Red beans and rice

So, tonight I made red beans and rice. Don't get too excited, it came from a box. ;-)
Sam and Monkey spent the day on base. I called them at lunch time and apparently they had decided to have lunch at the bowling alley. About 3 hours later, Monkey calls me and tellsme he doesn't feel well. They finally got home a little less than 2 hours later, and Monkey sat on the front porch and got sick in my flower bed. :-\ Poor fella! After he got sick,he said he felt much better. I guess we will see how he feels in the morning.
Bug came rushing in the door and said he was goin to the neighbors because it was her birthday. Way to let me know ahead of time so we could get a card. Frustrating!
Tomorrow is Sams going away party. We're going to his FAVORITE place in all of Jacksonville, Mongolian BBQ. I'm not quite sure if we've ever taken the kids here or not. If not, I guess it will be a new experience for them. Let's hope they don't throw a fit and actually eat!
I'll try and get some pictures from the Going Away/Retirement party tomorrow and post them! :-)

Welcome back!

So, I kinda really suck at blogging lately. Sorry about that...
I decided that I would come back with a recipe. A couple of people asked me for this on my facebook page, so, I thought I would share it.

We had Hamburger Soup and homemade Olive Garden bread sticks. They were DELISH!! I don't follow the recipes exactly, because I just cut stuff up and go "Yup... that looks about right" and toss it in for most things (like onions carrots and celery in this recipe)

Hamburger Soup

Ingredients

• 1-1 1/2 lb ground beef (we used ground chicken)
• 2 cups diced onions 
• 1 cup diced carrots
• 1 cup diced celery
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 (14.5 oz) cans of chicken broth (I used beef) OR 5 1/6 cup (same measurement)
• 1 (15 oz) can crushed tomatoes
• 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1 stick (or 1/4 cup) butter
• 1/2 cup flour

1. In a large saucepan or soup kettle, cook the beef, onions, carrots, celery, and garlic over medium heat until meat is no longer pink and the veggies are tender; drain fat. Stir in broth, tomatoes, Worcestershire, and hot pepper. Bring to boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
2. In another saucepan combine flour and butter on low hear. Cook for 6-8 minutes until golden brown. Be careful not to burn! Carefully stir into soup. Cover and simmer for an additional 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

This yields a fairly thick soup. I added salt and pepper and we still have quite a few left overs. The kids LOVED it and we ate it again for lunch on Sunday. 

Olive Garden Bread Sticks

Ingredients

Dough

1. 1 1/2 cup hot water
2. 2 Tablespoons sugar
3. 1 Tablespoon yeast
4. 1 Tablespoon salt
5. 2 Tablespoon butter, softened
6. 4-5 cups flour

Topping

1. 3 Tablespoon melted butter
2. sea salt
3. 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Stand mixer directions (for those luck enough to have a stand mixer!)

Pour the water into the bowl with the sugar and yeast, let sit for 5 minutes. Add salt, butter, and 2 cups flour. Mix dough on low, adding the rest of the flour half a cup at a time until the dough scrapes the sides of the bowl clean. Mix the dough about 5 minutes on medium speed, until soft and easy to work with. (see below)

By hand directions (for the rest of us.)

Pour the water into the a large mixing bowl with the sugar and yeast, let sit for 5 minutes. Add salt, butter, and 2 cups flour. Mix dough, adding the rest of the flour half a cup until unable to incorporate using spoon. Mix the dough on well floured surface until soft and easy to work with.

Roll the dough out into a log, spray knife with cooking spray and cut dough into 12-14 pieces. Roll those into smaller logs. Spray 2 large cookies sheets with spray and lay the bread sticks out, leaving an1-2 inches between each. Place them in the oven with the temp on about 170. Let them rise for 15 minutes or until doubled in size and remove from oven. turn oven to 400 and let heat. Brush with 1 1/2 Tablespoon of the melted butter and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake in 400 degree oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Combine remainder of butter with 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder and brush the tops of baked bread sticks when they come out of the oven. Serve immediately. 

Sam and Bug both said that they needed more butter, but Monkey and I thought that they were just perfect. These really do taste a lot like the Olive Garden breadsticks! They're very light, and it's REALLY easy to eat the entire batch way too many!! I'm going to try my hand at taking better pictures, and maybe even having some more pictures for a tutorial or something. 

Today is just NOT my day!!

This morning is NOT looking like a good morning for me... not even a little bit.

Our friends Bob and Keona are leaving today, so we had a little cook-out get together here at the house last night. Well, since there were 4 kids and 4 adults, we let the kids sit in the living room and eat. Their lil guy who is 2, was sitting on the floor eating his mac & cheese and hot dog so I decided that all the dogs should be in the dog/laundry room. Now, we were doing some hard core cleaning yesterday and Sam (in all his wisdom) put every single piece of clothing that was on the floor in the dirty clothes. Now, normally I do a fairly decent job of putting clothes up and hanging the ones that need to be, but lately it's gotten away from me. Well, HALF of the clothes that were in the basket were clothes that still needed to be put away and were sitting in front of Sams dresser for him to put away, which were still folded. *sigh* While we were having our little get together, the laundry was sitting in the laundry room, in baskets, waiting for me to run it thru the appropriate cycles of wet and dry, along with the dogs! Well, Dusty must have a love of khaki pants because she pulled a pair of Sams pants right out of the basket, pulled them into her crate, and chewed the button right off the top!!! I discovered that this morning when I went to feed them.

But the first thing that set me off was when I woke up! Doc woke me up an hour early by barking FROM THE LIVING ROOM! Apparently Sam had slept on the couch (again) and shut the door to the bedroom with only Dusty and Lilly in the bedroom (where she has no problem not chewing clothing... strange) and so during the middle of the night he must have gotten cold or something because he went into the kids bathroom and tore out every single bit of TP and everything else that was in the trash can (I have no idea why TP is in the trash can and not being flushed down the toilet) and placed it in various areas of the house ranging from the hall to the bathroom to the living room. There is a nice little trail actually!

I noticed before I even got out of bed that Sam didn't hold up on his end of the bargain for having the windows open last night! It was FREEZING! The current temperature is 38 degrees at almost 8AM. It was colder when I woke up.... almost 4 hours ago. Sam was SUPPOSED to close the windows up before he came to bed... but I guess his argument will be that he didn't come to bed so he didn't have to shut the windows. *heavy sigh* When I asked him last night where my big, thick, keeps-me-warm-at-night comforter was he responded with "I threw it away because it had holes in it." *sobbing* So, instead of having a sheet, a throw, and comforter so I can turn my fan on and drown out his TV show... I have a sheet and a throw.... and a Greyhound... LOL There was NO WAY I was turning on that fan... not even pointing away from me! It was already cold enough as it was, but when I tried to get Sam to shut the windows... noooooooo!!! I have a feeling that I'm going to come down with a cold sometime soon... :-/

OH! Remember my last post about going to the eye doctor and needing a CT? Well, the drops are working a bit, but now I'm on 2 drops because the itchiness didn't go away. I was supposed to have a CT with contrast, but apparently my body doesn't want the contrast!

A couple of days before I was supposed to have the CT done, I was having episodes where it felt like someone was punching me in the chest and walking away, complete with the feeling that I couldn't catch my breath. I complained about it to my bestie and she said "Well, you have been anxious a bit lately, maybe it's just anxiety?" I chalked it up and went on about my daily business. That evening I started having REALLY bad chest pains! It felt like I got punched in the chest, no matter how deep I breathed I didn't feel like I had enough oxygen, it hurt to breath, move, my arms were tingling, it felt like someone had their hands around my throat right under my jaw bone and the pain went up into my neck and my jaw was tingling! So, of course, I send my loverly sister the Cardio Nurse a text message asking her what I should do, and she said that if I were one of her patients she would send me to the hospital. So, we packed up and went to the ER. When we got there, there were quite a few people there, but, I was having some SERIOUS chest pains and figured that I would be called back to at least triage right away. NOPE! They gave me a beeper and told me to have a seat. I sat in the ER for more than 2 hours before I got fed up and decided that whatever the ER could do for me right there, they could do for me in the morning, and I walked up to the front to tell them we were leaving, and that I was SHOCKED they hadn't even gotten me into triage in the 2 hours I had been sitting there. So, of course the nurse gives me some crap answer about being busy with other patients while she was looking for my chart.... which she couldn't find! When she finally finds it and looks at it she tells me that if I continue to have discomfort to come back. It was terrible. I thought I was going to die. It hurt so bad! I did eventually fall asleep (after saying my prayers extra well... just in case... ;-P)

The next morning was my CT... and I told them of my chest pains and they told me they couldn't do the contrast and to go to the dr. So... we went back to the ER. It was MUCH better in the daytime! Right into a bed and hooked on about 6 different machines! My starting BP was something like 156/89 (when it's normally about 110/72) with a resting heart beat of 112 (when it's normally about 80). I got some tasty (Seriously! I wanted more!) orange Asprin, blood drawn, chest xray, EKG, all kinds of stuff... and it was all within 10 minutes of walking in the door! Of course, they all asked me why I left and I told them exactly why. If I was going to die, I would rather it be in my own home and not in the ER waiting room. They asked me all kinds of questions that I didn't exactly have the answer too (family history stuff... I'm never good with that stuff....) They said that they were okay, but not normal, and told me to follow up with Cardio. Well.... the way our insurance works is, we have to have EVERYTHING done thru our primary first, and if they can't do it, then we're sent to a specialist. When I made my appointment it was SUPPOSED to be Dr Hott-stuff, but apparently he couldn't make it because it was Dr I'm-50-and-think-I'm-20 Hippy. She told me that there was NOTHING wrong with EKG and that if I insisted on being sent to a Cardio then she would put the referral in but didn't think I needed it. She also told me that the thing that the ER dr was calling "suspicious" could be anxiety... then she changed her mind and said I probably had heartburn and was going to test me for some bacteria via a needle stick, gave me a script for what is basically Malox... then changed her mind again and said it was a heart murmur. I took my 2 EKGs and faxed them to my sister. ;-)

I have to call today to see if they got my referral back yet so I can see who my dr is and get an appointment set up. I was going to try and get back into shape, but I think that I will wait until I get the all clear from cardio before I decide to do any exercising other than some yoga and some squats and crunches!

Overall... It's been a CRAZY last week!!!!

Eye love going to the Dr!

Remember when I scratched my eye? Well, it kept giving me problems. CONSTANT problems, dry itchy, painful almost every day and when the lights are low, there is a dark blurry spot in the middle of me eye!

So, after much pushing and prodding from my friends, I decided that I should probably make an appointment to see the doctor about it. When I did finally go see the doctor he was very helpful . He gave me some eye drops and told me that if my eye didn't get better that he would put in a referral for me to have a medical exam at the eye doctors. It didn't get better and I got my referral. :-/

I go to the eye doctor yesterday and he says that my eye is really red, and I tell him it's also dry and itchy as well. Basically he told me that I have Episcleritis.

He's also sending me for a CT scan to see what could be causing the dark circle in my vision. I will have more info for you guys in about 3 weeks.

It's perfect... and I hate that!

So, I know that have been gone for what seems like a zillion years! Sorry about that! Quite a bit has changed since the last time that I wrote.

So... my eye is still acting all wonky (yes... it's a very technical word!) even tho I scratched it all the way in the beginning of JULY!! I go to the eye Dr on Tuesday. I'm hoping that he can look at it and tell me what's wrong. You would think that a scratch would have healed by now!

The garden wasn't a complete loss, but, it wasn't that great either. Hurricane Irene kinda wiped what was left of our garden out. Of course, there wasn't much left after my trip to Houston!!

Hubs has FINALLY got his medical board findings back! he's going to get 100% medical retirement!! WOOOHOOOO! He's basically decided that he wants to go to school for Electrical Engineering. Which is fine. Whatever he wants as long as he follows through with it!

So, like I normally do, I put the cart before the horse and decided to look at some houses. This is super dangerous!!!! 1) because I always find something that I like II) because I have no idea what areas of town are "good" or "bad" and C) because I absolutely found the most beautiful house that I could ever hope to own and it's significantly less than what we paid for our modular!!! I'll show you guys... it's here. If I could, I would drop everything and move right into this house immediately! Why do I do this to myself? I find "the one" and know that by the time we are ready to move it's not going to be there. :'-(

That's all for now... I'll try and come back and update this with a better post... but.. I thought I would revive the ol' blog here tonight. :-)

Just wanted to tell you about this

So, just for a little disclosure, I did receive this product as a promotional gift, but all of the opinions are my own and I have no received any compensation other than the free use of their product.




As part of a BzzAgent campaign I received a free year of back up storage from SafeSync.

I often don't back up my information. It's just not something that I do. I figure that if something is REALLY important on my computer, then I've already got it stashed away somewhere online (facebook, myspace, picasa, and photobucket for pictures and gmail for pretty much everything else.)
I started thinking, when this promo came up, about how not everything is safe online, and how SOME things I DON'T put online. In comes SafeSync. I can upload all of my content that I want to save to SafeSync and it's safe! (hence the first part of the name) Now, say that while I'm at my Mommas next week I decide that there is an important document that I need to work on. It's stuck on my computer! Now, I could call Sam and have him email it to me, and risk him not finding the right document, or not even being able to find it at all. With SafeSync, as long as I've uploaded it, I can access it from wherever I am with a web-based interface! No downloading to Mommas computer. (I'm sure she would appreciate that!)
So far this service looks like it will be fairly easy. The interface is simple and easy to navigate. I haven't been able to see about how easy the web interface is when I'm somewhere else to retrieve it, but, I may just do that when I go down to Mommas and let you all know! :-)
Now, if you, my loyal readers, want to have some protection as well, I've got a code that you can use for a discount! If you go to SafeSync and enter the code "BZZ20" you will receive a discount when you sign up! :-)

I wish I was my dog

Doc and Dusty have the EASIEST lives in the world. I guess they deserve it tho.