmas time Husband tells me about how back in El Paso they would all gather at his Abuela Carmen’s house to make tamales. In most Latino families making tamales at Christmas is tradition. It is to them what the Christmas cookie is to us white folk. And like the Christmas cookie there are several different types of tamales. Husband’s Abeula makes the traditional pork tamales and she makes a sweet one too. It is the sweet one that the entire family talks about. I have never tasted one of her sweet tamales but from what I hear it is the stuff of legend. Since Husband and I got hitched this year and don’t have any traditions of our own I decided that we should try to blend the traditions of our respective families. So on Christmas Eve we will have tamales and for Christmas dinner I will make lasagna which is my family tradition (as us Norwegians are known for our mad lasagna making skills). So…yeah…tamales. While I have eaten many I have never attempted to make one. They are a lot of work and I always figured that I would learn to make them from Husband’s family while visiting for Christmas. That isn’t going to happen this year so I am forging into tamale making on my own. And because I am overly ambitious when it comes to food I am attempting four different kinds; two savory and two sweet. I am feeling pretty confident about three of the four as I have recipes for those. It is the third, Abeula Carmen’s sweet tamales, which have me worried. Husband’s mom has asked for the recipe several times and has gotten ingredients, but not how much of each ingredient. Only Abeula Carmen knows that. She makes them like this…a pinch of this and a dash of that…mix it together…and voila the best tamales you have ever eaten. Easy right? So I am going to give the often imitated but never duplicated sweet tamales a go. I have a list of ingredients, no tamales making skills, and no idea what this sweet tamale is supposed to taste like…what could go wrong?

80 gazillion twinkle lights

Last week Jenn posted some very cool and very trippy images she had taken of her girls last year at Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo. It reminded me that I had a bunch of images that I took last year at Zoo Lights that I never did anything with. So because there are no original ideas left in the world I decided to steal Jenn’s idea and post some of Zoo Lights images of my own. (Thanks Jenn W00T W00T) I had never been to Zoo Lights. It was something I talked about doing every year and then never got around to it. So last year I made sure to go because I didn’t know how long it would be until I was in Denver for Christmas again. The night Husband and I went was cold as hell…no surprise it being December in Colorado and all. I wanted to take photos but was not all that excited about taking my gloves off to do so. We walked around a bit looking at the lights and bitching about the cold. We then stopped to get a hot chocolate and were pleasantly surprised to find that for a few dollars more you could get some peppermint schnapps added. Yes please! Nothing like a few shots of liquor to take the chill out of the air. I had been snapping a few shots here and there. Pretty basic, nothing too exciting. Then I got this one of the dragon… …and decided to have a little fun with my camera. The rest of my images look a little something like this: Yeah for cold, twinkle lights, peppermint scnapps...oh and Jenn too...you know for the idea!

what a brat(wurst)

It is not the Christmas items that start making their appearance on store shelves in August, or the Christmas songs played everywhere you go the day after Thanksgiving that get me feeling all Christmas-y. The thing that really gives me a jumpstart into the ol’ Christmas spirit is the Georgetown Christmas Market. And this year I MISSED IT! It is something I had done with my family for the last 30 years. At first we started going for the overall Christmas experience; the outdoor European market, roasted chestnuts and hot apple cider, St Nicholas, and horse drawn wagon rides all set against the quaint backdrop of a historic mountain mining town. Sure all that stuff is nice…but in the end we went every year for the brats. I am not going to go so far as to say I am a brat connoisseur, but my family is from Wisconsin and brats seemed to be the only meat that made it on to the grill in the summer. I am not talking Johnsonville here…I am talking fresh sausage made by that old German guy who had a deli counter in back of the PDQ in Waukesha. That being said I think it is fair to say that the ones we get in Georgetown are hands down the best. The booth that sells the brats is run by a Catholic church out of Denver…and those Catholics know how to make a kickass brat. It does not get much better than a veal brat boiled in beer and onions, then tossed on the grill for a few seconds to give them a touch of color, served on a pumpernickel bun with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard (insert drooling noise that Homer does here). Totally worth the 50 mile drive. After 20 years of asking we finally got them to tell us where they got the brats. Even though I could now go and buy the brats anytime I never did. Somehow it would take away from how special the Christmas market ones are. Having to wait all year makes them taste that much better. So if I seem a little bah humbug this year it is because I did not get my brat fix that kicks off the holiday season.

Favorite things: The Bathrobe

This is my bathrobe. It is just a plain old white terrycloth robe…and I LOVE IT! I was talking to my mom this morning about Christmas gift ideas and she tells me about this bathrobe she was thinking about getting me. She was going on about how soft it was when I cut her short and asked why she thought I would want a new bathrobe. She replied “well Melinda take a look at the one you have”. Sigh. This is not the first time I have had this conversation about “The Bathrobe”. It was a Christmas gift from my mother. Other than my frequent requests for a pony, I usually ask for practical gifts. Other than socks and underwear I cannot think of a gift more practical than a bathrobe. So in 1992 I got a white terrycloth bathrobe for Christmas…and it was PERFECT. I have worn it everyday since for the last 17 years. I am not well versed in the lifespan of a bathrobe, but for what I am told mine is way past its prime and it is time for a new one. About six years ago my ex-husband went so far as to by me this bathrobe from Hammacher Schlemmer. I will say it was a very nice bathrobe…I mean it should be as it costs $120. I treated it the way I treated most things I did not think I needed. I shunned it. I had a perfectly good robe why did I need a new one that weighed 45lbs? That was one thing I had no problem letting him keep when we got divorced. Now granted my bathrobe has seen better days. There is a hole in the back of the neck where it hangs… While the right pocket is fine… The left one not so much. It is worn in a few spots. And maybe it has become a bit thin. Like I said; I love it. 17 years is not so old when you really think about it. Maybe once it hits 20 I will think about getting a new one…but I doubt it.

squeezed

For the most part Husband is very easy to live with. He is clean, manages to get his clothes into the hamper, puts the toilet seat down, and doesn’t snore too much. There is only one thing that he does that really bugs the crap out of me. Husband is a middle of the tube tooth paste squeezer. For the past year I have tried to break him of this but to no avail. In the grand scheme of things this is a small issue…but it drives me crazy. Like want to stab his face off crazy. I know that when I walk into our bathroom tonight to brush my teeth there is going to be a big ol’ dent in the middle of tube with the tooth paste squished to either side. Chances are that Husband will already be snuggled into bed so I will have to make a big show of squeezing the tooth paste back towards the tip of the tube…you know just to show him for the millionth time how it is done. He will then give me one of his ‘Dios mio woman you are LOCO’ looks. This one implies ‘give it up because no matter how many times you do that I am always going to squeeze the tooth paste from the middle’.