Taking a Day Off Does Wonders...

Sometimes, it's nice to take a day off from everything, even Mondays.

Today, I had a day off. It was a planned day off but it was a much needed vacation day and it put the week off to a lovely start.

I also took a day off from blogging. While I love writing this blog, sometimes I do debate giving it up just because it is a little bit self-indulgent and sometimes, I write crap. Then I remember that the reason I blog is so that I do, at least, get some writing time in each day which is something that, for a writer, is important to do.

My day off was because I knew I was going to have a busy weekend and I didn't want to rush back into reality straight away. I spent the weekend at my parents. It was the annual Citywide Garage Sale day in their town and, as has become our annual tradition, I went out and about with my sister and brother-in-law.

It was a very disappointing year as far as the sales went. All three of us came home with very little to show for our day spent traipsing from sale to sale. I don't know if it's because it's a bad economy and people are desperate to make a little money but much of the stuff was the sort of thing that really should have been put in the rubbish rather than sold. I know the old adage "someone's trash is someone else's treasure" usually is true but, in this case, it was really just...trash. For some reason, there were a rather large amount of people selling baggies full of hotel soaps and shampoo. That was a little...odd. I mean, sure I know they technically paid for them in the price of the hotel room but, really, those things are FREE. Thus, selling them at a yard sale is just a little bizarre and presumptuous.

There were also a lot of houses selling those "As Seen on TV" products that have one specific purpose and one purpose alone such as quesadilla makers, waffle cone makers and quick burger cookers. It's fun to see those because you know they were probably gifts that seemed like a good idea at the time but end up taking up a lot of space and being somewhat useless.

Even in spite of the poor show of worthy buyings, the day was fun and it was nice to spend time with my sister and meet her new puppy- a Brussels-griffon that slightly resembles a pug-faced alien.

The rest of my weekend was spent planning, prepping and cooking the Mother's Day dinner I was making for my parents.

It was a big task but, overall, I had a blast doing it and it turned out pretty well. It was a five course tasting menu as follows:

Amuse Bouche- crostini with Fourme d'Ambert*, shaved pear and toasted walnuts.

Appetizer- Grilled asparagus with prosciutto, parmesan crackers and lemon-garlic aoili.

Soup- Cream of zucchini with gorgonzola

Entree- Salt roasted black grouper with fresh herbs (mum) or pan seared Kobe sirloin (dad) server with roasted fingerling potatoes and pea puree.

Dessert- Chocolate eclairs with fresh cream and an assortment of European cookies.

There were also two wines and dessert aperitif.

It was a fun menu to plan and make. I wanted my parents to have a meal that they'd feel like was a treat. Overall, it was all about the timing and making sure everything was prepped and ready to go.

I think the meal was a success. My dad managed to eat two bowls of the soup and three eclairs in addition to the other courses. Mum seemed to like it and it made me feel like a real cook. The hardest part was making sure that when one course was being served, the next was being "fired" (to use a chef term (thanks, Tom Colicchio and Top Chef)!). That way, by the time the previous course was finished, the next was cooked, still warm and plated.

It was a challenge. Having a soux chef would have been nice but, at the same time, it was fun to get to do it all myself and see a good result.

I will admit I was rather tired when the dishes were washed and we were sitting down watching "Game of Thrones." It was a good tired though, one that made me feel like I accomplished something.

It was also for that reason that I'd already planned to take today off. I didn't want to have to cook and drive home to make it back to work and I wanted to have some time to just hang out with my parents and relax.

That mostly happened. With the exception of Rory having eaten something that disagreed with her that resulted in some rather vigourous vomiting, it was a nice day. I suspect she had a drink from my parents pond. Not pleasant to see or have to clean up. She's ok now.

We're back home after a nice day. The grass is mowed and I'm actually sitting outside writing this since it's actually not raining and is a lovely sunny evening.

In short, it's been a good Monday. I don't say that very often so I'm glad to say it when it does happen. Tomorrow, it'll be back to work and the daily grind but, for now, I have a few more hours to enjoy a day off.

I'd say that there are far worse things in life!

Happy Tuesday and, as always, thanks for reading.

*Fourme d'Ambert is a delicious, creamy French blue cheese that is my new favourite even if it is a wee bit stinky.

Friends and Mothers....

I promise not to wallow today. I can't lie and say that the self-doubt is gone but thanks to good friends and a great mother, I'm feeling a little less like a failure and a little more like a human.

I'm lucky that way. I have people to talk to when I feel down. I've never been much of a socialite. My social circle has always consisted of a few very good friends and some casual friends who I know but don't know well.

I've always been the type of Monkeypants to prefer quality over quantity. When I was a child, I had a best friend and other good friends I knew but although I was always invited to birthday parties, I never felt like I was likely to become a fan of being with the 'in-crowd'.

That carried through to high school. For the first couple of years, my crowd of friends consisted of quiet, shy girls like me who never felt like they completely fit. We had fun- some of my favourite memories of my early high school days are of playing Uno and eating ice-cream sandwiches. As high school passed, my circle of friends changed a little. We all moved in different directions. It's sad but that's high school. It never meant I forgot those friends, it just meant that we were no longer jigsaw puzzle pieces that fit together- we'd morphed into pieces that were from the same puzzle but from different corners.

College was the same. I had a close circle of friends throughout. Sometimes the members changed but I still always had people to talk to, people who would talk to me.

These days, it's not much different- it's just that my friends are scattered. Some, via Facebook, are my earliest friends from my childhood days. Some are high school friends who are always there for me, no matter how long ago we sat in Mrs. Studebaker's English class and laughed at the fact that she said "eggo" instead of "ego."

Some are newer friends, friends I've made in my 'adult' years. I've always been lucky enough to find good friends with whom I have a lot in common and, like me, see the need to appreciate the goofier things in life.

It's these friends I appreciate most because they're the ones who pick me up when I'm down. I can't go without giving a shout-out to Saz in Washington for being there, even when her own life is dark and scary at the moment. And, Ms. P in Texas- I love that you read my blog, I love that I have my puppies because you persuaded me to make getting a dog one of my New Year's resolutions. The other friends out there, reading....I don't need to name you but...thank you.

Since it's Mother's Day on Sunday, I can't go on without mentioning my very best friend- cheesy as it sounds. My mum hates sappiness. She was born in Germany and raised in England so it's not exactly odd that she feels that way. But, at the risk of making her cringe, my very best friend in the world is my mum. No matter how mean I get, how crotchety I am, how much I waffle on and on...and on and on about my puppies...she's always there. When I'm feeling down about writing, she gets indignant on my behalf because she reads library books and lately seems to have been comparing them all to The Reluctant Demon. I love that she always thinks my books are better. I love that I can go home for a weekend and have a moan about my life to her and she always listens. I love that I can take a picture of flowers in my garden and ask her to identify them- she usually does.

Most of all, I'm just glad I have a mother who I can talk to and whine to when I'm down. I can't believe she hasn't hung up on me yet when I get snappy on the phone with her but she never does...unless those mysterious hang-ups when we get 'disconnected' and she has 'no idea what happened' mean she's hanging up on me. Just kidding- she always calls me back.

So, even though I'm still doubting my ability and my skills, I'm not in such a dark place I can't turn around and see that even in spite of the writing, I'm very lucky in my life. I have people who care enough to try to stop me giving in to my self-pity. I also have people who read my blog and make me feel like I'm not just a voice on the wind...someone is reading. For that, I thank you all.

For now, I'll keep the blog going...after all, I always have something to say, no matter how random. It's what makes my blog...my blog

Happy Friday and to all you mothers out there- be it mothers of children, Monkeypants, puppies, pigs, dogs, cats, characters or ideas....Happy Mother's Day.

Rain, Quiche and a Monkeypant's Mother's Day

Today is another gloomy day; I don't think we're going to see the sun at all. However, the storms have passed, with only the lingering chance of a shower remaining.

I'm trying not to notice the effect that the rain is having on my lawn but I'm noticing that when I pull into my garage after work, I'm looking to see how much it's grown. Growing means mowing.

I have noticed I have a new pet bunny though. Every evening, he sits in the same spot of my back lawn and has a nibble. Last night, he actually came onto my patio. When I looked out, I noticed he'd bought a friend who was leaning against the fence where the yappy neighbour dogs normally bark, as if keeping a lookout for them.

I'm hoping the bunnies aren't eating my green tomatoes. Something is and it's not making me happy. Normally, by now, they'd be red tomatoes but our influx of rain is keeping the tomatoes green. The nice thing is that I'll hopefully be able to eat them later in the year than normal. As long as they stop disappearing.

The scariest part of all of this is that I'm noticing how domestic I'm sounding. I'm not used to that. We apartment dwellers fake domesticity; we dabble but it's hard to truly 'nest' because we have to keep a constant awareness of what damage we're 'allowed' to do to our apartments. As a homeowner, it's quite a different story. I've been celebrating by putting all manner of holes in the walls. I've put quite a few pictures up just because I can.

Last night, I decided to cook my first actual 100% homemade dish. I've been cooking dinner but it's been things like frozen pizza and salad, stuff that's easy. I made a quiche.

I didn't know I liked quiche until a couple of weeks ago when I went to Comic-Con. I tried a bit of my friend's when she ordered it for breakfast and it was like an epiphany. I had found something new that had never appealed to me before and now, suddenly, it was delicious.

That's pretty much how the food in my life has been. As a child, I was a horribly picky eater. I feel bad for that now because I had one of the good mothers who wouldn't say "Eat what I cook or go hungry." Instead, she'd substitute things for me, things she knew I'd eat. I never liked mashed potatoes and am still not a huge fan but at least now I will eat them. As a child, my mum would make me a baked potato in the microwave instead, just so I didn't miss out.

The one thing I always feel horribly about, even now, is my mum's mincemeat dinner. As a Brit, mincemeat is a pretty common meal. Basically, we take ground beef, spice it and add stuff, brown it in a pan, add some gravy and serve it with mashed potatoes. It's the same sort of thing that goes in Shepard's Pie but a little runnier with the gravy. We used to have it with noodles which I think is a little bit of the German side of my family coming in.

Anyway, mum would make mince, as we called it, and I never ate it. I ate around it. I'd eat the noodles and the peas that went with it. I'd eat the gravy but I never liked the mince. Yet, on weekends, we'd get to go to my granny's and she, too, would make mince. Except....for her, I'd clean my plate. I ate every bit of my mincemeat and often would have seconds. Nowadays, I feel a wee bit guilty about that because it wasn't so different to my mother's and yet because granny cooked it, I'd eat it. For what it's worth, mum....I'm sorry.

The ironic thing is I make my own mincemeat dish now now. I'm still not as keen on the meat. I'd rather have gravy with a little meat than have meat with a little gravy. Yet it's one of those dishes that my mother, my sister and I have all seperately fed to friends and family and each time, they clean their plates because they enjoy it. I suppose that's as close to 'passing on the family recipe' as we've ever come. It's a nice feeling though.

Mincemeat isn't the only dish I've learned to accept as I get older. Nowadays, I'll try many, many things which I previously scorned as "vile" and "revolting". Quiche is apparently one of them. My first attempt involved spinach, Canadian bacon and fresh sage. I have to say, it was actually pretty good considering I'd never made one before. I even made the pastry. Apparently, that's quite unusual because when I told my coworkers, they were all "Wow, really? You're ambitious." The thing is, the pastry was the easiest part. I didn't even have to use a recipe: I just called my mother who is now, in my opinion, the Pastry Queen because, let me tell you, her instructions were perfect. My pastry was light, tasty and didn't overpower the quiche because I rolled it out thinly.

This blog is turning out to be a bit of a tribute to my mother. That was unplanned. However, why not? Just because Hallmark has scheduled Mother's Day for May, doesn't mean I can't make my own Mother's Day. So, hey, mum, if you're reading this, thanks for everything. Thanks for not hanging up on me when I use you as my verbal punching bag when I'm stressed, thanks for all the asparagus you gave me this year. Thanks for always lifting Sausage onto the sofa even though we know he's capable of getting up there on his own. And, most of all, thanks for teaching me to cook, dad might be fancy but your food is always the stuff I crave.

So, I'm making today Monkeypants' Mother's Day. To my mummy-Monkeypants, you're the best. I'd give you a piece of my quiche but, unfortunately, by the time you get it on Friday, it might be nasty. But it's the thought that counts, right?

To my other readers, sorry I'm a little random again today. Sometimes I just have to go where the blog takes me. Thanks, as always for reading. I appreciate you all.

Happy Wednesday.

Mothers, Fridays and Disturbances in my Peace...

It's another wet and soggy morning. Yesterday, at least the sun came out. Today I think it's going to remain gloomy. The fact that it's Friday more than makes up for that fact though. I'm a big fan of Fridays.

I can't say it's been a bad week. It's been a there week. Weeks like this are definitely not a bad thing but they also don't have anything to really distinguish them, to make them special. I did get two more rejections but given I'd forgotten I'd ever submitted to the rejectors, that didn't seem as bad as it could have. Buying a house is good for distracting you from everything else.

I finally have boxes in my apartment. I can start packing. Anytime now. I'll get right on that. I hate packing. The problem is that I need a lot of the things I'm going to pack since, you know, I'm still going to be living in my apartment. It's hard to know what to box up aside from books. I mean, I use my kitchen so I need most of the stuff in there. The really useless stuff that I don't use regularly is still in boxes from the last time I moved so that part is easy.

I think I'll look at the boxes for a while longer. Then I'll figure out what to put in them. As long as I'm packed by moving day, I think it's ok to procrastinate just a little longer.

It's Mother's Day this weekend. I suppose now would be time to pay tribute to my mother. All I can say is that...mother's don't get better than her. She'll think I'm being sappy if I get sentimental on here since she can't stand the sappy stuff. So I won't. But I do want her to know that even when I'm a foul-tempered beast (and even when SHE'S a foul-tempered beast), I couldn't ask for more in a mum. Thank you, mummy-lady for always being there for me, even when I'm positively horrible, over-emotional and stressed-out. You're the best. Ever. Also, your chips are much better than dad's. Just thought you should know that.

Moving along (though I could talk about my mother for hours because she really is the best), this week, as a whole, has gone by quite quickly, a fact for which I cannot complain. I was hoping it would be quiet and not require much productivity. For the most part it didn't yet it still didn't seem like I had much time to just...relax. When I did try to relax, it was after hours, lying in bed trying to read or to watch TV. Let's just say that even with headphones on....there are things I can hear through my ceiling and, again, I wondered if a hard hat was going to be necessary. There were, um, other noises coming from above me last night, noises that I really, really did not want to hear, noises that told me far more about my upstairs neighbour than I ever, ever wanted to know. Sadly, I'm pretty certain that last night, everyone in our apartment building could hear those noises. I kept telling myself: "I'm moving soon, I'm moving soon..."

I am moving to a one level house with no walls attached to anyone else's dwelling. At this point, I can't help but think "THANK GOODNESS!!!!!"

Again, I'm not a prude, for the most part. People have fun with sex and I'm very happy for them but, well, some of us aren't having fun like that that. Some of us are pathetic enough to be in our beds alone, watching downloaded episodes of Iron Chef America and wondering exactly what on earth would possess someone to try to make ice-cream out of trout. However, there is a level of discretion that I do prefer, especially when you know the person having such a, uh, spanking good time.

Enough said about that.

So...it's been...a week. My blogs haven't been quite as exciting as they can be; I know my house-buying has to be getting a little old so I promise that I won't talk about it too much again. It's getting to be the new snow of my blog and if you've read any of my winter blogs, you know I love my snow. I forget sometimes that just because I love something doesn't mean that people love hearing about it all the time.

Anyway, sorry for the random blog but, it's Friday and I've noticed that on Friday's I have a bit of a habit of being random and uncollected. I'll be better by Monday. I'm hoping the weekend will refresh my brain and my stress level. If not...well, I'm sure you'll hear about it next week.

Happy Friday!