Dreams

Today, I sang for a special little concert that the university music department was putting on for an accreditation committee. I also played violin for an original composition by one of the composition majors. That was really funny, because there was a flute player onstage, a clarinet player playing from backstage, and me, playing from the back of the auditorium. Don't you just love twentieth century stuff.

I love performing so much! I really look forward to the day when I can do what I was born to do (and no, it's not waiting tables!).

Adam hasn't been feeling well today, and when I came back home, he was still in bed. And I unwittingly woke him up from the most amazing dream. He dreamt that he somehow won $500 million dollars. He then decided that we'd live like we were making only 50k a year (funny how this is pretty much exactly what he'd do in real life), and he wanted to get a new, but used, car, and he wanted me to quit my job and be a stay-at-home wife. 

I was so sad to wake him up from that! I was very tempted to say, "Go back to sleep, and let me dream with you!"

Well, I'm going to go do the laundry, and maybe play the lottery today. ;-)

Fire in the House!

And that is exactly what happened this morning.

Every morning, I boil a kettle of water for my French press coffee, and go take a quick shower or something in the meantime. Today, instead of turning on the burner on which my teakettle rested, I accidentally turned on the burner with plastic dishes on top.

Thank God for fire alarms. 

I rushed out of the bathroom, and Adam jumped out of bed, to find angry, thick, black smoke swirling overhead. We ran into the kitchen to find a huge fire a-blazing on the stove! 

Things from here on are blurry. I remember Adam heroically confronting the fire... by blowing on it. I was a little more concerned about the neighbors forming a mob as the fire alarm pierced the air at nine in the morning, so I grabbed a fan and got it out of the box at superhuman speed. Amazing what adrenaline will do for you!

I also remember Adam dropping to the floor and crawling on all fours over to the front door to open it. Me, being much more practical, took three large leaps to the door and yanked it open, watching a huge puff of smoke billow out. I ran out, hacking and coughing. 

There were several neighbors standing outside, just watching. And then I suddenly hoped I had tied up my bathrobe securely when I threw it on.

After all was said and done, I am now short one cookie sheet, a Pyrex dish, both my spatulas, and a 1/4-cup measuring cup-- the cause of the fire. I hope to have some pictures for you someday.

I had to go to work in an hour, so I jumped in the shower. The ash had migrated into the bathroom. Dear Lord...

AND... I didn't ever get to have my coffee. Talk about adding insult to injury!

I wouldn't mind if this was all that happened. Unfortunately, those of you who have observed plastic burning have also probably noticed the stringy ash it produces. Every single inch of my house is now covered in the stuff. Luckily, the one exception was the bedroom, so I have a nice, soot-free place to go tonight. However, I spent that entire day cleaning the kitchen alone. The soot got into the cupboards, so I've been washing many dishes. 

AND I've been washing them all by hand. Because evidently the only thing that works on this ash is Liquid dish soap!

AND I accidentally broke the French press while I was cleaning. This was clearly NOT my day! Either that, or God is going to great lengths to break me of my coffee habit.

So now, I will always look twice before turning on a burner!

WFMW-- Handy Recipe Helper

Graciously hosted by Rocks In My Dryer.

Ahhh, sticky tack. Its uses have matured with me. That wonderful substance reminds me of Sunday School giving charts (why was the fifth-grade class "thermometer" always higher than my class-- except for when I was actually in fifth grade myself? Hmph), and later on held any thing I ever hung on my dorm wall in college.





Come to find out, it has also become very handy in my post-dorm days: namely, for keeping the recipe I'm currently working on from getting covered in oil, obscured by a flour bag, or just getting lost. Any cupboard will do!




Works for Me! (and for my recipes, too)

The Great Kitchen Re-Do

I did something terribly Downright Domestic the other day. It all started innocently enough. The coffee pot for my nifty coffee maker/espresso machine has been broken for a while, so I decided to get the coffee maker out of the way to free up some space in the kitchen. Our kitchen has a ton of counter space, as far as apartments go, but I was always bumping into something when using a rolling pin, and having two people working on something at once was impossible. No "Honey-Do's" were possible at my house! (and DH was glad)

Long story short, after I got the coffee maker out of the kitchen and noticed all the fine space newly available, I couldn't stop! I rearranged all the counter space, with its various and assorted items, until everything was as streamlined and convenient as could possibly be. I can finally reach inside the canisters that previously required contortions. The knife block is right next to the area(!) where I actually chop things up(!). I had a CD player in the kitchen for those long nights of scrubbing dishes-- with an accompanying disheveled heap of CD's. No more! Now (and I really wish I could show you pictures, but for some reason, the computer isn't reading my camera chip! Grrrr), the CD's are inside a box, with the CD player on top. The microwave has been banished to a corner, leaving lots of free space for two people to work on things ("Oh, Honeeeeeeey....").

I love love LOVE it! I would encourage anybody to take a look at her kitchen and take stock. Are there any little frustrations with the setup? Is there anything that can be moved, or even put in a cupboard to free up some space? Are things in the general area where they are used? (potholders and utensils near the stove, canisters near the area where batters are made) Just a minor rearrangement can make a world of difference!

WFMW- Homemade Instant Oatmeal

 I despise having to wash one single more dish than I absolutely have to. One morning, as I was cooking a pot of oatmeal, I bemoaned the fact that not only did I have to wash the breakfast dishes, but the pot that the oatmeal was cooking in, as well. I make lots oatmeal during the week, which equals a lot of pot-washing. I thought back to my dormitory days, when all I had were those instant oatmeal packets. All I did was add boiling water...

EUREKA!

I discovered that this does not work only with over-priced, sugary packets of oatmeal, but it also works with bulk quick oats and old-fashioned oats, too! Here's how you do it:

1. Put on some water to boil. 

2. While you're waiting for the water to boil, scoop the desired serving amount of oatmeal in the bowl you plan to eat out of. The oatmeal will expand a little, so don't fill the bowl too full!

3. When the water is boiling, pour it over the oatmeal. Be generous, because the oatmeal will absorb a lot more water than you think it would.

4. Let it sit for a couple minutes (the old-fashioned oats take just a wee bit longer). Put on all the toppings you like (I myself love cinnamon, brown sugar, and walnuts), and enjoy!

No more dirty breakfast pots! That works for me!

Mercy

The other day, I showed up to my voice lesson exhausted, running there in between shifts at the restaurant. It was supposed to be my day off because of slightly important things, like, you know, attending class so I can earn a degree already; however, the restaurant decided I had slightly more important things to do, like, you know, serve to Coke to crabby businessmen. So much for the arts!

My voice teacher is an operatic baritone who has sung all over the world and has made many appearances on NPR-- and yet he is so humble and is very fatherly to me. We were talking about restaurant work and how crummy the pay is. I bet you didn't know that restaurants just assume that waiters will make enough tips per hour to make minimum wage, so they get away with paying the waitstaff next to nothing. My restaurant pays me a whopping $2.15 an hour to be there! It had been a grueling weekend, with me working doubles for several days and then finishing that off with a ten-hour workday. I felt more dead than alive. My teacher, who has been through all that (starving musician and all :-P), sympathized with me, didn't push me too hard, and wished me a good evening at the restaurant when I left to go back to work.

At work that night, I went to the kitchen to get something, and dragged myself back out... to see my voice teacher sitting in my section! (he told me later that he asked the hostess, "Could you seat me in Maria's section?" and she replied, "Which Maria?" Tee hee, work is so hilarious sometimes!) He ordered a good-sized meal, chatted with me whenever I passed by, and left me a $10 tip for a $12 meal! I was very touched, to say the least. I suddenly had more energy for the rest of the night.

It was a little thing, stopping in for dinner and leaving a few extra bucks, but it meant a lot to me.

And then, last night, I waited on some truly horrible people.

It was a combination of me still being new to the job and them just looking for someone to be ticked off at, I think. They said hurtful things to my face and then left angry, mean writings on the receipt (and, of course, no tip). And then there was another table that I waited on hand and foot (and believe me, they had me running back and forth from the kitchen nonstop). They ran up quite a tab and then... left no tip. Nothing anywhere. It's quite amazing what tips will do to a server's ego. Not to mention the pocketbook! I was exhausting myself and not even making minimum wage. So there I was, so tired, and suffering thoughts of failure, shame, and financial worry.

I went to the restroom and had a meltdown for a few minutes. I wanted to just leave that crummy restaurant with all its crummy hours and crummy customers. 

And then I thought of my teacher from a few nights before.

And I received the strength and the will to go on. I could forgive those not-so-nice people and give control over to God. Not everybody that goes to restaurants is horrible (just most of them :-P), and I am a good waitress.

Moral of the story? Be kind to people! You never know when your actions will help your friends long after the fact, even if it's as simple as cheering them up on a Monday night in a restaurant. If you made it this far in my ramblings, good for you! 

A Day Off!

Today, I have a day off!-- sort of. Those four credits I need in order to get a diploma? That... happens... tonight... in a four-hour Chemistry Lab. The things I will do to graduate! The good part, though, is that Hubs is also in the class, so we get four solid hours of quality time blowing things up together. Hooray!

Since I worked long hours this weekend, the house has devolved into a state of domestic emergency. My Domestic Duties of the Day:

Grocery shopping

Baking bread

Baking breakfast muffins

Doing laundry

Finding the dining room table again

So now, I'm going to go off and be Downright Domestic.