Cabin Fever

I've been burning the candle at both ends lately and I wish Friday could hurry up and get here. I've been everything from the maid to the chauffeur to the cook all week. I'm glad to be a mom and wife, I'm not complaining about that. I'm just worn out and could really use a whole day off to do absolutely nothing. I want nothing more than to wake up, drink coffee, eat pancakes in my pajamas and stay in them all day.

I can't wait! Just one more day....

In other news I was so happy to hear from my little brother. He's working some pretty long hours over there and mentioned going in a Chinook when he does leave again. It's his first chopper ride so he's pretty stoked. He's requesting chocolate chip cookies but I can't send them to him yet. *sighs* I have to wait til he gets where he's going I guess. It was also good to hear that he called my dad.

At some point tomorrow I have to get to the post office and mail something off to my cousin. She's been asking me for some of the family recipes and I've been to busy to go all week. Once I got to printing it all up it's more than an envelopes worth of stuff. One of the recipes I'm sending is for wojapi (woah- zaw-pee) its a pudding thats really good with frybread. If anyones interested in making it here's the recipe

WOJAPI (Wo zha pee)
5 lb. bag of frozen berrys (blueberry, raspberry, cherry or a mix)
8 cups of water
2 cups of sugar
cornstarch
To a 5 quart pot (enamel or stainless steel) add all the berries and smash them with a potato masher. (If you are fortunate enough to have a food processor this would work fine also. However, stop just short of puree, you want fine pieces throughout.)

To the smashed berries add the water and sugar. Boil (lightly) this mixture (Approximately 15 to 20 minutes) until everything is cooked. Thicken to desired thickness with cornstarch that has been dissolved in cold water.

Serve warm and eat with Indian Fry Bread. Dip the bread into the Wojapi and eat in this manner.

Traditional Wojapi:

Fruits--Wild Choke Cherry, plum, sand cherry, currant, buffalo berry, or grape. All wild, all found on the Great Plains.

Recipe: Ingredients -- Fruit, Wild Corn Flour, Honey

Mash fruit, boil pulp for about one hour at low heat, strain through a cheese cloth type cloth, (This first cut is used for fine jelly)

Boil again for an hour, remove seeds and half the pulp, add a white sauce of water and flour to boiling fruit and water. Thicken and add honey to taste. (This second cut is wojapi)

Crush seeds and remaining pulp, boil for hour. Strain juice and add thickener, salt and a small amount of wild honey. (this final cut is meat dressing or B-bQ sauce)

And there you have it. Anyway, I'm sending her both of these, her mom didn't pass any of these on to her. She's had wojapi but never made it.

Well ,its late! Wow, where did the time go. I'm out of here! Take care out there people, and if you make this, let me know how it turned out!

Project "Buttercup"

This is the doll that I made for Babe for Christmas. Considering I sketched out my own pattern I think it turned out pretty good! I'd originally planned on making it from various fabrics in coordinating colors but that proved to be harder than it looked and considering the time it would've took. I decided to go with a solid color and make clothes in coordinating fabric instead. You can't tell from the pic but I managed to find a pom pom for the tail from Hobby Lobby's doll making section. I'd found some bubble gum pink floss for the mouth and some old buttons for the eyes. And I couldn't resist using some blush on its cheeks. Looking at it now, it looks like its foot has a chunk missing, I guess I could've went heavier on the stuffing. LOL Oh well, this was so much fun to do!

Anyway, my day will be making clothing patterns for this doll and trying to make dresses for it with Velcro enclosures instead of buttons. Now that I have a minute to breathe since the holidays are over and I don't have anything else going on for a few more days.

I spent the whole day yesterday watching the inauguration and its events afterward. What an exciting time! Looking at that sea of people from my TV was unreal, I wish I could've been there. I have hope that things in this country will get better.

Since talking to my cousin out in NY were starting to think about going out to visit her and the kids. My husband and I haven't been out that way before and it would be nice to see her and see that part of the country. I hate to sound like a tourist but I just want to see the sights, and get an I heart NY t shirt!

Well from the looks outside I should get moving, I might have to leave early to get some errands done.

Time

I love this clock. I'd received a gift card to Hobby Lobby for Christmas and I couldn't wait to use it. I'd originally thought that I would load up on some specialty card stock or some scrapbooking tools but they didn't have any good sales. When I picked up the store flier I'd noticed that clocks were half off and the first thing I thought about was this wall. This clock actually replaced the tiny one that was hard to see from across the room. Not a bad deal, sometimes gift cards are nicer to get!

I'd been here for days now freezing my ass off. And just when I had hope that I would be able to get outside to move snow around. I've been thinking alot about the tons of snow we got and I wanted to get some of it moved towards the back yard. I just wanted to make more rooms for the next couple of months of winter. Oh well, I hear next week's going to be above freezing.

Anyway, its been an interesting week so far. On Monday I got tons of calls from my aunt who was under the influence. I'm just getting to know this lady and she didn't make a very good impression on me. I know the lady has her demons, however I couldn't allow this to happen without saying something. I hope she heard me. I like my peace and quiet, and when people disrupt that then I get annoyed and I voice my opinions without caring. I do want to get to know family but not like this. In time I'm hoping she stops doing this to people. I know I'm never talking to her again. My sleeping patterns have been messed up so, yes, I'm still annoyed with her.

My little brother has gotten to his destination and is trying to get settled in. He sounds like he's in good spirits though. I passed his message on to my father who was relieved that he's contacted someone.

I keep losing my train of thought. I'm just so damned tired!

I know that JS is back and I want to wander over again to see whats going on. I checked it out after it had been up a few hours. I'm not sure if I'm going back or not. I just got the hang of this and I don't know if I'll have the time to post in both. I guess if I did go back I would just want to copy and paste. How many of you went back over there? What do you think of it so far? If you go back do you think you'll keep both journals?

Comfort

My phone has been ringing non stop for days now. Jesse no longer has cell service because paying his monthly bill isn't worth only having his phone for the next couple days. So we've been communicating through myspace and I've been passing on messages to other people. (My dad doesn't do the internet.) I don't know why he just doesn't want to try to call anyone himself. My guess is that he's trying to distance himself now that his deployment is almost here. For now I'll just keep chatting with him when I get the chance. I know he's anxious and just talking to him about day to day things will be somewhat of a distraction. Being this is the second time around for him he knows what to expect, we're just along for the ride to support him.

My youngest brother Johnathan called this evening. He's doing pretty good in school and has an after school job now. It's so strange talking to him at times because I find myself sounding more like a mother hen to him than a sister. I try not to! He knows I mean well, I just want him to keep on working hard and stay focused on some long term goals. He's more like a son than a brother to me because he is a year older than my oldest child. My daughter thinks its hilarious that her uncle is that close in age. I tease my dad about this too, in my opinion my dad should stop hooking up and having kids. But hey, I guess that's his business though. ;) He's never really been one of those dad's who sat and watched reruns of Jeopardy.

When I wasn't on the phone or myspace I was getting Babe's IEP paperwork ready for tomorrow morning. It's hard to find the words sometimes when it comes to things like this. I always get worried because I want to make sure that her needs are met at school and I don't want to forget anything. I do wish these forms had more room for me to write though. My main goals for her are to learn how to transition, stay on task until completion, learn how to voice concerns/needs without using pecs cards, work on doing tasks that require more than three steps. I've got more to add on there too but my mind is wandering. I'm exhausted! And I still have more paperwork to do. I love that girl and want whats best for her. I hope that the meeting goes smoothly since we won't have much time to do this before school is in session.

Anyway, its pretty late and I should get back to it so I can catch a few hours of sleep. After the meeting is over I just want to come home and bake some cookies. I've been craving chewy oatmeal raisin cookies. LOL When I'm stressed I love my comfort foods! What are your favorite comfort foods?

29 degree heatwave

After spending the past week or so in either a blizzard or ice storm its nice to see it warm up for a bit. My whole street and driveway have been a skating rink so I've started learning how to perfect this way of propelling my van off of my slippery street. I do this wide sharp turn and start giving just enough gas to slide into my driveway and up the hill. It's sort of like watching a high speed chase in slow motion.

I can't complain today though because its beautiful out there. The rock salt is working and it was nice enough for me to do some scraping. I cannot wait for spring! I miss my petunias blooming, light jackets, cute shoes, and sitting around outside. Just three more months!

In other news my printer is acting shitty, and right as I'm trying to get my Christmas thank you's printed up and mailed out. Now.. its already lame that I haven't gotten them out yet. (I know) But its even worse that my printer is messed up which is going to delay them even more. It already sounds like an excuse huh? I should redo them all and make them read:

"I'm a procrastinator with a broken printer so here's my belated holiday message to you - thank you... I would say more but its already taken an hour for this to print."

Hmmm. Thinking about it, these would make lovely postcards.

Hiatus

So during my NyQuil induced stupor journal space finally bit the dust. Damn..... that sucks. I thought that it was time to stop lurking around here and create another journal already.

The holidays went by pretty fast. We spent some time together as a family and got to spend time by ourselves doing what we love. I for one, love to sew/ scrapbook so I worked on a family scrapbook thats been on going since June. My husband got to jam with some friends for a few days which made nice ear candy to enjoy while scrapbooking. There's nothing like picking your own cut n paste soundtrack and hearing some Hendrix really made my day.
We didn't do much outdoors due to the fact that its been cold and icy for days now. I can't remember us having a winter that was this rough. Typically we have snow, but not this much this soon. If it the snowfall, freezing temps and ice are going to keep up then I'm hoping that spring comes quick this year. I think the knee high snow in the backyard is more than enough already.

My brother and I spoke for about an hour on the phone today. He got back to Texas just fine however he's still missing some luggage. LOL Poor kid! He deploys on Saturday so he's hoping that it shows up by then. He's already packed up and ready to go just in case he has to leave early. He'd just returned from visiting our dad so he filled me in on how that was. I guess they spent some time sorting through some family pictures and talked about how my grandfather courted my grandmother. She'd been a religious woman and was a nurse. They'd met a tuberculosis hospital, he and his wife and child were patients there and my grandma was a nurse there at the time. His wife and child eventually died but he recovered. A few years passed before he pursued my grandma, he used to drive to see her at her at the church where she attended with her family every Sunday. From what I've been told the letters were written in Sioux and my dad had them for awhile but he's not sure where they are now. My dad told the boys about my grandma and how she was. I remember her but they boys met her when they were babies. So for my brother Jesse it was nice to hear about her and see old pictures of her. From what Jesse said my dad's going to try to ship these family albums here before he arrives. I know I'd like to see them. It would be good for the kids to see their great grandma too!

I suppose I should get out of here. I need to find out whats going on for tomorrow and get going on the newsletter.