Dear Scooter Girl,

You'll be glad to know you are no longer my #1 worst enemy on the planet. A far superior candidate has taken your place.

Last night we let my awesome neighbor take Roscoe down to the grass to play with her dog. She has a beautiful Golden Retriever who is Roscoe's best bud and we often take turns watching them while they frolic in doggie joy.

However, last night was a unique night thanks to the worst people on earth. While our little munchkin was running around, being his happy go lucky, playful self these two jokers with two Jack Russel terriers came out into the grass.

Now, normally I love a Jack Russel. My aunt has a great one who is awesome. But, news flash, a Jack Russel is the type of dog that needs a TON of exercise to stay balanced. These people lock 2 of the little guys up in a 2' x 4' balcony. Of course they are going to be a little out of whack. Every time I've seen these two little dogs they yip, lunge and bite at people.



Roscoe didn't know any better, so he ran up to these two dogs and one of them CLAMPED DOWN AND BIT OUR LITTLE GUY HARD on his droopy adorable jowl. He made him BLEED.

I admit, some of this is our fault. We let him run around without a leash. We weren't there supervising the meeting. We are partially to blame...but how can I feel anything but hateful wrath toward someone who let their pet to this to mine:




After going to the vet, doping him up so they can shave the puncture would site, getting the bite flushed with saline and sending him home to us with $90 worth of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories all we could do was lay around and make sure our little guy was alright.





So, scooter girl, consider yourself officially removed from my S*** list.





Love, Katie

You were oh, SO, wrong!

Friday as I was driving home from work I was feeling kind of lame. We hadn't been invited to a Halloween party, we'd been too lazy to throw our own, I hadn't got around to decorating the house and we had no plans to celebrate the holiday at all. I was bummed out.

When I threw open the door to my apartment I was greeted by this:

The ear doctor had totally decorated our whole house! I was so thrilled, but it was only a small portion of the joy I was about to experience when I saw this run up to great me:

I never thought I'd be the type of person to put a costume on an animal, but guess what...I totally am. Better still, the ear doctor whipped out an awesome costume for me too!

I think this may be our Christmas card photo this year:

(Guess what is hard? trying to get a dog to take a timer photo....)

Then, the unthinkable happened. Brace yourself. Against your passionate advise we went TRICK-OR-TREATING! And guess what...people LOVED it! No one gave us dirty looks and everyone's face lit up with joy as soon as they saw Roscoe's little adorable mug.

So there you have it: Ear Doctor 1, Blog friends 0.

Spookiest time of the year

Halloween is truly terrifying for me. Not in that, "oh, isn't that kind of kitchy and spooky," way but that honest, "my life is one constant M Night Shyamalan movie" creepy. It is this way for a solid month and there is nothing I can do about it.

Why?

Because I have a special object that haunts me. It pops up all over my house, and has been doing so for the past 3 years.

This year I decided to take some pictures to prove it's creepy, other-worldly ability to haunt me. Everywhere I turn, there it is. In my favorite shoes:

In my purse:

In my medicine cabinet:

It even haunts me from atop sacred writings from God:

The ear doctor denies any hand in this maniacal plot to slowly drive me insane. He vehemently denies moving this little creepy object from place to place to surprise me. He has assured me that his is not the hand that strikes fear into the very depths of my soul. So the only conclusion is that I am being haunted from another world by a small, round, plastic pumpkin with a rubber tongue that extends when you squeeze him.

See, TERRIFYING, huh?

Vote

Are you a pumpkin carving purist like me?





Or would you rather make a funny political statement like the ear doctor?

Vote now, it's your civic duty, right?

Do it, or else!

FYI

You are all probably so much more educated than I am. You probably read informative stuff online or *gasp* in the newspaper. NPR is probably the only radio channel you listen to. Some of you probably even read academic journals just to learn stuff. Not me. If it isn't on the Colbert Report I probably haven't heard of it.

Not that the ear doctor and I are thinking of starting a family or anything, but here is some interesting information I found out this morning. Before becoming pregnant I should:

1) Get a tetanus/whooping cough booster. Turns out that since I live in hippie-ville, USA a lot of kids don't get vaccinated for whooping cough so it is all over this town. Not bad for an adult to get, but really dangerous if a fetus gets it.

2) Start on prenatal vitamins before pregnancy. Really? Why did no one ever tell me this? I would never have thought to do this until after I saw those two little lines.

3) Get tested for this cystic fibrosis. Turns out 1 in 25 white Caucasian women carry this and if the ear doctor is a carrier then our kid could have a 25% chance of getting it. Not that it would stop us from having a family, but it'd be good for the doctors to know about it ahead of time.

4) Go off the pill 2-3 months in advance and let my body re-stabilize drug free. This makes sense to me but I never would have thought of it on my own.


That's a lot of stuff to learn all at once. How is it that, as a woman who wants, for sure, to have children some day, I never knew this?!?!?!?! Probably because I don't listen to NPR. I guess I'm missing out, right?

Then again, I did get to hear baby got back on the radio on my way back from lunch today....

The beauty of BYO_____

I started playing violin when I was 5 years old. I can't tell you how grateful I am to my parents for giving me the chance to learn music at such an early age.

I took lessons at University of Puget Sound where they had a very well organized group of teachers. They had 2 formal concerts every year and tons of kids participated from throughout the Seattle area. I'd only been "playing" my violin for about a month before the recital was scheduled. Instead of coming out onto stage and scratching through Twinkle Twinkle, my teacher thought it would be best to just bow.

So, I dressed up in my most fancy outfit and waited by the side stage door. When it was my turn, 5 year old Katie proudly walked out onto the center of the stage made a formal, Suzuki-style bow, turned around and left the stage in glory.

For the next few years I marked my progress on the violin through those concerts. And, as rewarding as it was to play a piece I'd worked on for 6 months perfectly, the really memorable part of the recitals were the treats.

After the music was over the kids all ran through the halls of the UPS music building to the designated refreshment room. Each family had brought a plate of cookies for celebration and post-concert mingling. Well, to me, this was a cookie/brownie/rice-krispie treat FREE FOR ALL!

I'd load my little plate up with as many chocolate covered, sprinkle coated cupcakes as I could balance and with the wild-eyed frenzy of a escaped inmate cram them down my throat. The need for haste arose because in about 3 minutes my mom would enter the room and demand that I only have 1 cookie from the table. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her get me in trouble.


Those happy positive memories have instilled deep in my soul the love of a potluck dinner. I just love walking around seeing all the awesome/strange/creepy dishes that people bring to a potluck. I love heaping my plate with random bites of food and being pleasantly surprised by someone's offering.

Today is my work Halloween potluck and I'm just about to run out the door to sample the fare. Here's hoping I don't come back with a raging stomachache! I've never really been able to exercise self control at this type of thing.

Have you tried it?

Lately I've really been loving SNL. I think the team of Andy Sandberg and Kristin Wiig is so freakin great that I look forward to it all week. And the Palin rap performed by Ms. Pohler....dreamy. The current team is really making the effort to bring back the glory days of the show.

One of my favorite classic SNL skits was performed by the illustrious Phil Hartman. It's title? SUPER COLON BLOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, it is so awesome. Sometimes I'll be walking down the cereal aisle and just start cracking up thinking of it. However, today it is especially on my mind because I, Katie, author of this blog, am considering doing an at home, herbal colon cleanse/body detoxification.

There, I said it.

It might not be the most lady-like thing to write about, but it's true. Keep in mind that my lovely Aunt died of Colon cancer in 2004, and you'll know why I have a soft spot in my heart for GI cleanliness.

My question to the blog world out there is this: Have you tried it? Would you do it? Any horror/triumph stories? Is this a total medical scam (Daniel)?

(you can comment anonymously if that makes you more comfortable spilling the juicy details)

hard at work

My grandpa spent his career building America. He worked at a Steel plant...perhaps the most masculine line of work there is. Every day they took a coffee break at 10 am. There must have always been a cookie or doughnuts with the coffee break because even now, long retired he stops whatever he's doing and has a cup of coffee and a cookie.

At 10 am sharp.

And I guess some of that has rubbed off on me, because look what I found myself eating today at 10 am on the dot:

(Not coffee, but you get the idea)

Get ready

Ever since I heard about the Nielson's I've held them in the back of my mind. As corny as it is I really care about these two people and their rad kids. Sometimes I'll be talking to the ear doctor and say something like, "My Internet friends who were in the plane crash are doing better today." Lately he's even started asking me about them.

We both genuinely care.


Which is why this article beautifully written by Jaimee Rose brought tears to my eyes.

Don't start reading until you have a kleenex. Trust me.

Morning revelations

This morning the alarm clock went off twice and I ignored it.

Instead of pretending not to hear it and sleeping in (my immature idea), the ear doctor groaned and rolled out of bed. Perhaps he was extra tired this morning due to my 3 am strange hyper incident where I decided to assault him and laugh like a hyena in his ear? Hard to say. He pushed the mountain of puffy down comforter off and stumbled to the bathroom. Did I mention that he hates the down comforter? Hates it. His feet get too hot.

I lay in bed wondering if there was any way I could rationalize sleeping in. After 10 minutes of little doggie whimpers coming from his crate 2 feet from the foot of my bed, I decided it wouldn't be fair to let Roscoe's little canine bladder explode because I was tired.

I crawled out of bed and got in the shower. A little tap, tap on the bathroom door preceded the ear doctor's head poking in to ask me if I wanted to go on a walk with him and Roscoe. Pushing the suds out of my eyes, I croaked back, "yes, I'll be down in 5 minutes."


It was cold this morning at 6:45 am. Cold and dark. Even Roscoe didn't really want to be out there. As he walked through the frost covered grass he gingerly picked up each foot not wanting too much pad contact with the crunchy green stuff.

As we walked the sun rose and the frost melted. I looked over at the ear doctor and his perfectly round cheeks were rosy from the cold and I blurted out the first thought that ran through my head, "Babe! You are so good looking! You look like Christmas!"

He rolled his eyes at the supreme dorkiness of my comment. But as he turned, I caught one of his true, genuine smiles creeping across his face. He smiled because he knows that's pretty much the best compliment I can give.

I never in my life thought that I would find someone who understands that about me. So, today, I realize I am a lucky, lucky girl.

Keeping my brain healthy

Friday afternoon is my favorite time of the week. I usually come home from work a little earlier than every other day of the week. The whole weekend stretches in front of me and I walk around with a spring in my step. Usually the sun is just streaming at full Rocky Mountain force through my kitchen window. I sit down with my cookbooks and brainstorm.

I slowly flip through the pages, consider my latest issue of bon appetit and cook's illustrated and design our weekly menu. I really relish the moments spent contemplating the perfect arrangement of dishes. I image what each will taste like. I look forward to the chance I'll have to cook them. It's such a personal indulgence.

I try to have one Asian inspired meal, one Mexican, and one pasta. I try to use all 4 of the standard proteins (beef, chicken, pork and fish). One night is the ear doctor's chance to work on his progression toward the title of "grillmaster." I like to have one crockpot/casserole since that makes great leftovers for lunches. And I always throw a dessert/baking experiment into the mix. It's like a big ole crossword puzzle trying to cover all the bases.

Does anyone else get this level of enjoyment out of meal planning? or am I an even bigger nerd that I thought?

Un believable

My congregation at church has about 10 little girls aged 8-12. For the last year the other congregation that shares our building has had only 2 little girls, so I willingly invited them to be a part of our Activity Days.

Well, about a month ago a new family started going to the other congregation. This family had an adorable little 10 year old girl. She and her mom came to one of my activities in September. We made rag dolls that night and everyone had a BLAST...I thought. When the new mom introduced herself she seemed a little blunt and pushy.

I shrugged it off figuring that she probably has a big family and had a crazy day, and, well, I give most people the benefit of the doubt.

Fast forward to this week. I diligently bake up a storm in anticipation of 12 little girls, like usual. I haul the 50 million things with me down the 2 flights of stairs from my apartment and load up my car. I drag all this stuff for 12 girls from my car to the building in bone-chilling weather. I set up the mountain of cupcakes in eager anticipation for my 12 little cuties to come filing through the door.

Right at 7, 3 of my girls are sitting with me. I figure everyone else is late because, well, people are always late. We start my lesson.

About 10 minutes into my lesson I notice the 3 girls from the other ward are hovering near my door. I turn my head and see the new pushymom. She looks me up and down with an air of entitlement and says, "Things were a bit too chaotic at your activity day, so I'm going to do my own thing with my girls." She turns and leaves.

No apology for springing this on me at the last minute. No acknowledgement that now 1/4 of the work I've done in preparation for the activity that night is now wasted. No thanking me for taking care of it for them for the last year. No discussion about the girl's progress and what we've been doing for the last year. Nothing.

I was dumbfounded and just sat there reeling from the rude slap across the face I'd just received. This lady, in one mean spirited quick comment made me feel like the work I'd been doing for the last year wasn't up to snuff. That I wasn't to be trusted with the development of these little minds. That all I brought to the table was chaos. I sat there feeling like a little lump of poo.

The only great thing was that at the end of the night the other three girls were wandering around the building and they peeked into our room. We were just finishing up decorating the awesome cupcakes and they all exclaimed, "You guys got to do CUPCAKES?!?!? Awesome! No fair!"

That felt a little better.

Take me to your leader

I do nothing half way.

Tonight is activity night. Yup, I'm still in charge of entertaining and teaching 12 little girls aged 8-12 who attend my church twice a month. Tonight we are learning about the importance of dressing modestly. I thought this discussion would be pretty timely since the sluttification of Halloween seems to be spilling off the college campus and into high school/junior high.

I'm going to spilt them into 3 groups, arm them with toilet paper tape and ribbon and tell them to dress one of their team members in a modest TP gown. I'm really hoping for a "modest" version of this beauty:

Perhaps my expectations are too high?

After the TP designing challenge we are going to frost cupcakes. Thanks to inspiration via Martha, we will be making these awesome creations:

Accordingly, night before last I got to work. I have 12 girls who will each get to make 1 mummy, 1 alien monster and 1 spider, so I'll need 36 cakes total. I went to Walmart, read on the back of the cake mix box that each box will make 24 and I grab 3 boxes...anyone catch the problem here?

After a few hours of baking the ear doctor came into the kitchen and saw this:

FYI, that's a few more than 36 cupcakes...oops. He looked and me, rolled his eyes and said one word...."really?"

I just shrugged and nodded yes. In exasperation, he threw up his hands. Resistance against the Katie-baking-monster-machine is futile.

Turns out that I have a slight tendency to overdo every baking activity I sign up for.

Certifiable NAH

I love it when people come up with interesting theories about life. This may be one of the things I like best about the ear doctor...he's always coming up with awesome, interesting, funny theories about general human characteristics. Just ask him about this theory on potato chips. Or, better yet, ask about girl flavors.



Today I read a really awesome theory written by Alison at she blogs she blogs. Boiled down, her theory is that each person is either a CAH (cool at heart) or a NAH (nerd at heart). I'm pretty sure that if you've read more that one of my posts here you'll be able to correctly identify me as someone who is totally nerdy down to the very depths of her soul.



I mean, only a NAH would do this to herself:

And then post it on her blog.

(I got a tiny little drop of Serrano pepper juice up inside my nose and the excruciating pain could only be numbed by coating paper towel in plain yogurt and jamming it up my nose. I wasn't patient enough to sit there and hold it in place with my hand so I used a festive ribbon to tie it in place so I could continue cooking....I'm hardcore )

Say it aint so

The current economic crisis has finally hit home. The ear doctor and I are young, years away from considering retirement and don't really look at our 401k ever. We don't own a home and we don't play the stocks. To us, this financial crisis has seemed a little like a bad fairy tale. We know that it's happening, but it hasn't been really personal.

Until now.


A week ago we found out that Mother's cookies was shutting their doors for good. You heard me correctly, those wonderful white and pink circus animals will soon be no more. My beloved Taffy cookies are going to way of the dodo. And, apparently, all because of corporate greed and the non-existent credit market.


The ear doctor and I are sick with grief.


Last night he became very pensive. He turned to me with the sadness of a devastated 10 year old in his eyes and said, "Katie, you don't understand. Every time I went over to my grandparents house they would get me a package of Mother's wafer cookies. My grandpa (who has since passed away) would eat them with me and we'd watch a USC football game."


These are hard times for us.

What not to do

Sometimes I delude myself into thinking I'm a great hostess. In my own addled, confused mind I see myself as that person who has appetizers out for guests to munch on, fresh flowers and a new magazine for overnight guests to read and an assortment of really interesting topics that everyone can talk about.


In reality, I am just not that person.


What? You don't believe me? Well, let me tell you about last night to illustrate my point.


My awesome guests were scheduled to arrive at 5:30 pm. In years past, this would have meant that I finished all of the required cooking right on the dot of 5:30. My mom always said that dinner guests are supposed to arrive early, but I've found that this may not be the case anymore. The ear doctor has FORCED me to always have the food done at least 15 minutes after the agreed upon arrival time.

As a result, I'm still cooking when they arrive.

Do I have any well thought out munchies for them to snack on? Um...nope. Luckily they are all chatting and seemingly having a great time. The two couples I invited that didn't know each other at all seem to really enjoy each other's company. Score.

Just as I am finishing up the honey-ginger glaze on the carrots I notice that my STOVE HAS CAUGHT ON FIRE! Huge flames, 3 feet tall are leaping from the top of my cook surface and are gently licking the rental microwave. I could practically feel my entire security deposit melting with the twisting white plastic.


My mind flashes to the day before when the ear doctor and I lifted the top of the stove up and noticed a lake of leftover frying oil from my attempt at shoestring french fries last week. Why, oh why, hadn't I wiped that up?!?!? It would have been so easy.


The ear doctor wasn't home yet, so I assigned the two other husbands in the room to man the fire and figure out how to put it out.

Side note: Aren't you supposed to put flour on a grease fire? but isn't flour super flammable if it's falling? Isn't that how silos explode? I'm going to BLOW THE ROOF OFF MY APARTMENT BUILDING?!?!?

As my house rapidly filled with dark black smoke the alarms started to go off. Which, in turn, made ROSCOE bay like teen wolf under a full moon. I suddenly realized that my dear 8 month pregnant friend should not be sitting on my couch breathing in noxious fumes. So, despite the obvious effort and excruciating pain involved, I made her go out and sit on my balcony.

Joining us on the balcony was my other friend carrying her 8 month old baby. UGH! The guilt of ruining an infant's lungs and breathing ability made me sick to my stomach. This poor kid is going to get lung cancer in 20 years because I was TOO LAZY TO CLEAN MY STOVE! They politely talked about my dying attempt at a vegetable garden (that I should have cleaned out and thrown in the compost about 3 weeks ago).


After 5 very intense minutes, the fire is extinguished. Little cords are hanging out of the demolished smoke detectors like the entrails of a disemboweled rebel force. Every window in the house is opened and fans are set to expel the fumes.

In an attempt to salvage the night I set up the food and force everyone to act like nothing had happened.


The one true casualty of the night was my beautiful pumpkin praline pie. I worked so hard on that sucker. Turns out the moment I set the broiler on to finish the last minute of cooking the oil ignited. The pie top was burned and not nearly the glorious dessert I thought it would be. I just covered each slice with HUGE scoop of cool whip. In the end, it was OK.

Turns out you can hide a lot of sins with cool whip.

Beat to the punch

Yesterday I glanced out my kitchen window and saw something amazing. The infamous scooter was pulled over to the side (nothing out of the ordinary there) and a car was parked in the same spot. As I looked closer I noticed that this car was not the same old hoopty that usually alternates with my Nemesis's scooter.

It was a new car, a different car, one with a creepy little birdy hanging from the rear view mirror. I noticed that there was a white piece of paper tucked under the car's wiper. Unfortunately I was running late and didn't have time to go down and be the world's nosiest neighbor by reading the note.

However, I came home for lunch to walk Roscoe and, low and behold, this is what I saw:

The foreign, birdy-wielding car was still there! Joy of joys! Now I would have a chance to spy on them and read their note! I cannot begin to describe the feeling of pure joy that entered my soul as I read the words written on that innocent looking white piece of paper.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Turns out that while the ear doctor and I were concocting a perfect, poetic revenge on scooter-girl, someone else took action. I seems that they picked up, moved her scooter and parked in her "reserved" spot!!!!

Oh the sweet taste of victory!

I couldn't help myself. I whipped out my pen and under scooter-girl's 3 emphatic lines wrote, "Thank you for moving that scooter. No one has the right to reserve open spots!!!"

Take that!

Whatta ya think?

I have a friend who had a baby earlier this week. I've offered to bring her family dinner tomorrow night, but I'm at a bit of a loss for what to make her. She's got 2 other little ones (3 and 18 months) and I want to make something that they'd love as well.


But I'm pretty sure that showing up with happy meals is out of the question.


So, here's my question for all you ladies who've already started your family: What was the most delicious/welcome/awesome meal that someone brought you while you were taking care of your infant?

Thanks

He could totally be a lumberjack

I once had a friend. This friend was named Schmarah*.

When Schmarah got married she would dutifully and lovingly pack her husband a lunch. After a few weeks the truth came out that her husband was kind of starving all day, even after he ate his lunch. Turned out that Schmarah was packing the same size lunch that she would enjoy, a sandwich, a baggie of carrots and some rosemary crackers topped with Gruyere. In her mind this is what a lunch consisted of.

She was quite surprised to realize that her new husband considered this a mid-morning snack and was a ravenous beast by 1 pm.

The truth is that men and women just eat different portions...and I'm currently still learning that lesson. For example, just take a look at the meal that the ear doctor planned and prepared Tuesday night:

Compared to what I made last night:

I have to admit that the ear doctor usually really is the better vegetable eater in our house, but still, the plates don't lie. I've married a red-blooded meat eating lumberjack of a man.

And I'm sort of proud of it.

*Real name changed to protect the innocent...plus I wasn't exactly sure of all of the details of the story so I had to...well....embellish the story. But trust me, the gist is right.

I love this

I've always loved a great calendar, but never really felt the burning need to get a specific one.

Today, my life has changed. I think I need this.