Hump Day from Hell

Monday started with me sorting through 92 new emails with a steaming cup of high-caffeine pepperment tea.

I had ham and avocado on crackers for lunch and some kettle corn at 4pm.

Tuesday began with eating Honey Nut Cheerios in the car on the way to work, and having guacamole and tortilla chips at the office for breakfast. With coffee. While listening to Alanis Moissette.

Wednesday...
Started all normal and innocent.
Little did I know it was the Hump Day from HELL.


Yesterday was absolute crap.  Really.
I put a new recipe in the crockpot for sweet and sour chicken in the morning.
I was really excited for that chicken, being a big fan of sweet and sour myself, and wanting to know how to cook it at home, instead of venturing to a restaurant any time I get a hankering.
Plus I'm expanding my cooking repertoire in general.

The hubby and I got to work where a very busy, stressful, overwhelming day occurred.
I was tired and grumpy and we had a huge influx of work due to it being the end of the month.
I had to crack down on one of my team members, which I felt bad about, though it was necessary.
My cubicle-mate shattered the screen on her brand new phone.
I spilled hot coffee on myself and when I went to get more it was all gone.
My avocado at lunch was bruised and mostly rotten.

And then a Regional Operations Manager started haranging me on an issue.  I reviewed it and defended myself and my team, but it escalated quickly and my boss and her boss all got involved, and my anxiety flared up.
I was hoping to leave 10 minutes early to have time to taste the chicken before our realtor took us out house-hunting, but ended up leaving 20 minutes late due to the shitstorm.

We got home and the chicken smelled weird, so I re-seasoned it and had time for a bit of vodka before the realtor arrived and then we were off.

The first house was great and Eli was ready to make an offer, but for some reason it didn't rub me right. I got claustrophobic in the upstairs and the main level didn't even have a bathroom.
We would have had to knock down walls on 2 floor to adjust the house how we wanted, and for the expense and effort of that, it would not be worth it in my eyes.  It just vibed me wrong. Which was difficult to explain to Eli, who was stoked on the first really great house in our price range with a wonderful location (down the street from out office) we have seen.  So that wasn't fun.
The second house I liked, but the current owners decided NOT to leave during our showing because them and their 3 kids were sick. And it is disturbing to look through a house and critique it while the family that lives in it is there, hacking their germs at you. And Eli did not like that house.

The third one was horse property, which means a gorgeous yard, and it had a delightful wooden interior, but alas, the backyard fronted a major road and cars are loud when there are 6 lanes of them.
So we went home, empty-handed again, my buzz long-gone, exhausted from work, and just looking forward to some sweet and sour chicken.
I slaved over getting the sauce and rice ready and serving it up, creating a disaster in our kitchen (which is far too easy considering we have 2 feet by 2 feet of counter space). I served it up and Eli and I both took a bite.  He didn't say anything, but I fessed up that it was flat out awful.

I had consuled 3 recipes online, all with 5 star reviews, all pretty much the same.
Who gave this shit 5 stars??? Are they missing taste buds?! It was horrendous.
Eli, bless him, kept eating it, but I knew if I ate any more I would be stricken with...digestive issues... in the night.  And I was quesy from the 2 bites I took to begin with!!

I collapsed in bed with the covers pulled over my head.
Eli said "Not every food experiment will end well..." and microwaved us some frozen burritos for supper.
It was tragic.

He had to scrape the slop into the trash and take the trash OUT because of the rancid smell.
While I was doing the dishes to get rid of the rest, my necklace randomly fell off and INTO the garbage disposal, never to be seen again.  It was a thin chain and the sink ate it right up.

I chalk this all up to it being a full moon.

Eli and I went to bed, trying to end the hellian of a day. We were both so beyond tired we couldn't sleep for a while, but as soon as we got into our REM cycles, we were awoken by the wall shaking.
"What the hell is that?!" I wondered.  I could make out a thumping base that sounded like the heartbeat of a rhinocerous on crack.
I don't know if it was someone playing a keyboard with a backbeat, or just really bad techno, but it was LOUD. Our bed was vibrating a bit with it. I put my ear to the wall our bed rests against and sure enough, that crazy ass neighbor was the source.  It went on, and on, and on...
I called the after-hours security for our apartment complex and reported it.  We waited 20 minutes (ear plugs did nothing against this dumb beat) and it finally stopped.
But by then we were both so wide awake we never really got back into the sleep cycle, and had to split a 5 hour energy first thing this morning to get going.

Full moons are sure pretty to look at, but have I mentioned how much I hate their far-reaching effects on everything...?

I just got back from the taco stand in the bar's parking lot.
A few co-workers and I hit it up for an impromptu lunch.
Carne asada and chicken street tacos smothered in spicy sauce and all the fixings, shoved into your mouth while sitting on a stack of railroad ties, grease dripping down your hands on a sunny day in early spring kind of fixes everything...know what I mean?

This Weekend

I made tomato bisque.
I drank beer, vodka, and wine.
I sucked at shooting pool for the first time in a long time.
I took two baths.
I painted with acrylics and watercolors.
I watched African Queen.  Bogey, Hepburn, oh MY !
I had a dance-off with a group of Asians at a swinger's club.
   Yes, you read the last one right.  Funny how I get myself into these situations.
I got attached by a dog while I was trying to pee. It was a playful attack, though our friends heard      
    me screaming from the bathroom and had to send in help.
I ate a LOT of bruschetta.
I bought an apartment-warming quirky candle that I found with Death on the front.  One of those   
   saint's candles, you know.  But this one had the Grim Reaper on the front and I picked it up as a
   laugh.  Only later, as we were reading the prayer on the back, did we realize it is a candle you light
   for a person that you want to die.  WTF?
I had an..erm.. digestive issue while we were house-hunting.  Not the best timing.
I cleaned my car.
I painted my nails a deep, wine red.  They're purrdy.
I did 3 loads of laundry.
I slept in way too late and was tired all day. Until I had 2 cups of coffee. Which is when the car-
    cleaning happened.
I had a semi-decent conversation on FaceTime with my best friend.  It lasted about 20 minutes before
    crapping out.
I had a dance party with my husband in the kitchen.
I made a homemade pizza.  Full of kielbasa sausage and green peppers.

I just realized most of these remarks are regarding food.  You can tell what my priorities are.
I really wanted to celebrate Passover this year.
Considering Eli is making chicken parmesian for supper, I suppose that isn't quite going to happen...
But I fully intend to sweep up all the chametz hanging out on our floor and in the crevices when we get home from work tonight ! And drink my Passover wine.
You have no idea how hard it is to find matza.
Last year my friend, in an act of pseudo-Jewish desperation, used crushed saltines and water to make his own matza.  It was not ideal.

 

 

Taquitos, Chili, and Shit Best Friends Say

Our kitchen is the size of a closet.
That is why kitchens have become a deal-breaker in our house hunting adventures;
If it can't fit 2 people in in satisfactorily, and making a cuppa tea gives you claustrophobia, the whole house is out. DONE.
Our main criteria are:  BIG KITCHEN, BIG BATHTUB, DECENT BACKYARD.
Not too much to ask, right?

Anyhow, I have somehow managed to make quite a few delectable feasts in that closet of a kitchen recently. And I am proud of them.
Especially the chili I did last night, that made Eli declare me an Honorary Texan.  That was the high point of my week!




Here is my first shot at taquitos!
Shredded chicken, cilantro, sweet corn, black beans, seasoning (chili powder, salt and pepper, tapatio), cilantro, and salsa.
I wrapped them up in egg roll wrappers, basted them in egg white and baked them up.

It was blissful and you can make a whole batch, freeze them, and have them ready to pop in the oven when you're not in the mood to fix anything up properly.
And because I baked them, they're sorta healthy.

As you can see, I'm still learning how to wrap them properly. I overstuffed them in my zealousness.

These are some yummy butter cookies I whipped up for our St Paddy's potluck at work.
I did my basic Scandinavian butter cookies recipe, with almond and lemon extract and a splash of food coloring.
I used my cookie press for all but the shamrocks, which I formed myself!


I think they kind of look like sea anemones.
Either way--wonderful with coffee!










All decked out for an early St Patrick's party at the office!
I wore green eyeliner and pigged out on the greenness.



Though I draw the line at green deviled eggs.
I love deviled eggs but I can recognize the inherent wrongness in them--their smell and texture...
Unless there is some green ham on the side and wicked rhymes to go with it, I'm just not down for those.










Green Jell-O shots are perfectly acceptable though!
No, this was not at work.
Unfortunately.

This was our weekend party.



Where we learned to play Ring of Fire.
We consumed...everything
Beer, vodka, rum, and copious amounts of snack food.  It was glorious!

And now... THE CHILI!

I diced it all up fresh the night before--green peppers, red peppers, tomatoes, jalapeno, celery, garlic, some sprigs of cilantro...









Then the ground beef that we fried up, black beans and kidney beans, tomato puree, and seasoning!
Boy, I seasoned the shit out of it.






We left the crockpot in the fridge overnight and it all marinated...
The next morning we put it on low for almost 7 hours.








It came out like this . . .

I served it with fresh, hot, buttery cornbread, and cheese and yellow peppers on top of the chili.
And cold beer goes great with it as well of course.

Absolutely gorgeous--and enough left over for us to gorge ourselves again tonight !

Considering my hubby is a Texan and he was light-headed with the deliciousness of the chili, I am pretty proud of myself.









I've been scrolling through some of the texts between my best British pal and myself and giggling a bit.
I hate my iPhone and it has never-ending problems, but being able to text her 24/7 (even with the time difference we embrace drunk texting) is totally worth it.
Though we can be a bit morbid, and have enough health problems to keep 10 people busy, our messages to one another tend to be fabulously entertaining.

HER: "I have nothing against guys having long hair, but if they decide to have it longer, they need to commit to washing it!"
(sends me picture of guy in question)
ME: "Yeah he is a Young Snape for sure. Especially in that jacket."

ME: "I need booze in my coffee."

HER: "I was at A&E until midnight. I think they recognize me by now."

ME: "My mouth feels crookeder today. Is that a word?"

HER: "Even if my leg is broken I'm still bloody coming on holiday in July. I'm getting on that plane even if I'm in a full body cast!"

ME: "Is it vanity if I am unhappy with how different my face looks after having had my jaw broken?"

HER:  "I have long since stopped being polite."

ME: "Someone need to tell her to 'avoid being a bitch, though it comes naturally.'"

HAPPY WEEKEND!

Horror and Historic House Hunting

There is nothing quite so nice as watching the rain outside while listening to Motown classics...
Which is what I am doing right now whilst taking a breather from work.
I need a minute to relax, because the week has been hectic and exhausting! The last 2 nights after working full days, Eli and I have gone out house hunting.

And it has been as unsuccessful as unsuccessful can be.
If this were an official science experiment, it would have been scrapped already because of contamination.
If it were a new plant growing, half the buds would be dead and it would be lopsided in the still-green places.
I don't know if those metaphors even made sense.
Which is fine because house hunting does not make much sense.  It is nuts. And fun to see the different houses and how people decorate, but sometimes you shudder inside when you realize people live like this.

We saw a house that was a total piece of shit. The kitchen was wallpapered in Tabasco advertisements and there was foam seeping up through the fake wooden floors in the main room.
And if you know me, you know I have a phobia of foam, so I basically ran out of that house screaming.
Then, in contrast, we saw a house that was veeeeery nice and overpriced and had those ridiculous 22 foot ceilings that you need 2 ladders and a team of workers to change the lightbulbs in.  It even had a "mud room" off the garage and those showers that are entirely enclosed with glass.
But it was also part of those awful subdivisions they plop in wherever they can find land (in this case, in the middle of a not-so-nice old neighborhood full of ramblers 1/6 the size of these new houses.  And the view of the mountains is gorgeous... until their build the next house directly beyond your little backyard and then you get to look out on the neighbors taking a dump (if they're the kind that don't close their blinds appropriately).  I hate that.
What is the point of buying a house in the Salt Lake valley if you can't enjoy the mountains?!

Then we found a sweet old home-- red brick with Queen Anne's lace trim on the front patio and a tower room in front, Victorian style (I adore Queen Anne's lace and front towers)!!!!
It had big old beautiful trees and a nice yard.
So we went to check it out with our realtor.

Winchester Mystery House. 

It looked so innocent from the outside...little did we know that this movie is like those that they make horror films out of...

We stepped inside and it felt cold. Not like "I can see my breath!" but just that chill you get deep in your heart when you are afraid and don't know why (what Holly Golightly called the Mean Reds).

The whole time we were exploring this house, I felt like we were being watched and was so convinced of the presence of someone else, I was ready for someone to be standing in the kitchen going "oh hi, we are viewing the house as well."  But there was no one else there--just Eli, myself, and our realtor Mike.
The setup was really psychotically twisted.  It reminded me of that house in Rose Red that is based on the Winchester Mystery House, where stairways go to nowhere and you turn around and a closet has appeared where there was no closet before.
I don't even have any photos of the inside because I was so scared out of my wits I did not want to be distracted snapping pictures with my phone when I sensed the serial killer that owns the house was about to snake his hand out of the crawl space and yank me in.

The worst part was the root cellar.
I literally have goose bumps as I write this...

More from Winchester...

We found this half-door in the middle of the house and opened it up and there was a pit of darkness with rickety, miniature wooden stairs leading downward.  Mike bravely led the way with his flashlight held in front of him, and Eli and I followed, but that light was not enough to illuminate this huge, dirt room. Literally, the walls were dirt and crawling with giant spiders, and it looked like the basement pit where the Texas Chainkiller Leatherface guy lives.  I screamed a little and ran out.
There was a mask like something from Planet of the Apes on a pike in the middle of the floor.
And you guys, seeing the way the rest of the house was, I'm convinced whoever lived (lives?) there worships it.
There were so many separate crawl spaces that just gave off the odor of wrongness, and I thought of that guy that hid bodies under his floorboards in the crawl spaces...
This house was PRIME for that sort of stuff.

They added random rooms here and there, so you'd step up a foot and be in another part of the house, and turn a corner and there is nothing there, but you open a closet and you can walk inside of it randomly.  Then you step down and you are in yet another part of this dark pit of a place.
Not to mention the entire loft they built in back, on top of the house, that had a swamp cooler balancing on a board 10 feet in the air attached to it.  Charming. Real safe.
And you took these death trap of metal stairs all the way to the top.
I'm pretty sure something was living in the bathtub up there--I didn't open the shaking shower curtain to find out.  We booked it out of there fast.

And contributing further to the weirdness--there was a fort-type thing built high up in the backyard, about 15 feet in the air.  But there was no way to get to it--no ladder or anything! I am convinced the psychos used that for their rituals as well.

This house was a disappointment.
We loved the outside, the square footage and yard sounded good, but after seeing the place, we were more relieved to drive the hell away, and getting away with our lives drowned any disappointment we might have felt...

But the other houses we saw were disappointing to help account.
Though we did thoroughly enjoy traipsing through them!!

The hubby and I are both history nerds. We love old places, stories, objects, memories, all that good stuff!
I volunteered for the Sandy Museum during college for a bit and helped catalogue some of the historic buildings in the area, so imagine our delight when we saw 2 of these houses for sale!
Although they were turn of the century, and therefore demanding of upkeep, and small, we wanted to check them out.





This first one had turquoise trim that killed me it was so precious!

But these old homes have lots of creepiness to them. The crawl spaces kill me they are so terrifying (as seen on left).
One of them had a boot inside of it that looked like it went down with the Titanic.

The old coal chutes are neat, but still kinda creepy.
And if they have been sealed up, I can't help but get all Edgar Allen Poe and daydream about the body sealed up inside.

Here is Eli in the "basement" of the first historic house we saw, built in 1898.

It is hard to tell, but that little sign over the doorway says "Haunted House."  Needless to say, we were a bit hesitant to open the door..

 

Some of my favorite books growing up (that I still read!!) are the Betsy-Tacy series, set in the early 1900s.

Seeing these houses really brought those characters and that era to life!
People were so TINY.
And the whole bathtub shower thing is interesting too...
This first house had 2 bathrooms (both airplane sized), and one of them had a shower that no one over 180 pounds could step into.

The wallpaper was ancient. And fabulous, the kind of stuff all the trendy boutiques are making dresses out of in similar print.



Yes, these houses are charming and have so much character,but they are also demanding because of their age.And the size makes it difficult. I could see myself as an old person living with my cute old husband here,but not at this stage in our life when we want a big boisterous dog and are planning on babies in the next few years.  Not to mention plenty of house parties.And these cottages don't have enough room for me to paint in!

By the way--this door on the left attacked me as we were trying to leave.
I don't know if the house was crying out in desperation for us to buy it, or trying to say I don't want you to live in me anyway GET OUUUUUT!!! all Amityville Horror style,
But the little handle to open the screen door hooked into my nail bed and I started bleeding all over the porch.
Kind of creepy.

This was my absolute favorite of all the houses we have looked at, and the story behind it is very romantic and endearing.

I'm pretty sure the couple that built the house and lived in it until their death may have died in the house... though I didn't get the same being-watched-by-netherspirits feeling that I did in the Hell House.

This little place had good karma.

I'm sure this photo of the sign is hard to read--
summary is they got married and then he went on a 2 and 1/2 year mission (this is very common in the Mormon church).
He gave her a blank checkbook to get by on while he was away, and she became a schoolteacher and supported herself for those years, and proudly handed him back all of the checks when he came home.
What an independent lady!

With the money they saved, they built this house, and he was a renowned architect in the Salt Lake Valley, so it is particularly valuable.
Plus their named were August and Mabel.  How adorable is that??!

This house was completely refurbished and had so many unique touches-- the original hardwood floors with hand-painted folk art flowers!
The original light fixtures with vintage chandeliers.
A fireplace and stained glass windows, a garden tub, a little fireplace in the bedroom too, and a basement with a not-too-creepy crawl space.

The best was the attic (at left)--look at that exposed chimney!!
We would want to turn that into a badass open space, but that involves a contractor determining if the structure is sound and all.
There are some amazing grants out there if you live in a historical home, which is one of the positives. But for us, there are just too many negatives in our first home being a turn-of-the-century home.
I'm glad we checked them out though, we have been dying to get into them after driving past them several times and hearing the stories behind them! And only after experiencing them firsthand were we able to come to the realization we don't want a house built any earlier than the 1960s.
There sure is a learning curve in home buying!

Isn't it neat how you can see the imprint of the ivy on the brick?

It is the little things that fascinate me, and how something that is now long gone can leave such a lasting mark.

 

Such his history...