Giving Up Vs. Offering Up

Two days ago I was in the kitchen prepping some raw chicken for dinner.  It was the kind that already comes cut up into strips, which is awesome for homemade chicken strips...if each and every piece of chicken didn't have this big, annoying vein that needed to be dug out!  So, there I was grumbling about having to de-vein the stupid chicken before I could cook it and, almost as soon as the thought popped into my head, I immediately felt ashamed.  I mean, how ungrateful must I be if my worst problem in life is that I have cut the yucky stuff off the food before I cook it?  How many people are there in the world who change places with me in a heartbeat? How many people in the world are hungry or homeless or defenseless, cold, ill, afraid, alone?  Would I change places with them over some freaking raw chicken?  Would I change places with them at all?  

...(in my smallest voice)...no...

And right then and there, with my hands covered in raw chicken muck, I said a prayer of thanks for all that I take for granted every day, starting with that vein-y chicken.

And then life went on, more or less uneventfully, and I kind of forgot about the chicken.  Until this morning, when I tried to watch netflix on my computer and the video wouldn't stream because of some problem with silverlight.  Apparently, programs like flash and silverlight have some kind of beef against chrome and they like to take it out on websites that play videos.  I know this; I've run into this problem several times since becoming a chrome user and usually I can fix it.  But whatever my technologies' problems are with each other, it seems to be beyond my limited technical capabilities.  

So, there I was, again, grumbling about having to poke around in folders and program settings and install/uninstall/update/check/uncheck/etc. when I felt that familiar flush of shame wash over me.  

I mean, really, Victoria??  

I've got food, clothing, shelter, running water, electricity, and, obviously, luxuries, such as electronic devices.  But instead of appreciating them, I'm irritated because my luxuries aren't luxurious enough.  

Wow, that really made me feel like a jerk.

And, again, right then and there, with a computer on lap and a screen full of open program settings boxes, I said a prayer of thanks and praise.  But first I added a prayer for forgiveness for my ungratefulness.  And I thought, with the Lenten season upon us, I hear people saying they're giving up this for Lent or they're giving up that for Lent and I had an idea.  And this is not to knock anyone else's faith, but in the past, I've given up an indulgence for Lent that didn't really mean anything to me and I was doing it just because it was the thing to do.  I GUESS I can live without chocolate for forty days.  I'll give up caffeine, but that's IT!  You know, and that's cool if it's a sacrifice that's meaningful to you and brings you closer to God, but that's never really been the case for me; not with that attitude, anyway.  I'm not going to give up some random thing just for the sake of being able to say I gave something up, and I haven't practiced the custom of meaningless participation for Lent in several years.  I haven't ever really had much of an understanding of how the church's customs relate to my own personal faith.  

But I totally got something today.  This year, instead of giving up, I'm going to offer up.  And by that I mean that, instead of resentfully giving up one out a million of life's little luxuries, I'm going to offer up thanks and praise for those million luxuries; as many as I can, as often as I can think of it, for every problem and frustration and woe that represents all that I have instead of all that I lack.  I'm going to offer up as much appreciation as I can fathom.  Because I get that. That means something to me. 

And this year, I hope each and every one of you does something that's meaningful to you!

Science Project Preview

I know, I keep tossing appetizers at you without ever getting around to the main course, but bear with me! I AM going to get a full spread of photos and detailed descriptions of Nicholas' science project adventures later tonight or tomorrow, but right now the kids just got home from school and they're hungry and I want to hang out with them a bit before I stick my nose in the computer and never come back up for air.  So here are a few pics of his experiment, Balloon Hovercrafts:

 Building the first model.

 Testing phase.

 Pretty much the whole reason why he picked this particular project; the balloons!

 Building the second model.

 Both models, accolades to whoever can guess which one performed better!

 It works!

 ...for five seconds!

Ok, this was totally a set-up pic to depict how he gathered his data!

So, those are pretty much most of the pictures I took of the whole process, but I promise to get back to you with pictures of the final presentation, his score and more details of his project (hint: he did well)!

Thanks for stopping by, love you guys!

Not Quite Yet

Ok, so I'm not ready for my Grand Unveiling just yet - for those of you who follow my hilarity and insanity on facebook, I chopped off a huge length of my hair recently and have a new 'do to reveal!  BUT (there's always that darn butt, butting in and ruining my plans!), I should've taken a picture as soon as the salon lady whipped that hair-cutting-tarp-thingie off of me because she made my hair pretty in a way that I can't do myself, as I own neither blow dryer nor round brush.  I know, I know, but I've never been much of a hair girl...or a girlie girl...so I'm ill prepared for beauty emergencies such as this one.  Now I need to figure out...some other way to make my hair picture worthy for my Grand Unveiling, and I better hurry because more and more and more people have seen my hair and it's really ticking me off that I haven't been able to hide in a bat-cave until I'm ready to show myself off.  Haaaannnng on..........I'll try to get a decent sneak-peak shot for you.......

This is my "I'm not so sure about this" face - the picture in general, not the hair.  I'm super diggin' the new hair!  And yes, my pursed lower-lip really is that full.  I like to think of it as a God-given half-off coupon if I ever wanted to collagen my lips.  (...NOT! Hahahaha!!!)

In other news, Nicholas has a science project due.  It's the first year that it's mandatory for any of the kids, and it's only mandatory for Nicholas (and all of the fourth and fifth grades), being the oldest.  Even though I thought we got off easy with a simple project, it's turned a lot harder than I had originally anticipated.   Apparently, doing the project the RIGHT way (eyeroll), instead of just the "this looks good to me" way, requires a lot more effort and research and technical blah-blah-blah than I was even aware existed for elementary school science projects.  The last time we did this, we just had to slap pictures and captions on a piece of poster board.  Elementary school is a lot harder the second time around!  It's a mental workout, teaching Nicholas enough about the scientific process for him to do the experiment and presentation on his own.  The cool part is, he totally gets it.  The balls part is, he totally gets the enormity of the quality and quantity of work expected of him.  

I'm right there with you, dude; this is overwhelming to me, too!

I'll get y'all some science project pictures soon, if this whole affair doesn't kill me.  At least we're almost done.  We got the question down, and the research and the hypothesis and the experiment; we've collected the data and cited our references.  Now we just need to type, print out pictures and arrange everything on that stupid tri-fold board. 

Seriously, whose idea was this whole science fair thing, anyway? 

Victoria.I.Am.

I've decided that that's my new name for today; Victoria.I.Am.  Tomorrow I may be...some other name.  Or no particular name at all, but today...Victoria.I.Am!  Because today I am Awesome, and I'll tell you why.

 I....can make CHILI!!

And not just any chili -

 Wait, hold that.  I don't like the spelling of the word "chili".  I hereby change it to "chilley" because the i-l-i hurts my eyes and aggravates my sense of symmetry.  Ok, so, carrying on..

- not just any chilley, but Turkey Chilley....FROM SCRATCH!

And not just any turkey chilley from scratch.....

...(wait for it).....

...but Turkey Chilley From Scratch From My Own Original Off-The-Top-Of-My-Head Recipe!

HA!  

I am now officially awesome, thank you very much!  As of this very minute, I have a pot of turkey chilley simmering on my stove.  I have tasted it and it is delicious and chilley-ish, so I know I did a good job.  Because the true measure of any recipe you make up off the top of your head is whether or not it actually tastes like the intended food and my chilley definitely does! 

Granted, I can't speak for what it'll taste like after a morning of slow simmering, but the initial results were amazing!

Want to know my recipe?  I can't tell you because I already kind of forgot it, but I can give you the general idea if you want to make chilley and trust a total amateur rather than googling it and finding an overwhelming amount of information on the subject of making chilley the "right" way.  Whatever!  (Btw, how hilarious is it that blogger's spell check doesn't recognize the word "googling"?  It's like a Coca Cola exec not being able to identify Coke in a blind taste test!  Anyway...)

Basically, if you're a no-fuss cook like me, and you have no experience cooking chilley and have no desire to sift through millions of opinions and recipes on the matter, do this:

Brown some ground turkey and toss with whatever fresh veggies sound chilley-ish to you; I used onion and garlic because those were all I had on hand, but I would totally have added some bell pepper and maybe even spicy peppers, if I had had them.  And mushrooms.  I will probably try this again with mushrooms.  And maybe celery.  I don't care if celery doesn't sound chilley-ish to anybody else; I like it!  

Dump in a can of diced tomatoes, the best flavor you can find.  I found fire-roasted with garlic at HEB yesterday, which is what started this whole thing by giving me the idea for the chilley in the first place.  You know, one of those impulse buys that actually isn't a load of poo.  

Then, if you're a bean person, add a can of beans (I used red).  Also add an eight ounce can of tomato sauce and season the heck out it!  I more or less used every spice in my cabinet that looked and/or smelled like it belonged in chilley - a couple of bay leaves, seasoned salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, chilley powder.  

That's not hard at all, is it?!  And if, for any reason, you're thinking, "Well, that does sound kind of hard..." I'll say this - ground turkey, onion and garlic, diced tomatoes, beans, tomato sauce and spices.  Mix 'em up however you like!  THAT'S not hard!  Is it!  That's how I cook - by lists, rather than by recipes.  If I can't memorize the ingredients and if I can't work out how to put the dish together just by looking at the ingredients, then that dish is entirely too complicated and I probably won't cook it.  

Right now, I'm letting my chilley simmer, and I'm giving it a taste every so often to keep the flavor on track.  I have no idea how long I'm going to simmer it, or how much or how often I'm going to have to adjust the flavor - I've already added more spices once.  But my chilley's pretty darn good as of right now, so it'll only get better as it cooks!

Well, that's pretty much all I wanted to tell you.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  Thanks for stopping by, love you! 

Happy Halloween, Happy NaNoWriMo and Happy Birthday to Frankie

This week is a busy one, starting today, Halloween.  It's always an ordeal getting all the kids costumed, Tricked and Treated, fed some semblance of dinner (which they won't eat in anticipation of the candy), and then settled down enough afterward to get to bed at some point.  But it's the happy, fun kind of chaos, at least!

And tomorrow is the first day of NaNoWriMo, which I anticipate to be completely stressful and exhilarating at the same time!  I "won" last year with a novel about a young mom who lost her young child - yes, depressing, I know; I made myself cry many times writing that one!  But while I started off last year's challenge with a detailed outline of my novel, chapter by chapter, I'm hardly as prepared this year.  I barely have a rough idea of a story line, which is basically about a husband and wife who venture into polygamy with chaotic and heartbreaking results.  Sound twisted?  It's supposed to.  It's a kind of "what would happen if a person did X?" scenario.  Have you ever gotten a hypothetical situation stuck in your head and hashed out the what-ifs in your mind a hundred times over?  What if this person won the lottery? What if a person got lost in the wilderness and had to learn to survive?  Well, what if a couple decided to add another spouse to their family and discovered that it's not as Happily Ever After as they had imagined?  What?  It could happen!  I'm certainly not about to run right out and try it, just for the sake of the firsthand experience necessary to write a good story (nor for any other reason, for that matter), but I find the idea of exploring the what-ifs pretty irresistible.  I suppose I could explore the possibilities of alien encounters or historical events or generic live-laugh-love kind of themes, but that's just not my style.  I much prefer to make people cry than laugh, a la Anne of Green Gables, although without her knack for writing ridiculous, unintentionally comical tales (I hope)!

So that journey begins tomorrow (or tonight at midnight) - wish me good luck or broken legs or something!

And last, but not least, it's Frankie's birthday on Thursday!  He'll be nine and (Hallelujah!) for once we're not getting strung through my in-laws' ludicrous Frankie's Birthday Parade/Charade.  This year it's supposed to be pretty low-key, which is good because I don't know if my nerves could take another grating.

Ok, well!  I'll try to get some pictures going later in the week, but for now, I've got to sign off and try to figure out something for dinner before all Halloween breaks loose!

I've Lost A Lot, I'm Getting Some Of It Back

So, I haven't blogged in forever...because?  Because I haven't wanted to talk about it.  I haven't wanted to talk about having to move again, moving the kids to a new school again, about being depressed again, about not having enough spunk left to get to know a new PTA set and volunteer at said new school.  I haven't blogged because I haven't been doing anything other than going through the motions and scraping together the energy to just get through the today.  Isabel started school this year and I only just barely managed to take a couple of pictures on the first day.  Nicholas is having all his same old struggles in school, only with much more of a vengeance.  I'm working with his teacher to get him evaluated and my dad is helping by coming over to tutor Nicholas twice a week, but I still feel frustrated by how slow the process is.  Well, actually, I'm frustrated but I'm not.  The process IS slow, but I feel like this new teacher is the first one to take his troubles seriously and is actively trying to get him some real help.  So, there's a ray in the dark with that.

But as for myself, I just feel kind of void.  I have so little interest in...things, in life, in activity.  It takes a lot out of me to do every day tasks, and it's pretty gargantuan to actually enjoy something, anything.  Frank doesn't know what's wrong with me.  Neither do I.  I try really hard to spend at least some time each day enjoying the here and now with my kids, so they're not just living with my empty shell.  Some days I do better than others.  Some days I sleep all day while they're at school.  Some days I don't eat.  Some days I eat too much.  Some days I don't think and some days I think too much...and short circuit my brain.  Brain malfunction hurts; I wish I didn't have it.  It helps to watch tv, it's kind of numbing, but then I feel guilty for not doing anything productive, which pretty much sinks me further into the muck.  But on the other hand, I don't have any desire left to read or bake or listen to music.  I have actually ceased reading books for leisure.  

Is all this too much for you?  Because it's too much for me, sometimes.  And then some days, I feel fairly normal and I do laundry and shop for groceries and laugh with my kids and cuddle with my husband and feel hopeful.  But those days are fewer than the other kind.

Today's List

This is what my plans are for today, in this exact order:

1. Play games on fb for at least an hour.

(Oh, the sweet, sweet rewards for sending ALL. four. kids. to school!)

2. Make some coffee and maybe eat a bit of breakfast to offset the coffee-rumbly-tumblies. 

Maybe. 

(I really don't like to eat while I drink coffee; it detracts from the deliciousness of the coffee itself.)

3. Take a shower A.N.D. brush my hair.  Yes, I know, I know.  I'll admit it. 

In fact, let me do this right.

(standing up)

Hi, my name is Victoria and I don't brush my hair every day.  

I'm a thirty year old hair brush hypocrite.  I fight with my daughter every morning about brushing her hair, but I don't always brush my own.  Because, I mean, let's face it, I'm just going to throw my waist-length (that's right, waist-freakin'-length) hair into a bun anyway, so who's really going to know?  And who can honestly rock three feet of insulation, from head to waist, in 110 degree weather, anyway?  

Am I right?

Ok, so!  Moving on..

4.  Play Rock Band all by myself.  

I've been seriously wanting to belt out a few tunes, but, unfortunately, this is not an activity with which I would ever assault innocent ears.  So, with Frank at work and the kids at school, it's probably safe to indulge. 

5. Consider a nap.

I had decided earlier that I was NOT going to take a nap today (hence the coffee), but now I'm thinking maybe I will.  I can always nap, even after coffee, and my day sounds pretty exhausting so far.  In fact, I think I deserve a bit of positive reinforcement for getting the kids to school a whole ten minutes before morning assembly!  If I don't dream up a better reward for myself, I'll probably take the nap.

6.  Have a snack or possibly lunch, depending on how hungry I am.  Or possibly neither if I do end up taking a nap, in which case I doubt I'll wake up in time to eat.

7. Pick up the kids, have a whirlwind dinner and rush right back to the school for Back To School night, where I'll spend a frenzied hour and a half being cornered by the PTA while trying to stop in on four different classrooms; never quite having enough time in any of them, yet still trying to obtain all the information as quickly and non-rudely as possible so I can bolt for the next kid's class.  

I hate Back To School night. 

If your kids are spaced far enough apart that you don't have to do the Teacher Tango for every school event, please take a moment at the next school function to just pause and enjoy the non-chaos.  Please.  Seriously.  Take that moment and send me some calming vibes, because I'll be over here with my feral hair flying all over the place, trying not to throttle someone.  o_O

Also, obviously the kids are back in school, so I thought I'd post an update.

Everyone's good.

The end.

Just kidding!  We had a great first day of school, and almost a great first week, except that Isabel didn't figure out until the SECOND day that she was supposed to cry when we dropped her off.  So, Tuesday and Wednesday she cried and clung to me and I realized how much I dislike her teacher for not having a little more compassion for a crying five year old (who was also the only one crying, for crying out loud)!  BUT, I'm going to rein it in and try really hard not to throw a tantrum on Ms. Snooty Pants unless she really earns it...!  

Anyhow, I got Isabel to stop crying in the mornings by promising her that she could ride the bus to school - a promise I haven't made good on, yet, but I will.  I don't think I'm going to ever let them ride the bus home, but if I can just fine-tune their routine a little more, so we can be ready about 20 minutes earlier, I think we can pull it off.  Like I said, I got them to school ten minutes before assembly, which is about ten minutes earlier than we've been getting to school, so I think we can do it!  

Now we're into the second week and not making it to bed as early as we need to, so...eh.  I can always tell if we're hitting the mark, bedtime-wise, by Leila's morning attitude, and Let Me Tell You!  We were pretty much on track for the first week, but we've been off the wagon all this week and you can smell that rotten attitude a mile away!  But please don't think I get my kids to bed late, not by any means!  It's just that, while 8:00 or 8:30 might work for some kids, it doesn't work for Nicholas or Leila.  Now, Nicholas isn't a stinky, little turd when he's tired, he just won't get up.  But Leila!  Woo, Leila!  

So, yeah, going back to a 7:30 bedtime!  

But otherwise, everyone's happy and loving school, so I can't complain.  

(or, well, grumpy as I naturally am, I probably COULD, but I'm working really hard on not letting the funk take me over...!)

Oh, and, funny story!  Friday afternoon, Isabel came home from school SUPER EXCITED because her teacher told her that she didn't have to come to school "tomorrow OR the next day!"  Ha, the look on her little face was so cute!  I realized that she had never have any concept of "weekend" until now!  But by Sunday night, when she realized that she had school again the next day, she was moaning about how she "went to school for a lot of days, so I should get a lot of days off, too!"

Hahahahahahaha!!!

I just couldn't stop laughing!  I wish my mom had been there to hear it with her own ears!  All of my mom's trials and tribulations with me are indeed being avenged; what one kid doesn't put me through, another will :)

Nicholas drags his feet over homework.

Leila can never find a perfect enough outfit and she hates brushing her hair. 

Isabel is impossible to wake up in the mornings.  

Remind me to ask my dad to make a recording of himself trumpeting "Reveille" through his hand cupped in front of his mouth.  My kids need to hear it.  It's the Garcia Morning Legacy.