December 11th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good Morning! Happy 500th Blog Post. That’s insane. It feels like I just started the blog, and today is its 500th entry.

My Nemesis 

I started this morning off with another heart attack. Last Monday, I was not quite awake when I went outside to wait with Dani for her bus, and I opened the family room door, stepped into the garage, and then hit the garage door opener. When the door started to open, a bird in our garage flew into the house, where he remained for there 26 hour.

For the past week, in the mornings, I have been opening the family room door just enough to squeeze my arm through, reach out, and hit the garage door button, quickly retract my arm, and close our family room door to where I can peek out to watch the bird(s) fly out. It has been working well, that is until this morning. One of the little beasties, flew in through the less than two inch space, brushing my cheek as he passed. E.E.E.E.W.W.W.W.W!!!

On the prowl...

I kicked Colby out and closed the family room door. Then I started chasing my cats around so they wouldn’t have bird for breakfast. I grabbed Mikey and shoved him down the basement and slammed the door, then scooped up Sebastian and tossed him in the bathroom and slammed the door, all while this crazy bird is dive bombing us. I shut off all the lights in the house, opened the back door, flipped on the back porch light, and went out the garage to spend some quality time with Colby, praying the buzzard would leave on his own.

I wish I looked this cute
in the morning...

Mind you, I just woke up, my hair is standing on end, I’m in my nightgown with my coat thrown over it, and I haven’t had my coffee yet. I only lasted ten minutes in the garage – it’s cold out there. I THINK, the bird has vacated the premises, but I’m not 100% sure. The cats are still acting a little weird, but that may just be the aftereffects of having a bird flying around them earlier. Let’s hope. There should be an unwritten law that you’re not allowed to get traumatized before you’re fully awake.

So that’s how I started my morning, how about you? Have you started your holiday shopping yet? Hanukkah is less than a week away, and Christmas is in two weeks.

TWO WEEKS – Oh bother!

I don’t think I’ll be getting cards out this year, well at least not photo ones. I don’t know if I have enough time. I haven’t even begun to write the Christmas letter yet. I don’t have a single gift wrapped, I haven’t even sorted them out yet to see what I have and what I still need. I know I have at least seven more gifts to shop for, because I don’t have ANYTHING for those family members yet. The tree’s still not decorated, and now there’s a string of lights out on it, so the few ornaments that did get on the tree, need to come off again. The house does not have any decorations, inside or out. How did I get so far behind?

Crachunik on Left
Crutsanik on Right

What’s worse is, next week I leave early Tuesday morning, don’t get back until late Thursday night, and will probably be shot all day Friday after driving 1,100+ miles again. The week before Christmas is when I start all my baking, and the Crachunik and Crutsanik are all dependent on weather conditions. If it’s too cold or raining, the dough won’t rise, so I need to find the mildest sunny day, in the Northeast, a few days before December 25th, to make the traditional Slovak breads.

They looked sort of
like these

I really hope that day isn’t next Tuesday – Thursday, or I would have missed my window of opportunity. If that day is Friday, it just might kill me, but I’ll do it anyway. I am the only one who bothered chasing my Baba around the kitchen so I could learn how to make everything she made, well almost everything. She used to make these spareribs, only on Christmas, that were amazing. All I remember is she cooked them in a pot, and they came out dark brown, fall off the bone, garlicky and delicious. So if any of you out there come from Slovak, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian or Hungarian heritage, and someone you loved made these types of spareribs at Christmas, and you know how to make them, PLEASE contact me. I’d love to be able to make them again.

Okay, I’m off to do one more sweep of the house to make sure that dang bird is really gone. The last thing Dani needs, when she wakes up, is to get dive bombed by a bird. She’s home, sick in bed, and I have to go to work at ten, so I’ll probably be gone before she wakes up. Never a dull moment around this place, I swear.

I hope you have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge:

I’m running out of room…

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

May 12th Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Check out the gradient
coloring

Good Morning! I’m so tired, my hair even hurts. We busted our butts yesterday.

I’ll show you what we accomplished in a minute, but first I wanted to tell you why I purposely omitted Lys from yesterday’s blog. You see, while Dani, my hubby and I were working outside, Lys was in charge of desserts for last night’s dinner, so I knew a good chunk of today’s blog would be dedicated solely to her.

Zero calories on holidays,
right????

As you have seen before, when it comes to desserts, Lys goes all out, and yesterday was no exception. She decided to do two different desserts, well actually three if you count the chocolate covered strawberries. She did individual servings of ice cream in a chocolate shell cup, and she made a marble cake.

Chocolate cups filled with
ice cream

Lys has gotten the decorating down, her creations are absolutely beautiful. Now she needs to polish her actual baking though. Although the marble cake tasted okay, it came out very dense, kind of like a pound cake. She needs to experiment a little more until she gets more consistent, and I will happily be her kitchen guinea pig.

Now, as for the garden; at nine, Dani and I headed off to Lowe's. We bought cinder blocks, mulch, manure, potting soil, vegetables – in both seed and plant form, and herbs – again in both seed and plant form. We looked over the hanging baskets for the two grandmothers’ gifts, but didn’t see anything we liked, so we decided to get empty baskets and individual flowers, and make our own.

All that's left of the
three yards of dirt

Three yards of dirt were dumped at the top of our driveway around eleven thirty. Unfortunately, because of all the rain we’ve had lately, the driver didn’t want to take a chance in getting her truck stuck, so she wouldn’t drive the load of dirt out back. That meant we (meaning my husband) had to wheelbarrow all the dirt.

The first trough took eleven barrows full, and probably could have taken two more, but I was nervous we wouldn’t have enough dirt. I should have waited until all the troughs were full before I started planting, but I wanted to get one done.

Strawberry Patch

Six hours of constant work by the three of us, and the garden is filled, planted, and mulched. The only thing I was worried about was, we didn’t have enough time, or quite frankly the energy, to put the cage around the garden. Sure enough, I poked my head out my bedroom window, and it does look like the wildlife had a buffet. When I get dressed, I’ll go and take a better look, but I think my lettuce was someone’s late night snack. Hopefully it won’t be too bad.

I still have to get onions and garlic, and then my herb bed will be finished, and then I have one section in front of the corn where I can plant one more thing, but I haven’t decided what will go there. I was debating about just putting in more corn, but I really think the eight stalks I planted will be more than enough for us. I don’t know, maybe artichokes would be good.

trough one is the closest
please ignore the long grass
our tractor is getting fixed

This photo shows you the whole garden from the north end. The first bed is corn on the left, a blue berry bush and a raspberry bush. In front of the berry bushes are carrots and radishes. The second bed has cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, regular tomatoes, red, yellow and orange peppers. The third bed (which still need the trellis put up) has peas, green beans and wax beans on the small side, and then zucchini, eggplant and cucumbers on the large side. The fourth bed has lettuce, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower. The final bed is my herb bed. On the left is where the onions and garlic are going to go. Then I have basil, dill, and finally rosemary. Along the western edge is my strawberry patch.

All we have left to do is the fence needs to be fastened around the perimeter, the trellis for the climbing veggies, the door, and the screen roof. Next weekend my hubby will be building my spud bin. It may take his back that long to recover after all the work he did yesterday. Between muscle aches and sunburn, he was in sad shape last night. I felt so bad for him, and I really feel guilty that I have to ask him to do more work tonight when he gets home from work, but I fear if we don’t get the fence up tonight, there won’t be anything left in the garden to fence in by tomorrow morning.

YUMMY!!

Dinner at my sister in law’s was nice, even though her dogs ate the two and a half steaks and the chicken I had left over and had planned on bringing home. My mom and my mother in law liked their baskets, and were impressed that Dani made them. PJ and Alex got me a box of chocolates and a gift card for dinner and a movie. Now I need to check out what movies are playing to see if there’s something I want to see.

Eternity Knot

I was very surprised when Dani and Lys handed me a gift as well. They handed me a Pandora bag, but I didn’t think much of it because we have a ton of those bags. Then I opened it and it was, in fact, Pandora charms for my bracelet. I got two new beads, the eternity knot charm and the clouds charm. Now I have six charms total, four from PJ and Alex, and two from Lys and Dani.

Clouds

As I was opening my gifts, my hubby proudly announced he got me dirt and poop for Mother’s Day. Yes he did. Dirt, poop, and plants totaling over three hundred dollars, plus an entire day of slave labor and the cost of his back. Then he had the nerve to apologize for not getting me a card. Seriously? As far as I’m concerned, he went over and above, and I don’t need a silly card which will only end up in recycling in a few weeks anyway.

Okay, I have rambled on long enough, and I still have the challenge to do, so I will say TTFN. I hope you have a great day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

Write about either your mom, being a mom, or what it means to be a mom.

Ten minutes is definitely not enough time to write everything about what being a mom means to me, but I shall try.

Always, since as far back as I can remember, I had wanted to be a mom; and since I was an only child, I was determined to have several children. I hated being an only, and I was not going to do that to my kid.

When PJ was born, I would sit there, holding him and staring at him, for hours on end. Although I had always wanted children, until I held him, I really had no clue what that meant. I couldn’t believe I had made another person. Reality also set in that this defenseless being’s life depended on me, but for some reason, I wasn’t scared. I knew, in my heart, this is what I was supposed to be doing, and even though I was bound to make some mistakes along the way – like securing his hands into his diaper during a three am diaper change – we would be okay, and we were.

I love being a mom!
Clockwise starting at noon
PJ, Lys, Dani, and PJ's girlfriend Alex
The hairy blonde is Colby

When I found out I was pregnant with Lys, I held PJ extra tight, because I couldn’t fathom loving another child as much as I loved him. That all changed when I held Lys for the first time. That’s when I understood a mother’s heart swells to hold enough love for all her children. By the time Dani was on her way, I was just excited over having a new addition to the family.

Yeah, ten minutes wasn’t enough. I found myself cutting out tons just so I could squeeze in all three kids, and instead I think I gypped them all. Oh well, this is just meant to be a writing exercise, not a dissertation.

Your Next Challenge is:

There’s a knock at your door, and when you open it, someone famous is standing on your doorstep.

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.