Monday Musings

I don't have one main focus for today, but I do have random tidbits to share.  They will each get their own number and subtitle, because I like lists and specificity. 

1.  Bye Bye Birdies

I am not a very observant person.  My old roommate Amanda and I liked to play a game called "See how long it takes Kristin to notice...." with our other roommate Kristin.  We would make bets (more like predictions since there were never any terms to these bets), but inevitably Amanda would point out whatever had changed within thirty minutes of Kristin arriving home so we never found out how long it would have taken.  The game was a total joke anyway; had I not taken part in whatever changes were made (nailing up street numbers above our garage, painting the mailbox, mowing the lawn after 17 months, etc.), I would very likely not have noticed any changes myself.  

All of that is just to emphasize my lack of observance though.  In carefully poring over pictures of my house and several walkthroughs before I purchased it, I never noticed The Birds.  Giving my mom a tour as soon as I signed all the papers and was handed my key, we discovered these guys in the guest bathroom upstairs.  

 

Ew.  

One friend described them as "comforting," but everyone else has been as disturbed by them as I was.  At some point in July, I finally got around to eliminating them. 

 

In their defense, their presence with the seashell does remind me slightly of Poppy and Goola's house.  That is was their only redeeming quality.

 

But now they are gone.

Look how fresh and clean the bathroom looks now!

 

No, mom, I did not iron the shower curtain before hanging it.  Nor will I.  A few steamy showers in there should take care of it.  

 

There's the sink right outside the shower.  Madre folded/hung the towels perfectly like that.  I will not touch them for fear of messing them up.  

2.  To the windoooooooooooow

In anticipation of getting a new roommate, I needed to clean up the window situation in the guest/her bedroom.  The window sills in there were worse than anywhere in the house.  I borrowed a palm sander and got to work.  Said work was much easier once I correctly attached the sandpaper to the sander.  This was hilarious because I have used them before and knew very well how to properly attach the paper.  Yet I still did it wrong at first.   

 

I think this was midway through the sanding process.  Of course I didn't take a picture at the end.  Or of the final product.  But I repainted them with some nice, crisp, bright white paint.  

Then I took down the wooden window treatments that rained animal hair any time you raised or lowered them.  (I still don't understand that.  Was the former owner's dog climbing the window treatments???  How does dog hair get lodged in there?) 

Next step: putting up new blinds.  I enlisted the help of Amanda and her new hubs Jose, but I decided to get started while I waited for them.  The result?  Naturally, I got a drill bit stuck in the wall.   

Fortunately, it came out easily.  Once I figured out to measure them from the front of the inset, rather than the back against the window, the brackets installed quite easily.  Well, Jose seemed to do it easily.  I was very helpful with the measuring and pre-drilling holes though!

 

  

Aren't they pretty?  I bought them to match the wood blinds that were already installed in the kitchen.  I like them sooooo much better than the metal miniblinds.  I know, I see the old hardware above the window too.  That has since been removed, but I still need to go in and putty those holes and touch up paint.  Eventually I will be putting these blinds in all the windows in the house. 

3.  To the wall

You know who's great?

Uncle Kevin.  

After reading my account of the Light Fixture Mishap of 2012, he caught up on my older blog entries and offered some unsolicited (but extremely welcome) advice on how to get over my stud problem to hang the medicine cabinet.  He sent me to Home Depot to pick up a few items and examined my pictures carefully to let me know which hardware would work best. 

 

He also taught me the vernacular.  I learned that this type of mount (shown below) is called a keyhole hanger.  He also wisely advised me to check the hardware before drilling to make sure that the heads of the screws fit into the keyhole hangers.  Friends, that is the voice of experience right there.  Sure enough, the giant wood screws I had did not fit.  He saved me another pair of holes in the wall with that foresight.

The bottom two holes are the original ones that I had to patch up.  The top two are the ones I drilled before realizing there was a stud on the right.  The hole I had made there was too big to put a screw into though.  The middle holes are the ones I ended up using.

 

 

Looks so much better, right???

In the reflection, you can see the gross brown that covered the walls of the bathroom before.  I'm in the process of painting my bedroom and bathroom walls much prettier colors. 

 

Even though I checked the holes with a level before putting in the screws, this is still the end result of the medicine cabinet hanging.  Let me tell you exactly how much this lack of levelness bothers me:  none.  I have a little secret to share:  with things like this, I just wait for Wonderlynn to visit.  If it's bad enough, she will fix it herself.  If it doesn't bother her, nobody else would notice either.   

 

5.  My First Potroast

and why reading a recipe ahead of time is important...

I had set out to make a pot roast tonight for dinner and then eat leftovers throughout the week.  

I missed the part of the recipe that said to "cook in a slow cooker for 6-8 hours."  This was untimely to discover at 6pm when I found myself quite hungry.  I went ahead and made the roast anyway, so I can have it ready for dinner tomorrow.  I've never made or eaten pot roast before this.  My coworkers learned that about me in the winter months and made me promise I would make one.  

The recipe asked me to deglaze the pan.  I had to look that up.  I learned that the little brown bits left in a pan after browning meat are called "sucs."  It's a French culinary term, according to the wikipedia. 

It sounds gross.  

I imagine I would have had more sucs had I not cut off the 2 pounds of fat on my roast prior to browning it.  I know, I know, cooking it in the fat is supposed to make it more tender or something like that.  I just can't bring myself to eat that.  I also learned that it's really stinking difficult to turn a giant roast with a small spatula.  

 

This picture of the roast sitting in the crock pot does not do justice to its size, so I took another with the spatula in there more visibly for scale. 

 

Is spatula the right word for that tool?  It seems wrong all of the sudden.  I'm pretty sure it said "turner" on the tag when I purchased it.  Whatever it is, it's Bobby Flay brand, super sturdy, and I love it.  Except when it comes to turning over roasts.  

I also had some Brussels sprouts to eat up, so I decided to cook them the way I did when transforming Wonderlynn's perspective forever.  Since my dad referred to them as "baby cabbages" and I happened to have some leftover purple cabbage from last week (one head of cabbage will last for.ev.er), I threw that in there too. 

 

It was such a cheerful color combo that I had to take a picture.  It looked dark, though, so I turned on my flash and took another one. 

 

I can't decide which picture I like better, so I'm showing you both. 

I think the first one is prettier, but I'm no food photog.

 6.  On recipe substitutions

The pot roast recipe called for seasoning salt, among other ingredients, to rub onto the meat before browning it.  I didn't have seasoning salt.  Normally I would have called the madre at that point for guidance, but I was too busy jamming out to the music on my phone to stop it and make a phone call.  How do you stop this greatness? 

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Answer:  You don't.  

So I didn't. 

I decided to use some garlic salt and a pinch of sea salt.  Chefs, I hope this combination is satisfactory.  I shall let you know upon tasting the cooked roast.  

7.  21 days

Actually, I've lost count.  I think this is day 21 of my whole 30.  I lost count because it has been so much easier than I expected.  Gum continues to be the one thing I miss more than any other eliminated food.  I've only felt the need to down a great big, icy diet coke two or three times.  I haven't strayed from the plan at all, even a little bit, except to take communion.  In the first week, I lost about 2.5 pounds.  I lost 5 in the second week.  I haven't weighed myself again yet, but my clothes continue to feel looser.  Two pairs of shorts that were a little snug last week are now falling off of me.  Not because I've been wearing them for a week straight, either.  Right out of the dryer!  

I highly recommend it to anyone.  I have enjoyed the food a lot and melting away without any changes in exercise isn't a bad side effect.  

It hasn't had any impact on my allergic reactions, or whatever the heck is going on with my skin.  I was tested for almost 70 foods last week and the doctor discovered very little.  The search continues.