Recipe: Coleslaw

I've been wanting to make coleslaw for, like, a year now, but Joe doesn't like it and it wasn't super healthy so I didn't. But then recently I DID!

Very happy with my first attempt. Instead of cutting up a bunch of cabbages, I bought a coleslaw mix -

- and then made coleslaw sauce and mixed it together and it was delicious.

Recipe:
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup sugar
2.5 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 lb (about 6 cups) of coleslaw mix (or chopped up cabbage and carrots)

Put the coleslaw mix into a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine cream, sugar, vinegars, and salt; mix thoroughly. Pour sauce over coleslaw mix and stir well. Serve chilled.

This actually tastes better after it's had at least 5 or 6 hours to sit. After a few days, though, the purple cabbage began to tint the sauce pinkish-purpley-red.

Dyeing to Get Away From Funereal

I love skirts and dresses. I kinda hope to have most of my pants replaced eventually by skirts I thrift or make. So every time I go to a thrift store, I check the skirts and dresses section first. Last week, I found a dress at the Swap & Assist (a thrifty used-stuff place on-post where I can get free clothes.) It's cotton, a bit longer than knee-length, with a square neckline, empire waist, and cap sleeves. It actually looks more like a nightgown than a dress. And, since it was black when I brought it home, it looked like a nightgown you'd wear to a pajama-party themed funeral. Black really didn't suit its simple peasant style.
So, since:
1. it was free;
2. I wasn't going to wear it like it was, so it would have gone to waste; and
3. it was cotton, so it would take well to dyeing...
I dyed it.

Here it is after its eight-hour water-and-bleach bath:

It looks weird because it was soaking wet in the picture. Well, and the uneven coloring, but I assumed that could be fixed.

Yep, that blotchy pink thing used to be 100% black.

After I washed and dried the bleached dress, I prepared a pot of dye.  

Looks gross, smelled even worse. Like how I'd imagine burning tires to smell.

I boiled the dress in the dye for a little while, took it out, rinsed out all the excess dye, and ran it through the washing machine. This is how it looks now:

So, still like a nightgown. But at least a vibrant red nightgown!

Sunrise

Being nocturnal is...well, dark. I wake up, there's no sunlight. I can watch the moon while I eat lunch. It feels cold in here no matter how much the heat is turned up. I just want to huddle in front of my PC in comfy clothes and not move or do anything useful.

But I get to see every day's sunrise.

As I write, the sun has been coming up for an hour. This is the time of day when my kitchen glows like home again after the long cold dark. When I see the sky lighten to blue through the cracks in the blinds it means it's almost time for Joe to come home from work...time to stretch, change from my nighttime sweatpants into something prettier, open the living-room blinds, start dinner, and start watching the driveway.

So dinner's cooking now. When he gets home, we'll eat, then we'll go to the Commissary.

Today I get to make a grocery list. It will say: fries cheese bacon browniemix icecream lemonade. 'Cause we were going to go to Ruby Tuesday's this weekend but then the dentist took our go-to-Ruby-Tuesday's-this-weekend money. So, instead, on Friday or Saturday we'll share a giant plate of bacon cheese fries and not share giant bowls of brownies à la mode and we'll stare at each other and smile a lot and it will be just as good as going out.

Seeing the sun come up fills me with gratitude and a kind of awe. I'm here again, just like yesterday, and I get to be part of this world for another day. I get to have one more day wonder, of simple joys and profound peace.

Today, I'll weave the routines of a household into a cloth of comfort. I'll dance with, cuddle with, laugh with my husband...and do his laundry...and clean, and cook, and absolutely love my life. My heart will praise the God who's given me everything, everything I could want.

My First Yoga Class

I took my first yoga class yesterday morning. It was pretty darn awesome.

Last week, out of nowhere, I developed a curiosity about yoga. I checked the schedule at the gym, and they had a class at 6:30 AM on Tuesdays. For me, that's a few hours after lunch time and a few hours before I have to pick Joe up from work. Perfect timing. So there I was yesterday morning, 6:25, in loose stretchy jeans 'cause I had no yoga pants, with a bath towel to use for a mat and a gross brown smudge that I'd managed to pick up between the house and the gym right on the front of my white tank top. Great. And it turned out I was the only student; me and my brown smudge got a one-on-one lesson.

The class took place in a room with hardwood floors and mirrored walls. The teacher-lady started by turning off most of the lights, leaving just a lightrope going around the floor of the room. I borrowed one of the gym's mats, so I didn't have to use my towel, thank goodness. (It wouldn't have worked anyway; yoga mats are, like, rubbery and grip to the floor. Towel = stretchy and sliding around.)

For an hour, I did the moves she demonstrated - like sun salutation A and sun salutation B - except badly. I was clumsy and missing steps and completely neglecting the important breathing method. There was one part which involved standing on one leg where I just kept falling over 'til she told me which muscles were supposed to be holding me up...then I did a little better. Some of the more simple moves were fun and nice and made me feel like I was expertly performing yoga on top of a mountain, surrounded by blue sky, green grass and serenity. Others with more difficult foot placement and a focus on spine alignment I just totally failed because I was watching her demonstrate rather than holding my head in the proper spinal alignment position.

At the end, my body was tired - probably mostly from Monday's workout - but I felt stretched and exercised and challenged. (But not too challenged because the lesson was perfectly tailored to my capabilities since I was the only one there!) It was such a refreshing break from my usual workouts, which are all about pushing myself to go just a little farther or lift a little more. In yoga, the teacher told me, you to listen to your body, respect its limits, and don't force it to do anything it doesn't want to do. Instead of pushing and torture and that fun lungs-are-about-to-explode feeling that comes on normal workout days, there was quietness and peace as I worked with my body to get into the right positions and hold them, making compromises with my muscles when necessary.

It was a successful workout...but there was still the problem of jeans being my only yoga pants.

After my class and my shower at the gym, I went and camped out in the parking lot of the on-post thrift store. It was 8:00 AM, and I expected them to open at 9:00, but they didn't – they were supposed to open at 9:30! Sadface! I couldn't be there, since that's when I'm supposed to pick up Joe! But I sat in the parking lot anyway to see if any of the employees might show up early. None of the thrift store employees showed up, but something even better happened: a Swap & Assist employee showed up! 

Swap & Assist = "free shopping" for E-1 through E-4 (E-5 and higher can also “shop” there, they just have to bring something of equal value to trade for what they want.) Since Joe's E-2, we can get stuff there without trading anything. Mostly they have clothing, but they have a lot of books and some toys and household goods and baby stuff.

Anyway, the employee was getting stuff out of the donation sheds because it was going to rain soon (she told me) and the sheds (she told me) are leaky. I was like, “I know the S&A isn't open until Thursday” (because it's only open for a few hours on Thursday mornings and closed the rest of the time,) and she was like “Yeah but what are you looking for?” And I was like “lol yoga pants” and she was like “Come right in and dig around” and I was like YAY because even on Thursday mornings there's quite a line to be the first one in and grab the good stuff. But I wasn't there for any of the good stuff, just pants. Surprisingly, I found 6 pairs of pants which might work. The ones that don't fit will be going back to the S&A, along with a large box of things I've been meaning to donate for a while. Pants problem solved!

So it was a lovely morning. Looking forward to next Tuesday. Especially now that I have pants.

How I Poisoned Jack

This is Jack. We found him in our landlady's yard a couple of years ago. We had to walk to her house for something, and there he was, laying on his side rubbing his face with his paws. He was very shy but friendly...and filthy, emaciated, and covered in ticks. He...NEEDED US! So I turned puppy-dog eyes on Joe, who said we weren't getting a dog and then lured the dog back to our house with Kraft singles and pieces of ham. Joe got the dog into our house by tying a belt around his neck and dragging him up the stairs of our back porch. The dog was traumatized. 

After he was dragged into our house, he apparently gave up on life; he just lay there sleeping, ignoring us as we picked off over a hundred ticks. After that, we gave him a bath. That was his first fun-filled night with us. Next step: get him to a vet.

That weekend, we got in the car and forced him to get in, too, even though he was scared. (He was scared of everything, though.) We put him in the back seat, assuming he was like a normal dog and would calm down and look out the window and just be a nice, normal dog. Instead, when the car started moving, he freaked out and started running around. He trampled me, ripping a hole in my jeans and somehow smearing poo on my shirt. We had just pulled out of the driveway, had twenty more minutes to drive, and already I was gagging, almost hysterical, and he was going insane. Eventually, he just smashed himself as far as he could into the passenger footwell, shaking and cowering and drooling (all over my pants) despite my efforts to calm him.

We got to the vet. My pants were saturated with his drool. I asked if they had any shirts for sale. They didn't. We found out that the dog (who we named Jack after a short trial run of the name "Tick") had Lyme's. We got some anti-heartworm medicine, anti-Lyme's medicine, and anti-freak-out-in-the-car medicine. Important detail: the anti-freak-out-in-the-car medicine was called Acepromazine. We referred to it as Ace.

Around that time, I called a no-kill shelter to see if they'd take the dog. We didn't want a dog, I didn't even LIKE dogs, and we especially didn't want this motion-sick mutt who, when we were at work during the day, tended to go around the house destroying the things we loved. There was a months-long waiting list for a spot at the shelter, and I put him on it.

We had to go out of town shortly after we "got" Jack, and we couldn't take him with us, so he needed a car ride to someone who would watch him. Per doctor's orders, we gave him an Ace two hours before the car trip. The effects were visible half an hour later. He became lethargic, the skin below his eyes started to sag, he could barely walk straight, and he had trouble navigating stairs. When the time came to put him in the car, I got in, then Joe put Jack in and closed the passenger door. Jack crammed himself into the footwell. We started moving. I watched Jack, and, miraculously, he stayed put in his not-so-happy place at my feet. And...there was no drool. Not a drop.

From that day forward, Jack [well.......we] relied on Ace for calm, drool-free car rides. Jack [we] was practically addicted to the Ace effect when it came to car rides.

A few months passed, and I got a call back from the no-kill shelter. At that point, we no longer had an intact couch; about a third of our movies were housed in clear cases, their originals long ago having been chewed up; we had learned to close the bathroom door before we left the house so the dog wouldn't get into the razor blades; and I'd cried over the loss of a favorite pair of shoes, the ones I'd worn to our wedding, which, like so many other things, we had found strewn about the living room floor in tooth-mark-dented pieces. The lady on the phone was telling me they had room for the dog I'd called about, and asked if we still wanted to bring him in. I looked at him. He was curled up in a ball, sleeping on the couch he eventually destroyed. I told the lady I'd have to talk to my husband about it.

Fast-forward two and a half years. We slowly learned to Jack-proof the house every time we left it. Around the time we moved to a new place, Jack stopped destroying our things (mostly.) A few months after we moved, Joe left for Basic Training and I was left with the dog. Jack kept me company. I finally decided (after, like, eighteen months of having him around) that I wanted to keep him. Ten months after our first move, we moved again, away from our families in Virginia to our first post in Georgia.

That brings us finally to December 2010 and the poisoning incident.

We were going back to Virginia for Christmas. I made boarding arrangements for the birds, but boarding arrangements for Jack were just cost-prohibitive. Our only option was to bring him with us. That was a total of 20 hours in the car - from Georgia to Virginia; from Fredericksburg to Gloucester when it was time to switch families; then back down to Georgia.

Three car trips. We only had one dose of Ace. By the time I realized that, all the vets were closed for the holidays.

So we got to Fredericksburg okay, using that last dose. Then, when it was almost time to leave for Gloucester, we went to a pet store and dropped ten dollars on some herbal-remedy calming dog treats which we fully expected to not work...but we had to do something. Christmas day, we gave him the recommended dosage before it was time to get in the car. They worked as well as expected. Jack rode in the back seat, which became a giant puddle of drool. Twenty minutes from my parents' house, after enduring for two hours, he vomited on my dry-clean-only winter coat. Our arrival in Gloucester was pretty gross.

The day came when it was time to drive the eight or ten hours from Gloucester back to Georgia. We were going to give Benadryl to Jack to sedate him, since those stupid herbal treats didn't work and we had nothing else. I was digging around in my parents' medicine cabinet, looking for the Benadryl, when I came across a bottle I didn't recognize. I checked the active ingredient: Acetaminophen! WOW! My parents already had Ace in their medicine cabinet! I showed Joe, excited, telling him that it was the same word, I was sure of it. (I couldn't pronounce it, but that's beside the point.) Ecstatic and relieved that we wouldn't have to deal with the drool, I looked up a recommended dosage online before giving some of the Ace to Jack.

After I gave him the medicine wrapped up in some pieces of ham, I sat back down at my laptop to do further research, to kinda confirm that I had given him an acceptable amount. The more I read, the more concerned I became. Especially once I noticed the difference between the words "Acetaminophen"  and "Acepromazine."

I phoned the vet my mom uses. The vet told me I'd given Jack twice the amount he should have had. (I think she thought I had given him our normal car-sedation drug Ace-P, and not Ace-T, aka Tylenol, which is apparently extremely harmful to dogs in any dosage.) She gave me instructions for how to induce vomiting: a tablespoonful of salt down the back of his throat. So we took him outside and Joe gave him the salt. Nothing happened. We gave him a little more. A few minutes later, he started throwing up thick whitish-yellow foam with ham in it. We just stood there in the snow petting him while he vomited. Once that was over, we brought him inside and gave him some water.

I felt horrible. I gave him some treats to make up for what I'd done. He wouldn't touch them. He just lay curled up as far away from us as he could get and would look at me reproachfully, his eyes all droopy and red, whenever I tried to get his attention. He knew a car ride was coming up, between our packing and the Ace-ey feeling the Acetaminophen had given him before we got most of it out of his system. (He had long ago learned to associate Ace(promazine)'s effects with impending doom by car-ride.)

Nine hours later, we got back to Georgia. I guess the car trip wasn't so bad. He didn't run around, vomit, or have any accidents...and we learned that he does eventually run out of drool.

It's Yellow!

We don't exactly eat healthy here at the Burrage residence. Lately, we've had grilled cheese and soup for dinner once a night every weekend. Vegetables only happen like twice a month (and I can only partly blame that on Joe and his veggie aversion.) Occasionally, for a special, simple, casual sort of date night, we'll have bacon & cheese fries for dinner - romance straight out of a bag of processed potatoes! Honestly, my healthy meals are sporadically sprinkled in among my quick & easy meals like the occasional nickel or dime among the pennies in my picked-over change jar.

Despite the lack of balanced nutrition, we do take some pride in our (most of the time) avoidance of cookies, cakes & candy. We don't keep the cabinets stocked with Chips Ahoy and brownie mix. Usually, the freezer is completely full of NOTHING INTERESTING, because there's hardly ever any ice cream in there. (There are currently three types of soda in the fridge, but we'll pretend that doesn't count as junk.)

But...yesterday, we went to the Commissary. Since Joe's been on the night schedule for school, he's had more free time, and has taken me to the grocery store a couple of times. (He's romantic and gallant that way, and it makes me super happy because even grocery shopping is so fun with him.) We ignored the candy aisle (even though I didn't want to because I'm kind of addicted to candy at the moment because it was so readily available at Christmas) and skipped the cookie aisle. But then we went down the cereal aisle and I fell prey to boxed evil in the form of chocolate Lucky Charms - perfect for snacking on during late-night weekend video game marathons. Then...Joe asked if I wanted to buy ice cream...and how could I say no to that?

Since we only get ice cream like four or five times a year, I wanted to make this purchase count, and I took my time looking at everything they had before deciding what to get. I thought two sample sizes would be awesome, 'cause then I could have variety without spending too much money. So I got two things of Blue Bell ice cream. And THAT is what I wanted to tell you about.

One of my things of ice cream was of the flavor Banana Pudding, which I knew I had to buy as soon as I saw it. I'd never heard of banana pudding flavored ice cream before. I actually wasn't sure it would be good. But it called to me and I said okay sure you can come home with me. And it did. And I tried some. And guess what!

It's yellow! Well, only some of it. The banana-ey part. The other part is white 'cause it's vanilla. and there are chunks of vanilla wafers in it! And it tastes like cold banana pudding!

Maybe normal grocery stores don't have this stuff, only Commissaries (as is the case with the Sara Lee coffee cake my family likes.) But if your store does have it and if you can eat an entire batch of banana pudding all by yourself so every time you make it you actually have to make two batches so other people can get some, this ice cream is for you.

Also, their chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream is bangin'. The chocolate chip cookie dough actually tastes like chocolate chip cookie dough, and it's soft and mushy like it should be.

But mostly...WOW! BANANA PUDDING IN ICE CREAM FORM! YAY!

P.S.: That's my one of my mom's kitchen towels in the background. I accidentally brought home like two towels and a kitchen cloth when we left after Christmas. (Sorry, mom.) But it's actually really nice to have them. It's like having a little piece of home. To dry my hands on.

Our Christmas Break, the Summary

As you probably guessed, my long silence was because of holiday stuff.

Joe was released for Christmas break at 7:00 a.m. on December 18th. After standing in line for an hour and a half, I was able to sign him out. We went home and went to sleep. Thus started our 16-day vacation.

We were due to leave for Virginia on the 21st, but traveling preparations were delayed when I slept through most of an entire day instead of packing, cleaning, and wrapping presents. I don't know what I had, maybe a sinus infection, but I was exhausted and could not stay awake. So that was exciting. But we left on the 22nd, both of us sick and with the dog (Jack) sedated and crammed into the passenger's-side footwell (where he prefers to travel, if he absolutely HAS to travel.)

We arrived in Fredericksburg and spent a couple of days and half of Christmas day with Joe's parents, and an evening visiting with his grandparents. It was awesome to spend time with everyone and to sleep in Joe's old room, which had been cleaned but was still very much Joe's old room. We watched TV a lot, and it was kinda fun because we don't have cable. We got to watch shows about food and outer space (but not food and outer space at the same time.)

On Christmas day, we drove to Gloucester, three hours away, to spend half of Christmas and a couple of days with my family. Of course there's nothing like being back home, even when your joyous arrival is tainted by dog vomit (more on that later.) We had a  days-long LAN party at the kitchen table with my brother, his girlfriend, me and Joe, fueled by candy and cokes, and it was super fun. (Also, I poisoned Jack, but more on that later, too.)

It was wonderful to be in Virginia again and I was sad to leave (even slightly depressed,) but it was also a relief to get home.  At 10 or 11 p.m. on whatever night it was we got home (the 28th, I guess,) with the dog washed and the car unloaded, Joe and I had our fourth Christmas.

Like every year, we had a quiet New Year's Eve at home. It's kinda become our holiday, the one we spend with just each other instead of switching back and forth between family houses. We stayed up 'til midnight playing video games, watched the ball drop in Times Square from an online live video feed, and played more video games when that was over.

Joe's nightly school schedule just started up again the day before yesterday, so things are slowly getting back to normal. I'm so not ready for this vacation to be over! But it was pretty darn perfect...family, video games, sleeping in, forgetting what day of the week it is...perfect.