Rabies Anyone?

So, you remember that we were visited by a  bat, right?  I'm not sure I even finished that story. We did eventually catch it.  Early on a Wednesday morning, coincidentally, the very day we needed to get up early and go back to ECMC for our last rabies shots, my hubby woke up to the bat circling his head. Clearly, the bat liked him.

My husband, now on a mission to get this bat, started clearing every last bit of everything out of the room. Curtains, furniture, bedding, etc. He finally cornered the poor, tiny little thing hanging on the inside of the bed skirt. His brother had brought him a fire extinguisher thingy that sprays cold air. The bat was knocked off the skirt and ended up on the floor where my husband and I caught it in a box.

The County came and took him and, sadly, he was not rabid. So it was all for nothing, which makes me really unhappy.

But now, we have a new, possibly-rabid friend who keeps coming to visit.  Here's a little sample of what has been happening in our yard:

Yes, we are now the most favorite visiting place for a skunk who is uprooting our front yard to find all the juciest grubs.  My husband takes his lawn very seriously and has spent much time and money on it this summer, since this is an area where we have had trouble growing grass.  There was a pine tree in that spot - planted by my father in the 70's, I might add - that my husband insisted on cutting down because of the grass. Personally, I don't care about grass.

I said that the skunk is doing us a favor by getting rid of all the grubs now and anyway pretty soon it will be winter, so there will be no grubs, no grass and no skunk. He was not amused.  

Now, he's talking about getting a pellet gun and shooting the skunk. I've pointed out that we don't know if he's a good shot, since he has never, in my recollection, ever shot a gun. And even if I wasn't against killing woodland creatures, which I am, in my opinion, skunks are not animals that one should unnecessarily annoy, as they can make things very unpleasant. Really. I'd rather he trapped it or something, but I'm not sure tangling with a skunk in any way is a good idea. Unlike bats, skunks can and will defend themselves in a way that won't be fun. 

 At this point, I'm thinking we should just let the animals take over.

Glee Is Making Me Gloomy

I'm a little sad right now. I think Glee may have failed the Buffy test. We're three eps into the season and so far I've had to force myself to watch each ep more than once.

The first ep, which I was so excited about, fell flat for me. Mostly cause I didn't know any of the songs. Not one. Unless you count that little snippet of Every Rose Has It's Thorn. I'm not a Britney fan, so the second ep was the same way. I don't even get being a Britney fan. From my perspective, Britney is a fat, gross, slut with addiction issues. I continue to be completely unimpressed with her.

So then we come up to this past week and Grilled Cheesus. Now they're just trying too hard. It's like a child who's been really spoiled by too much attention and thinks they can get away with  more than they can.  I just didn't even get the point of that entire ep, unless it was just to make me hate what a whiny little jerk that Kurt has become even more than I did from the week before.

This is going to be hard for me, cause I loved Glee season 1. I have all the music and everything. Look, I never said I had excellent taste or anything. But how can you truly hate on musical numbers with choreographed dancing delivered to your living room every week? You just can't.

But I think I'm starting now. Three more eps is all I'm giving you Glee. Get back to the happy days of music I like, kill off all the whining and let's have more Sue Sylvester. Or this is where we part ways.

Sigh.

Breakfast anyone....

I'm still trying to eat better, when at all possible, but it gets harder as the weather gets colder. In wet, cold, yucky weather, I crave comfort food, all of which, while comforting, tends to be on the less healthy and more fattening side as well.

So I was very proud of my new breakfast cereal invention this week. I've been having lots of yogurt, plain, with berries, which was great for the Summer, but wasn't cutting it as we head into Fall.  So this week I made up a weeks supply of a yummy, healthy, fruity, nutty, grainy hot cereal that's been just perfect.

It was really easy.  Here's what I did:

I toasted 1/2 cup each of millet and quinoa, added a tablespoon of butter, a touch of sea salt and some stevia. (Don't ask for exact amounts, cause I don't cook that way.) Then I added almond milk (about 3 to 1 to the grains),  brought it to a boil, reduced to a simmer and cooked for a while (1/2 hour maybe).  Added more almond milk (1 1/2 cups), brought it to a boil again, then 1/2 cup of oatmeal , cinnamon, vanilla, peeled and chopped apple, chopped dried apricots and cherries, toasted slivered almonds and chopped pecans. I simmered for about another 10-15 mins and voila!

It was warm and creamy, but had a crunchy texture, too. It even looks good.

I'm excited thinking about what other fun foods I can make up this winter that will still be comforting, but can take the place of less healthy alternatives.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

A conversation at work about Jennifer Grey on Dancing With the Stars got me to thinking.  First of all, it brought to mind all stories about how Grey and Patrick Swyaze didn't even like each other while they were filming Dirty Dancing. I firmly believe this, cause why would they even say that, since Hollywood prefers to make everyone be in love. Up until the moment that they need a story about their break up, that is.  But anyway, they just seemed to try so hard on DWTS to make us know that this was Baby we were seeing here. Baby was dancing for us again, with a guy who is young and handsome, just like Johnny Castle was back in the day.  Sorry, but I wasn't impressed.

Anyway, back to thinking. What it made me think about was what movies I have to watch whenever I see them on. What I mean is, if I'm flipping channels and a particular movies is on, from that point forward, I'm forced to watch. Well, not forced, exactly, I want to watch, but still I have no choice. I MUST watch them.

So, in no particular order, here are the movies I must watch when I'm scrolling the channels:

1. Dirty Dancing - Bet you guessed that one was coming just from the way I spent the first two paragraphs of this post talking about it.  I just  love this movie, it's fun and musical and full of young people and dancing and human rights and ...wait a minute, it's like High School Musical or Hairspray, only with sex.

2. Independence Day - My family always watches a movie or two on Thanksgiving, after the food when we are all sitting around in a stupor.  Well one year, when this movie first came out and we hadn't yet seen it, my husband went out with my nephews to choose a movie and came home with this video, which he decided to buy rather than rent. I think it cost like $20+ and I wasn't happy.  I actually refused to watch it with them.  It has since become one of my favorite movies and I watch it every year on 4th of July (but not on Thanksgiving). Even so, I end up watching it probably three times in that week, since there is generally at least one station that plays it over and over again. What can I say, I'm just a sucker for aliens, explosions and computer geeks.

3. Jurassic Park - The first time I saw it was at my sister's house. For some reason, she had bought it and she and her husband were having a "viewing" to which they invited me and my husband. I recall spending much of the movie with a pillow from her couch clutched in my hands, ready to cover my eyes at any scene I didn't feel up to seeing at that particular moment.  We were terrified, but in an awesome way, so whenever I see it on I watch cause I want that feeling back.

4. Beautiful Girls - Just seeing little baby Natalie Portman and Tim Hutton talking about Winnie the Pooh makes this movie worth a watch every time. Honestly, do you need more than that?

5. The Truman Show - I'm not really a Jim Carrey fan. In fact, I dislike him intensely when he's being what I would loosely call funny and I simply tolerate him when he's being serious. Of course, this movie is serious and somehow, when I'm watching it, I can completely forget that I'm seeing Jim Carrey. So I guess that makes him a good actor....hmmm.  In any case, this is just one of those movies that sucks me in when I see it. Suddenly, I'm watching it, again, and I'm still somehow expecting him to be able to sail his boat right out of there.

6. Silverado - I'm a fan of westerns and this is one of my faves. I remember the first time I saw it and was introduced to a crazy acting Kevin Costner for the first time.

7. Legally Blonde - Can you say shallow? OK, fine, maybe I am. But this is such a FUN movie.

8. The Shining - How can anyone resist the lure of Jack Nicholson's "Heeeeerrre's Johnny"  which gets me, every single time? And the woman in the bathtub and those creepy kids in the long hallway.  But only the original movie, not the remake. As I always say, accept no substitutes.

9. A Knight's Tale - One scene:  We Will, We Will ROCK You.

10.Back To The Future - I actually saw this about a week before it first came out as part of a test audience. It was the only time I've ever been in a movie where everyone in the theater was applauding and encouraging the hero. Out loud. It was just such a neat group experience. I feel like I should still be friends with those people, although I didn't know them and this happened back in 1985.

11. Terminator - I already mentioned my thing for explosions and computers, right?

I asked my husband and he said his movies were Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Good Fellas, Scent of a Woman and Riding in Cars With Boys.

Yes, we are very different.

So, what are your "can't pass by" movies?

The Buffy Test

I read a blog post the other day at Dating After 40 about using your favorite TV shows as a dating scale. It got me to thinking. Not about dating cause, since I'm already married, I'm fairly certain that my husband wouldn't look kindly on my deciding to date other men.

Since we've just entered the Fall TV season, it made me think about how I determine which shows to watch each year.  My husband has always thought I watched too many shows and, I'll admit, in the past I've watched 20+ hours a week, which may seem a bit excessive, depending on how you look at it.  But keep in mind that I wrote two different entertainment blogs at the time and you can understand the need to watch that much TV in a week. And honestly, it's less than 3 hours a night anyway.  Just because he never watches anything or reads anything or has any other interesting hobbies, is that my fault?

So, um, where was I? Right, how to decide what to watch this year. Normally, I have this system whereby I watch every single show I want to, as long as I'm able to DVR it and can find time to watch it at some point before the DVR (fine, two DVRs) was full.  That basically meant that I could record up to four shows at the same time and, if I really needed to, watch another one on a different TV.  I could even, if absolutely necessary, watch a show or two online at some point, too.

Even worse, once I started to watch a show I felt like I had to finish out the season and, often, once I finished one season I felt the need to keep watching. As though I owed the show something. Last year, I implemented a new policy. The "three strikes and you're out" policy.  If I didn't absolutely love a show after the third ep, I was done. It was better and it cut way down on my TV watching, at least by the end of the season. 

This year, I was even more ruthless. I decided to only watch the bare minimum of shows I really, really want to watch. But even then, I've been starting to think that I may have chosen too many.  So then I read that blog post. I've been thinking, maybe I should use a similar litmus test for what shows I'm going to watch.

The show I'd use as my standard would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is, as anyone who knows me already knows, my very, very most absolute favorite show of all time. Ever. I couldn't miss an ep when it aired and I watched every single ep at least three times in the first week.  I've seen each and every one of the 144 eps (also the original pilot ep) at least 25 times. At least.

So, now, I'm comparing every show on my list with Buffy. If I'd rather watch a repeat of an ep of Buffy that I've already seen 25+ times, then the show is totally off the list.

Probably. 





 

Holy Bats!, Man

I realized that I had neglected to share our bat story, which is still ongoing, I might add.  I've told it so many times, I guess I just forgot about you people. So here it is. 

A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday night/Sat morning, my poor hubby got up to the let the dog out and then went to sleep in our front room cause it's cooler and quieter than our bedroom in the back. Planes landing at the airport, which is about 3 miles away, shine their lights in our room all night, but I can sleep through anything and he can't. So anyway, around 4 am he got up to use the bathroom, felt something on his hair drop down, hit his chest and hit the floor. Just some dirt. He went back into the room and Bella was sitting up on the bed. He sits down and suddenly sees something flying around the ceiling over his head. He grabs the dog and runs out, closing the door and knocking over the hall table in his haste to exit the room. He's not too proud of that part, so I love sharing it.

I vaguely heard the crash of the table and then the dog being put down on the bed next to me.  He turned on the light and woke me up. He says, "don't get scared, but there's a bat in the house." I say, still half asleep, "OK, just turn on the light, open a window and he'll fly out." I'm not afaid of bats. He's not happy with this advice, since it involves his re-entry into the room with the bat, but he does it anyway. He does not look to see if the bat is still in there.

At this point, I'm awake, so we walk all over the house picking up bat poop (the dirt he found on his head!), which is basically all upstairs in our sitting room and in that front bedroom, and looking to see if the bat is somewhere. We don't see it, so we figure it must have flown out the window. We go back into the front room, close up the windows, turn off the lights, shut that door and go back to bed. It's about 5:30 am.

My great nephew Jofus (how his sister Natalie says Joseph), who's about 1 yr old, came over on Saturday around 9:30 am and we kept him til around 4 pm. Of course Bella is licking Jofus all over his face cause she can - they are at the same level and he can't stop her. Normally, that's not an issue, but we didn't take rabies into account. My nephew and his wife come in to get the baby at 4 pm, both pet the dog. They take the baby back to a party where he interacts with lots of people.

My husband comes home from a caricature job around 7:30 pm and I mention that he should sit outside during dusk to see where the bat may have come in the house. He ignores me as he so often does.

At around 9 pm, he's upstairs watching a movie, Bella is in the kitchen eating and I'm in my mother's room setting her hair (I have to do this every week and I HATE IT!!!) when her phone rings. He says, "Guess what? The bat is still here and it's big. Close the door." I close mom's door, but then he realizes that we don't know where Bella is, so I run back out to find her. I am dressed in a little cotton babydoll nightie with spaghetti straps cause it was very hot. This is not bat hunting apparel.

I get about half way through the living room and suddenly the bat swoops down the stairs towards me. When you are moving or making noise (and, yes, whimpers are noise), bats dive towards you. They are using their sonar to figure out what you are and your size. I know I said I wasn't afraid of bats, and I'm not, but honestly, when one is circling over your head, repeatedly diving towards you, traveling at excessive speeds, mostly, you're just thinking "BAT!!"

So I'm now cowering on the floor, calling Bella, who comes from upstairs.  Clearly she was with my husband the whole time. She looks at me like, What? What? I call her over and hold her while being divebombed. Can't make it back into mom's room cause of the bat who keeps circling the living room and hallway back up the stairs and around, so I head into the kitchen. I put Bella down in the foyer, turn back and no bat.

I've been on the phone with my husband the whole time and he's been upstairs opening windows trying to entice the bat to go outside. He comes down, we meet in the living room. No bat.

We both go back upstairs and look around and nothing. So we call these people that he's heard about recently who capture bats and other wild creatures, called Crittr Gittrs. (Yes, that cutesy.) We speak to them on the phone, it's after 10 pm by now, and they give us lots of pointers on how to catch the bat and scare us silly with stories of rabies, death and quarantines. She insists we call the emergency number for the department of health, which we do. This was our first big mistake. Also, the guy was kinda stupid (typical County employee) but sorta gives us some info, too.

Now we have to swing the opposite way. At first, we were turning on all the lights and opening windows to get the bat out. Now we were told to catch the bat, so turn off all the lights and close the windows, leaving just one open window, with the screen in place, per room, and turn off the ceiling fans. The point being that bats roost when the lights come on, looking for the darkest place and come out in the dark, seeking the air currents. Of course, it's really hot, really, really hot, so closing windows and turning off fans is even less fun than it sounds like.

Anyway, it works, the bat comes back out and starting circling the living room. At this point, I was hiding in my mom's room with her and Bella, and my poor husband, who is still terrified of the bat is out there, dressed from head to toe in warm clothing and gloves, walking around our dark and very warm house, looking for it.  At one point, the bat came at him in the dark while he was walking down the stairs. I hear this little yelp on the other side of the door and I'm all worried.  Turns out, he hit himself in the face with the garbage can he was carrying to trap the bat and almost fell down the stairs.

The bat, meanwhile, refuses to land or head to the open window so he calls me and tells me to call the Crittr Gittrs, which I do and they come over.  By the time they show up, it's 11:36 pm and the bat has once more disappeared. They walked around our house for 2 hours. Mom, Bella and I fell asleep. By 1:30 am, there was no bat found and I owed them $200. I had to put on one of my mother's flowery house dresses to come out of her room and pay them, too, since I wasn't really wearing the appropriate clothing for a visit with strangers. I should have changed earlier when I had the chance, but I was too busy being stressed out.

They left. Yes, they just left. We couldn't afford to pay them any more. We head back upstairs and finally go to bed a little after 2 am. With the lights on.
 
So on Sunday, we ended up staying home all day because we weren't sure about rabies. We went through closets and our office (stuffed with crap) and took all the pics off the walls, all the curtains and blinds down, we put towels in all the doorways so that when the bat came out, we could close the doors and completely block it out of rooms. We got all dressed for bat hunting, we had boxes ready, nets, sheets, my nephew even came over to help us catch it.

It never showed up.

Monday night was the same, we were all ready. My husband was completely stressed out about it. I was watching TV and typing up some letters and he was getting all mad at me cause I wasn't scared or worried. I said, would it make you feel better if I was terrified, standing with my back to the wall in the dark with a net clutched in my hands. He said, YES!!

We still had to sleep with the light on, but by Monday night it was a little light in the bathroom. So he was clearly getting better. Tuesday night I asked him to sleep in the other room so I could turn all the lights out.

Well, we haven't seen the bat since that Saturday night. But we still have the rabies shots to remember him by. We both have to get nine shots overall, but that's a story for abother day.

The Yeast of These

I'm seriously trying to cut all the yeast out of my diet for a while to see if it makes me feel better.

This is insanely hard. No sugar, no wheat, no caffeine (which means withdrawal headaches) and no fruit. I'm still finding food to eat, but not much. My husband said that this is the diet for people who don't care about food. At all. Unfortunately, none of the people living in this house fit into that category. We basically plan our lives around what we are going to eat and when.

So right now, for breakfast, it's plain yogurt. Plain. No sugar, no fruit. Plain. And maybe an egg. But those two things don't go together. An egg should be fried and served with toast. Only no toast.  Lunch has been a salad, lettuce, tuna, hard boiled egg, cukes, radishes. You can have spices and olive oil, but no vinegar. So boring salads. (Although I did make a sort of poor man's ranch dressing once, with yogurt, and it was interesting.)

Dinners have been pretty good actually.  One day it was flounder that I poached in a sauce I made with diced tomatoes and onions, basil, oregano and bay. No white wine, cause no alcohol.

So many things are fermented, who knew??

Then I sliced and grilled an eggplant (not a fan really, too slimy) and steamed some broccoli.  We've also had another vegetable I'm not too fond of, brussel sprouts. No, really. But I did roast them in the oven with garlic and toss them with butter and crumbled bacon. (It was this great recipe I saw on the Food Network, and it almost made me not hate brussel sprouts.)  We've also eaten lots of chicken, salmon, tilapia, turkey, broccoli, zucchini, onions, peppers and green beans.

See lots of veggies, but very few of the ones I really like. *sigh* I want mushrooms and carrots and corn and peas. I want potatoes.  Wait, who am I kidding?  What I really want is a hot butter caramel sundae with pecans and homemade whipped cream from Antoinettes.

But I have been learning to make lots of the foods I love in another way. It's taken a few tries for some things. I've perfected an amazing rice pudding, with brown rice, almond milk and stevia. I ate the entire last pan, all by myself, in about a day. I'm serious.

I've also been maying soy/buckwheat muffins. I experimented with all sorts of different flours, cause the first batch was terrible. Terrible. Within a day it was covered in mold and we threw it all out. The second batch was slightly better, but now I've got it figured out so at least they are edible.

This morning, I even made buckwheat pancakes and they were really good. I mean, really, really good. So maybe it is possible to live without sugar.

For a while.