Super Cleaning Weekend

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A little while back, my friend Melissa posted a journal entry about the “staycation” they took, accomplishing things around the house rather than going on a trip. I was totally jealous of her list as our house was a disaster area thanks to the usual child issues and that I had been slacking on any upkeep due to a Crohn’s flare-up. Awhile back, my mom had invited Cecilia to “vacation” at her house for a weekend. It was originally going to happen last weekend, but events transpired otherwise and so it turned out to be this weekend. Joe and I weren’t going anywhere, but we decided that it was Live Up to the Example Weekend. I think we did ok!

  • Toy organizationToy exodus/organization – This was the huge project for the weekend and it definitely took some time. The problem was mostly twofold: Cecilia has weird little collections of things and we really didn’t have a good place to clean things up into. I bought a number of clear bins at K-Mart a little while back and we basically made a huge pile of stuff on the floor in the living room after corralling it all, turned on Heathers and got to work. We tossed a bunch of stuff (do we really need the Star Wars party favors from Alex’s birthday?) and tried to sort things out into the bins in some sort of order. I’m pretty happy with the results, although I did need to quickly run out and grab a few more bins. We got rid of a bunch of nonsense stuff, moved some “baby” toys into a box that I’ve put in the closet so that they are available if she suddenly NEEDS one of them. The good thing now is that there are places to actually put things to clean up, so I think, regardless of child participation, it will be easier to keep it from taking over again. I think it will also help her actually play with more of her stuff because she’ll be able to find it more easily.
  • Middle room attack – This was mostly Joe’s project. The middle bedroom was kind of a mess of Joe’s music stuff. We decided to give up on it being a guest room with a bed and have him just use it as a music room. The basement was originally going to serve that purpose, but we really need to do some work down there to clean it up more and get the moisture down a bit. In the distant future, I’d like to re-do the “finished” rooms to be a more comfortable rec room and laundry room area. It used to be like that, as much as one can with 1960s wood paneling and such, but not so much right now. So he moved the bed out to store downstairs for now and just did a bunch of sorting and cleaning and setting up so he can actually use the room. It looks good.
  • Clean bedrooms – Cecilia’s room was already pretty good after bringing her bed in last weekend, so I just did the usual vacuuming, etc. I washed all of our bed linens and changed the sheets, vacuumed, did a little decluttering of stuff.
  • Clean bathrooms – I did our bathroom, Joe did Cecilia’s (which is the “public” bathroom, but it’s right next to her room). You know what happens with bathroom cleaning.
  • Vegetable soup stock – In the afternoon, I finally put my bag of veggie bits on the stove to make some veggie stock. I had been saving cut ends of veggies in the freezer for this purpose. It will come in handy this week when I have to prep for my capsule endoscopy and need to stick to a liquid diet.
  • Along with the toy project, the front room and living room got vacuumed and cleaned as part of the whole project. We also cleaned out the living room closet and purged a number of things. We have a trip to donate some stuff planned today and brought a bunch of bags down to the dumpster yesterday. We also purged some stuff from the kitchen and around the house a little too. This is an ongoing project.

Brand O's graveAmidst this, we took breaks for lunch and snacks and bathing. We also had to finally attend to burying Brand O. Not that we had been putting it off, but I wanted to wait until the ground was soft and it was a little warmer so we could plant something along with burying him. So the poor little guy had been in a tightly sealed box, wrapped in a blanket in our basement freezer until yesterday. I also kind of wanted to do it without Cecilia there. Not that doesn’t know what happened – we’ve talked about it a lot, but he was always more of OUR cat and Cheddar is more her cat, so it seemed right. We bought some blueberry plants and had a sniffly little ceremony. I’m glad it’s taken care of and it should be a nice spot. I miss my sweet puddy.

We hemmed and hawed about dinner. We can’t afford to eat out a lot lately, but I wanted to reward ourselves for our work and take advantage of a “adult” night out. We finally decided on The Lotus Garden on Bleecker St. in Utica and it was great. I had never been, but I had heard it was good. We got spring rolls and noodle dishes and were happy and the atmosphere was cozy. I’d go back! Stayed up late watching random things on tv and I made labels for the toy bins and we had a late dessert (those little heat-in-oven from freezer bumbleberry blossom things that satisfy my pie cravings).

I woke up early this morning, but I’ve been lounging on the couch, watching local morning shows and having tea and writing this, which is good. Our kitchen has been the dumping area, so we’ll finish getting that stuff out before Joe heads out to pick up Cecilia and go to church. We will also be FINALLY TAKING DOWN THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. Oy. And then I’ll mop the floor and clean kitchen surfaces (did the inside of the microwave yesterday) and whatever other puttering. We’re going to go to my mom’s for supper later.

One thing that didn’t happen this weekend was getting the dirt in the raised beds turned over, but the rainy, cold weather precluded that a bit. It’s not like I’m going to be planting right away anyway, so I didn’t mind that getting put off. I also made a box for the kitchen with file folders to catch all of our individual papers to cut down on that sort of clutter spewing all over the house. And having the box on that shelf will help keep that shelf from becoming a toy landing area. Joe also hung some pictures up around the house too that had been sitting in wait. I feel like there are also lots of little things that happened (some loads of dishes and laundry) too.

Overall, I’m happy with what we got done! The toy thing was huge and made a big difference. And I feel like the stuff we did helped to get us to a level where we can continue with the purging project more, rather than getting mired back in the everyday stuff as much. It definitely felt like a good spring cleaning reset.

Flares! Beds! Oh my!

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new bedAs any of you on Facebook have seen, we switched Cecilia to her new “big girl” bed last weekend. We had been debating about what to do in moving her out of her crib. We had been in no rush as she never tried to climb out (except for one time when we were having issues about it being bedtime, but I was right there) and she liked it and we didn’t have to worry about where she was wandering at night. But it was starting to seem like it should happen soon. She is certainly not getting lighter and they just get to the point where they are autonomous enough that it does start to feel like “baby jail”, especially with a 3 year old! And it would give her more usable room in her room because she could actually use the bed space. AND SHE HAS.

I don’t know how long she’ll actually fit in this toddler bed, but it is a decent wooden bed and my mom offered to buy it (it was just at K-Mart), so we just decided to do it. We were a little concerned at first because she’s always been a fan of her crib, but it went ok as we took apart her crib and she “helped”. We just couldn’t mention that maybe some other baby might use it. But she was excited enough about the new bed and the pink pillowcase I got her and flopping all over the new bed, that it ended up being fine. She kept wanting to run in her room and check to make sure her new bed is still there and she slept normally in it the first night.

The next morning, I heard her rustling around her usual wake-up time (I was awake, but just laying in bed listening to her). Then I heard our doorknob jiggling and the door opened slowly and a curly blonde head poked in and came trotting over to say “Mommy! It’s morning!” It was one of those classic kid moments and it’s nice to know that she can come in if she needs us now. We did put one of our gates up though so that she can’t go past the hallway – I’m not quite ready to let her have the run of the house without our knowledge just yet!

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I pretty much started having a Crohn’s flare the weekend of March 17-18 (which involved fever and chills and The Runs among other things). I knew something was up. That week was spent with dr appointments again. My GI on Monday and then I had to have a small bowel series on Thursday morning, which involved drinking this fruity chalky bleh barium stuff and then having them take a bunch of x-rays of my innards while essentially being paddled with a balloon. It also took almost 3 hours because you have to wait for all the stuff to go through all of your tract so they can make sure there are no strictures or fissures. Luckily, that was not the case.

Now they want to do a capsule endoscopy, which involves me swallowing a pill cam. I have to admit that’s kind of cool. I’m also on a round of antibiotics (actually, that’s done nwo) and prednisone again (started at 40mg and tapering down 5mg every week). I’ll be doing the capsule endoscopy on Thursday, so that should be interesting. I went crazy at got two different Gatorade flavors (lemon-lime and mango) for my Miralax “prep” the night before. Figured I’d mix things up a little. I’ll be going back on the Humira this week too. Woo.

Winter Dinner

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O hai. Apparently I have this blog? It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I will try to remedy that soon, but for now, here is a post about our dinner tonight, written mostly to provide people that asked with links to the recipes.

Pesto chicken, roasted cauliflower, and couscous.

First off, there is the pesto chicken. I pretty much followed this recipe for Baked Pesto Chicken from Kalyn’s Kitchen. I didn’t cut my chicken into strips, but gave the boneless breasts some gashes to let more pesto in. FYI, I’ve also made this with bone-in breasts. I pulled the skin off and again slashed them to let the juices in more and reduce cooking time a bit. I also didn’t brown the cheese. And I used a jarred pesto. Maybe someday I’ll make my own basil pesto when I finally grow some basil. I HAVE made garlic scape pesto before, so I’m not completely pesto-less in experience.

The roasted cauliflower was inspired by this recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches, but I used a slightly different seasoning. The original recipe called for cumin and sumac, but I happened to have some za’atar, which contains sumac, so I just used that. I roasted at a lower temperature as the chicken called for it, but bumped it up after taking the chicken out and gave them a chance to brown up a bit more as the chicken rested for a bit.

The couscous is just 1 cup of couscous to 1.5 cups of chicken broth. You bring it to a boil and then turn off the heat and let it go and then fluff it. I poured some of the pesto “sauce” over it as well so as not to let tasty juices go to waste. And there you have it!

Halloweens Past and Present

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This is a photo of me (and my cousin, Matt) on Halloween, circa 1981.

Halloween - 1981

Some facts about this photo:

  • If I’m calculating correctly, I’m roughly the same age in this photo that Cecilia is now. Obviously I was freakishly tall as a child and had lots of hair. I still have lots of hair, but tallness began to elude me around the end of elementary school.
  • We are standing in what is currently our kitchen back when it was my grandparents’ kitchen, pre-remodeling. I actually really like those old curtains! That flooring was still in place up to this summer.
  • I’m wearing the bottom part of a Tweety costume and the look is cracking me up. Maybe I’ll go as “Little Me Wearing The Bottom Half Of A Tweety Bird Costume” some year for Halloween.
  • MILK DUDS
And here we have Cecilia, wearing her pumpkin costume (that she wore all day today and almost wore to bed, but it was too lumpy to let her get comfortable) at school and surveying her loot from the Halloween party they had. I don’t think we’ll do trick-or-treating yet this year, but there is a Halloween party at the fire station Monday night that she’ll get to wear the costume to (if it doesn’t end up being her uniform for the whole weekend).
Cecilia PumpkinCecilia Halloween Loot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some recent meals

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Here’s a little round-up of some food we’ve had lately. I mentioned before that I’m using Paprika to help plan meals. It’s been great for keeping different recipes in mind to try. All of these are iPhone photos because that’s what I usually have handy. Someday I’ll attempt to return to more “styled” food photos with my “real” camera.

Bok choy and beef with snow peasOne night we had beef and snow peas, with sauteed bok choy. I ended up using skirt steak instead of flank because it was cheaper at the store and it was fine. I realized at the last moment that I didn’t have any “regular” soy sauce for the beef marinade and used black soy sauce instead. I think it made the beef a little too heavy (with the molasses flavor of the black soy sauce), but it was certainly edible. I REALLY need to find a good recipe to recreate beef bulgogi at home, as that is what we are usually craving. I could eat bok choy all day and I don’t know why I don’t buy it more. NOTE TO SELF. I was originally planning on doing baby bok choy, but Hannaford’s only had the large kind, so I just chopped it into smaller pieces. These are the sort of things that happen when you are used to being a Wegmans shopper. You just ASSUME that you will find baby bok choy.

West Indian Red Beans & Coconut RiceI made this recipe on the recommendation of Shari and realized at the same time that I never actually ATE at Moosewood the whole time we lived in Ithaca. My vegan/vegetarian restaurant choice was more often the now-defunct ABC Cafe. Anyway, this, West Indian Red Beans & Coconut Rice, was good, although next time I will use dried beans to start. For some reason the “can” flavor of the beans was more noticeable to me although Joe did not seem to mind. I might also throw in some garam masala or something too to change things up. The coconut rice was great, as coconut rice usually is. I’ll definitely make this again, though, and Cecilia even ate a few spoonfuls of it (being a long-time fan of coconut rice for dessert), so that’s always a win.

I made this Butter Chicken recipe in the crockpot and it was pretty darn good, although I used the boneless, skinless breasts I had in the freezer. Next time I’ll do otherwise to get the extra flavor and fat in. Chicken in the crockpot is always kind of a gamble for me as it seems if you don’t shred it and mix it back into the sauce, it can be kind of watery-tasting and bland. But the sauce this created was flavorful and “good enough” for hitting the Indian spot without having to monitor it cooking. Have I mentioned that there are no Indian restaurants in town? I’m mostly familiar with the Syracuse/Ithaca/Troy options, but I actually haven’t eaten at any of the ones in Utica, though, so I’ll have to explore. Instead of rice, I paired this with Jamie Oliver’s Bombay Potatoes. I left the tomatoes out though as we already had that going on in the chicken and threw frozen peas in instead. The potato leftovers also ended up making two servings of what I dubbed “Samosa Frittata”. Indian-spiced potatoes, peas, eggs, and a handful of mozzarella (fusion cuisine!) and I was a happy camper. Behold potatoey goodness:

Samosa Frittata