Ten Things

"I MUST HAVE MORE NOOK! I AM GOING TO DIE IF THERE ISN'T A NEW POST BY TOMORROW! THIS IS TOO MUCH! HAVE MERCY AND POST SOMETHING ALREADY! IT"S BEEN TOOOO LOOOONG!!" said Bop the Dinosaur, my children's under-appreciated stuffed toy, to me recently. Bop is quite awesome and has excellent taste, and is invited to my next dinner party. He and I are pals. Actually, he is invited to ALL of my dinner parties.

Now, I wouldn't want to bring unnecessary fatality to my classy Jurassic friend, because otherwise my dinner parties would be extremely sparse in attendance, so I am coming up with a post even though I have two small children, recently moved across the country, am cooking and housekeeping for 6, am de-cluttering and organizing our current living space, and am assisting in cleaning out 50 years of stuff from my husband's grandmother's house that is being sold as she now lives in a nursing home and must be empty by November 16th. Dear Bop: you owe me one. You'd better bring the booze. Or at least an appetizer.

Here are Ten Things that have been going on in my life lately!

1. See paragraph above. It explains a lot.

2. Hurricanes, Snow, and Nor'easters, Oh My! Luckily for us, Maine has kind of been hovering somewhat above all of the crazy apocalyptic weather stuff, so we've only gotten some windy flurries and the occasional downpour, and never even lost power. I am grateful. I love Big Weather, but having six feet of standing water in my basement is NOT something I would want to be dealing with right about now.

3. I finally started appraising my coin collection. I inherited a foreign coin collection from my grandfather and have picked up random additions to it over the years. After many recent blissful hours watching Storage Wars, Pawn Stars, and American Pickers (thanks to my in-laws, I now have TV for the first time in seventeen years. How, oh how,  did I live before the History Channel??), I have developed an acute interest in collectibles and their value, so of course I was all nobly prepared to go online and discover what I had known all along, that my cigar box of assorted metal bits is worth Thousands of Dollars and that I have been sitting on a Veritable Gold Mine and that I Will Be Going On A Two Week Long Cruise When The Snow Starts To Get To Me This Winter, Thank You Very Much.

You can see where this is going.

Yeah, most of my coins are worth about a buck apiece. Some of the solid silver ones in good shape might sell for $10. MIGHT. Woohoo. Save the cruise for next year, I guess.

4. Baby C seems to be growing. Shocker, I know. I have been tipped off to this by the fact that we have had TWO major blowouts in one day (if you don't know what a blowout is, well, consider yourself very fortunate indeed!) and by the fact that ALL of her 0-3 month clothes, which fit her just fine yesterday, are too small today. This is not an exaggeration. They literally did fit her on Wednesday, November 7 and now, on Thursday, November 8, they don't. The Nook Is Now Accepting Donations Of 3 Mo. + Baby Girl Clothes. And College Fund Contributions.

Also, I am 73% sure she is starting to teethe. Seriously. Max started teething at 3 months and had his full set of teeth before he was two, so it's really not impossible. I can feel a couple of very hard bumps on those gums and she is drooling like crazy and has been a little warm, and enjoys gnawing on my knuckle and practically purrs when I rub her gums. The poor kid is 11 weeks old. Time to break out the baltic amber.

5. I am slowly, but surely, learning to love being in the kitchen again. I took about a year off from my adoration of cooking - being pregnant and mothering a toddler this year kind of took it out of me. I used to LOVE to cook. Then I was morning-sick and nothing sounded good. And then I was starving and only wanted steak, gummy bears, and McDonald's french fries. And then I weighed 172 pounds and it hurt to be on my feet too long... especially after serving coffee to people for eight hours straight... and then we were selling everything and packing, and then we were moving, and then I couldn't fit in the kitchen even if I wanted to, and then I had a newborn and couldn't be bothered to do anything but sit on the couch and stare at her and then we were flying around the country and then driving 3,021 miles and the whole cooking thing was just ridiculous.

Happily, with settling in and a slow return to normalcy, and a houseful of working people who need to be fed after I've been home alone with a kitchen all day, I have been forced to cook - but I've actually had the time and energy to cook, and am falling in love all over again. I developed a propensity for burning things this year but that seems to be changing, too! Maybe it's the time-and-energy thing. All I know is that I semi-deep-fried (shallow fried?) hoe cakes tonight and Didn't Burn Them, For The First Time Ever. On an electric range, no less. And dang, unburned hoe cakes are GOOD!!

With all of this magical Cooking and Time and Energy flying around, I might even come up with some more The Nook Cooks posts. We'll see!

6. I love Pioneer Woman. Sigh!

7. This coming Monday, Todd and I are brewing our first beer! Finally! Okay, so we aren't doing it all by ourselves. His dad and his dad's brewing partner/best friend Dwight and Dwight's kids are helping, too. But it will be my very first Brew Day here in Maine and I am STOKED. Stoked, I tell you! I may even write a blog post about it! You have been warned. [UPDATED: Here's the blog post!]

8. I have been horribly remiss in practicing my fiddle and banjo lately. They stare at me forlornly from the corner of my bedroom where they live, and it's quite sad. But it's really, really hard to play when the only time you have both hands free is after everyone else is asleep and then you can't play because, obviously, everyone else is asleep. And I'm sorry, but one-handed banjo just sucks. 

I have been trying to fill the banjo-sized hole in my heart by watching YouTube videos of others doing what I cannot. Alas.

9. Apparently, I Am On A Let's-Capitalize-The-First-Letter-Of-Each-Word-Like-We-Are-Really-Making-A-Statement Kick Right Now. It's Just A Phase. It Will Pass.

10. It's after midnight and I'm too tired to think of a real #10. Sorry. I hope that was enough for you, Bop. If you only manage to bring yourself to the dinner party and don't bring the appetizer and the booze, we will just put out carrot sticks and nip out of the vodka bottle I use to make pie crust and it will all be okay. 

...10 1/2. Vodka in pie crust. Yes. But that is a Post For Another Day, My Friends. :-)