Time to let me know if you want a holiday postcard! (And yes, of course I’m happy to send cards to other countries!) Send your name and mailing address to hollydays@gmail.com .
I’ll take names and addresses until December 20th.
If you’d like to send me a card as well (never ever required, but always appreciated – I don’t keep track of who does and doesn’t send a card, I promise!), send it to: Robyn Anderson, PO Box 461, Athens, AL 35612 USA.
“Halp!”
©Forgotten Felines
“I need a name!”
Forgotten Felines is having a raffle to name this sweet boy – $5 buys you one chance, and you can buy as many chances as you’d like. Go here to read about him, and enter the raffle to name him!
So, recently I went back on the hormone replacement therapy estrogen patch. I was intending to go back on it at the beginning of the year, after my gynecologist strongly recommended that I do so. But I was having surgery in February (cue 103 of you searching frantically on “surgery” and “surgery February” and “what surgery?”), so my primary care doctor told me I ought to wait until afterward, because blah blah something about blood clotting or not clotting or bleeding or I don’t know. Something about blood. Come on, it was PRACTICALLY a year ago, I’m supposed to remember the specifics?
I waited until after surgery, and then I was about to go back on the estrogen (with a progesterone cream chaser) for real, but then I knew I’d be having surgery in October (cue the “October surgery” and “surgery” and “what surgery?” searches), so I waited some more.
FINALLY, when I got back from Pennsylvania a week and a half (ish) ago, I restarted the patch and the cream and it’s been fine.
Except, of course, for the hormonal swings as my body tries to figure out what the fucking fuck is going the fuck on. I swear to god, I feel like I’m 13 years old again, with the mood swings. One minute I’m all “HIIIIIIIIIII I AM HAPPY!” and the next it’s like “OH MY GOD THIS COMPUTER IS SO SLOW WHY DO I BOTHER TO LIIIIIIIIIVE?” Last night, I woke up a little after midnight with what I’m pretty sure was a HOT FLASH. Okay, maybe a mini hot flash. But why am I having goddamn hot flashes, mini or no, when I never had them BEFORE I restarted the damn estrogen/ progesterone?
The other night I was watching this video (of rescued Beagle puppies who’d always lived in a lab and were being rescued), and I was fighting back the tears so hard that if Fred had come in and asked me anything at all, I would have dissolved into an instant puddle on the floor.
I know it’ll take a few weeks (months) for my body to figure this shit out, but in the meantime AIN’T WE GOT FUN.
When I was in Pennsylvania, someone asked in Nance’s comments (to this post) which Real Housewife we’re each most similar to. First we were horrified at the idea that we might be like ANY of those crazy bitches. Nance finally decided that she’s probably most like either LuAnn (NY) or Kim Zolciak (ATL).
I still don’t know that I am anything like any of those women, but I’ll admit that I’m worried that I’m probably most like Cynthia from Atlanta because she’s wishy-washy and spineless and boring (but beautiful!) and her blowhard husband irritates the shit out of me and I don’t WANNA be like HER, even though she’s super nice and everything. I’d like to think I’m most like Adrien (BH) sans all the Botox and lip injections, because she seems the most level-headed and seems to pretty much stay out of the drama, but she bickers with her husband way more than I bicker with Fred.
I like Bethenny, but I’m not anything like her because while I find her hilarious, she’s way too high-strung. She’s probably my favorite of the Housewives. I like Kim Richards from BH because she’s just so ODD, but she’s neurotic and I find her taste in men HIGHLY questionable.
Anyway. Um. So there ya go. Maybe I’m like Adrien, but I’m afraid I’m like Cynthia (please, god, noooooooooo).
Sunday night dinner: chicken, sauteed chinese cabbage and onions, and Paula Deen’s Cheddar-Yeast rolls.
The chicken was a Crooked Acres chicken, of course, one that’s been sitting in the freezer for almost a year. I rubbed some spices on it, cooked it all day in the crockpot with a little stock, and it was so very good. We have a Ronco rotisserie which we occasionally use to roast chickens, but they’re such a pain to clean, given that the fat from the skin splatters everywhere, that I prefer the crockpot.
We ate our first head of chinese cabbage – I’ve had one head bolt, and a second was starting to, so I pulled it up. I’ve read that when they bolt they get bitter, and I’ve never actually (to my knowledge) had chinese cabbage before, so I didn’t know what to expect. It didn’t taste like cabbage to me; it tasted more like collard greens. It was definitely good, and I think next Spring I’ll actually plant a row of it in the big garden.
About the rolls, the only smoked cheddar I could find at the store cost almost $8 for a small block, and I knew I had sharp cheddar in the freezer at home, so I used that instead. The rolls were good, but I’m not sure I’ll make them again – not because they were hard to make (they weren’t), but they lacked… something. Fred said maybe just more salt, but I don’t know. I did like the clover look (I love it when rolls pull apart easily like that), but I wasn’t super crazy about the flavor.
Do you have a favorite roll recipe? Do share!
Side note: I cut the roll recipe in half (there are two of us and we don’t each that much bread; 18 rolls would sit on the counter ’til they got all moldy), and still ended up with a dozen (which means we’ll probably end up with moldy rolls on the counter. Unless I freeze them. But I think I didn’t like them enough to save them for another time).
The many faces of Chuckles (AKA Charlie Peppers).
Do you remember back when we had a turned-on-its-side trash can in the back yard under the trees? Sure you do, Sugarbutt loved to hang out in it all the time.
Well, the trash can developed a hole in the end from being tossed around when it was windy, and so we tossed it and for a while there was nothing under the trees for the cats to hang out in. Then we got a small dog house and put it on the patio, and this past weekend I had Fred move it so that it was under the trees where the trash can used to sit.
It was, to say the least, a hit.
Sugarbutt on top, with Corbie sitting on the stump behind him, trying to figure out what’s going on.
Corbie in the house!
Alice on top, while Jake and Elwood supervise (I shot this out the window while sitting at my desk, thus the cloudiness. Someone oughta clean that window.)
Jake’s wondering how Alice got up there.
These last few days it’s been raining almost constantly, and last night at snack time I went out to call the cats in, and the little house was like a clown car, cats pouring out of it. Sugarbutt, Tommy, Elwood AND Jake had all stuffed themselves in the house somehow. I need to put a towel or bed in there so that they don’t have to shiver on the bare wooden floor, the poor dears.
Previously
2010: *That’s a lie. I love to be a stickler for details. I THRIVE in the stickler-detailed environment. My tagline should be “Detail-sticklering since 1968.”
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: Why can’t I just buy bubble clothing that only touches me at the neck and knees? WHY?
2006: On my way to somewhere important, I’m sure.
2005: Perhaps I’ll make it my New Year’s Resolution to not fill my house with crap in 2006.
2004: Ever had one of those days when you just can’t remember the name of anything?
2003: No entry.
2002: I keep wanting to use the phrase “Sweet crappin’ Jesus!”, and just haven’t determined the right moment to do so. Maybe in the middle of sex?
2001: Her name is Brady James.
2000: If I knew whodunnit, I’d beat that $300 right out of his ass, the little bastard.
1999: They all tend to sound alike, you see, and hearing basically the same sound over and over ain’t the thrill at 31 that it is at 11.