To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
~ e. e. cummings
First of all, thanks for the good thoughts and well wishes regarding the aide interviews, parent-teacher conferences and my infernal migraine. I survived the day on Wednesday and by yesterday afternoon, the headache was gone, whew. There were two clear favorites among the four candidates, a third candidate who would probably be fine as well, and a fourth that would've been a great choice had the position been "hostess or bartender at Hooters" instead of "aide to work with a five year old kindergartner" ....... Let's just say that the skirt was in the "micro-mini" realm and the top was in the "revealingly tight and low cut/unbuttoned" realm and the hair, make-up and nails all in the "large and heavy" realm and that it was very difficult to get beyond the appearance and presentation to picture the candidate actually, you know, down on the floor in the OT/PT room doing yoga or deep pressure with Kiddo. Hoo boy.
Anyhow, there were definitive top choices, and the process is underway to get one all vetted and hired, and there is a slim chance that things could move quickly enough for her to start on Monday (she said she'd be available to start then, at any rate, so it's all a matter of the hiring process moving forward). Failing that, we're supposedly to have the same substitute who was hired for last week (yes, another new person to Kiddo, I've lost track of how many folks this has been now since September to work with her...) but that person no-show/no-called on Wednesday, so not sure what the story is there. Just one more reason to hope that the permanent aide can be in place for Monday.
I felt very good about the top two candidates and so am hopeful that things will go well if everything works out with the rest of the hiring process. A cautiously optimistic WOO-HOO for that!! (Also, the parent-teacher conference went very well, and Kiddo's excellent work even at the kindergarten level made Hubby and I quite proud of her, so woo-hoo for that too. She's a little smarty-pants, our kid!)
It's funny, the dressed-for-Hooters candidate totally gave me flashbacks to my pre-SAH mom days job. See, I worked in "vocational rehabilitation" for individuals with disabilities. That's a fancy, official sounding way of saying my department helped folks with disabilities (of any sort) find and keep jobs in the community. One of our main programs was a "supported employment program" which involved job development and job coaching. Part of the SEP was a weekly "job club" in which we taught various resume creation, interviewing and other job-related skills to the program participants in a group setting. We had a few program participants with rather interesting ideas about interview-appropriate clothing, and more than once I arrived to pick up a client to take him/her to an interview and had to request that he/she go back into their home and change into something more appropriate before going to the interview. For that one candidate in the "I'm going clubbing right after this interview" ensemble, I would totally have recommended a clothing change, I can assure you.
On a completely different note, I've been tagged in meme land. The fantabulous Vickie issued a photo challenge, in which I should go to the fourth photo folder on my computer and then post the fourth picture therein. Here 'tis:
This picture was taken on June 20, 2003, the weekend after Kiddo was released from the NICU and home with us. She was almost one month old (so this is still before her actual due date) and she was about 4 pounds, 10 ounces. (To give you an idea of how not-very-big she was, the onesie she is wearing is a "newborn" sized onesie and you'll note it is a wee bit large for her! We had a heck of a time finding preemie-sized clothing at the time - there were just a few places that had preemie sizes for reasonable cost. I was so happy when she was finally large enough to fit in newborn sizes so she didn't look like a baby David Byrne...
Oh HECK, we just lost power for the briefest of moments and yet it was enough to lose about 500 words of this blog post! ARGH! And now, of course, I'm out of time and must get on with my day, so I'll be back later to do the rest in another post. Perhaps it was the universe's way of saying "Ahem, Heather, your post is getting too dang long already!" ...... Before I go, though, please don't forget there is still ONE MORE DAY to enter my very first giveaway for a terrific CD that we have been enjoying (in between rounds of Christmas music) here quite a lot! Click here to enter and good luck!
Okay gang, please think good thoughts for me today. The interviews for the four candidates interested in being Kiddo's sensory diet aide are this morning starting at 8:30, and then we have our first kindergarten parent-teacher conference tonight at 6:00. The headache that was at Level 4: Mildly Annoying when I went to bed at 9:30 last night, chock full o' drugs to kill it, instead morphed into Level 10: Major Migraine this morning. (If it goes to Level 11: a Spinal Tap Would be Preferable, I'm in serious trouble.) I've downed another handful of meds and ingested some caffeine for good measure. I'm a little shaky and the screen is seeming really bright (I know, WTH am I doing blogging then?) but I'm not feeling nauseous anymore and I can open both eyes at the same time without keeling over, so that's an improvement.
Oh how I hope these interviews go well and we find someone who will be a GREAT fit for the position. The school year is almost halfway over and we're still not where we should've been back on September 4th, and that probably isn't helping my headache any.
I'll let you know what happens later, if my skull hasn't exploded.
Woo-hoo, Merry SITSmas!! First of all, if you aren't here via SITS today, get right over there and check them out! It's the most fantabulous blogging networking community around, I'm telling you! Go now, I'll wait, but then please come back....
Okay, everyone all SITSified? Excellent. Where was I? Right, SITSmas. I'm already doing one giveaway (see post below, please - it is an excellent holiday gift kind of a giveaway!) but for SITSmas, I wanted to do a little something more. So, I made a little bloggy stocking stuffer, if you will - a little blog bling you can use to decorate your corner of the interwebz for the holidays.
If you want it, please help yourself to the code below my card!
Oh yes, the card. Now, I know that most folks are doing something along the photo card line, but I'm doing a little bit more.
It isn't that I didn't want to deck the halls, I mean, we decked our halls the day after Thanksgiving...
We even took Kiddo to see Santa (armed with her list, spelled entirely on her own, so she proceeded to read it to him to be sure there was no miscommunication)...
It's just that I felt a wee bit bad about the whole George Clooney video thing, with how I only kept that up for 24 hours. So, I decided to do another video as my SITSmas greeting card to all of you. I shot this one myself which means it is pretty shoddy camera work, and I did it in one take, so it's not perfection, but I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless. (Oh yeah, and while I may be able to jam one of Kiddo's tiaras on my ginormous head pretty well, it turns out that borrowing her itsy-bitsy Santa hat doesn't work as well on my big ole noggin. It's more "resting precariously atop" than "being worn upon" as you might notice...) Here, therefore, is my holiday greeting to all my SITStas and BITS!
(SITSmas blog bling code:)
(PS - Don't forget to check out the giveaway going on in the post below this one!)
I am SO excited because this is my very first giveaway! The prize is really cool, too - perfect for a holiday gift for the special kid(s) in your life, or even for you to enjoy yourself.
What's the prize? It is this:
the Jazzy Fairy Tales CD from Jazz for Young Children. Now, we have our own copy of this CD (thanks Rachel!) and it gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from every member of our family. Kiddo's favorite is the 3 Jazzy Little Pigs, but they're all spectacular. (The storyteller's voice reminds me a bit of Cleo from Between the Lions on PBS, which is just another plus in my book, as we are big Between the Lions fans here too.) Anyhow, it is a great CD that blends great music into familiar fairy tales to give them a fresh, exciting twist, and I'm giving a copy away to one lucky reader! All you need to do to enter is leave a comment here on this post and tell me your favorite fairy tale, or if you don't have one, your favorite jazz song/artist/group. I will randomly draw a winner from the comments received on Saturday afternoon (that'd be December 6th), so you have until noon on Saturday to enter. Please be sure I have a way of contacting you (so if your profile information on the comment doesn't give me an email address, please leave it in your comment) to get your information if you are the lucky winner! Good luck!
(Oh, and if you are within driving distance of the NYC area, check out the Jazz for Young Children website because they do performances and conferences that you can attend live and in person! I wonder if my corner of upstate counts as "driving distance" hmmm.......)
Hey y'all, doing my best to type here with my grievously injured finger. "What?!" you say? "Grievously injured?! Oh no!!"
Indeed, grievously injured. Sliced from the tip of my finger right down to the first joint. Sliced on the corner of a packing tape dispenser's cutting thingamabob, so it was nicely serrated and sharp. Yee-OUCH! (Which was decidedly not the word that came out of my mouth at the moment it happened. I was listening to Christmas music at the time and I think I made the reindeer blush brighter than Rudolph's nose with the bomb I dropped in that initial blaze of pain.) It cut deeply, too. Deeply enough that it began bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig and would. not. STOP. I wrapped it in a bandage wound tighter than a tourniquet and tried to get on with my day. Danged if it doesn't turn out that this finger is rather essential to my daily functioning.... I mean, it's on my dominant hand, but still, it isn't like my thumb or index finger. Nope, 'tis my middle finger. So not good. It does come in handy with the whole "enabling me to flip Hubby the bird whilst innocently pointing out my injury" though... When bandage number one fell off as I was shampooing Kiddo's hair, I noticed that it began bleeding again. Dagnabit. I was tempted to treat it with some Krazy Glue (in lieu of that actual liquid bandage stuff, of which we have a bottle but I couldn't find it anywhere) but refrained and re-dressed it with a Cinderella, waterproof bandage instead.
That was just the crowning glory of my later afternoon, mind you. I also had cat hairball barfings, grumpy and overtired Kiddo meltdowns and dirty kitty litter boxes to contend with. So not the way I'd envisioned my day going, I can assure you. Humph.
Annnnnyhoo, I had a craving for some chicken pot pie, so I whipped up a batch for dinner. I have a crazy easy recipe which I feel I must share because it is soooo delicious. Yes, even with my injured, essential-to-maintaining-a-decent-typing-speed finger, I will give you the recipe. THAT is how good this is! Here 'tis:
2 chicken breasts, diced into bite-sized pieces 1 can cream o' chicken soup (I use the reduced fat kind that is 98% fat free) 1 small bag of frozen mixed veggies (I mean, you could use fresh veggies, but I'm giving you the EASY-n-LAZY way to do this) 1 box of cornbread mix (I usually use the Jiffy brand, but you know, any brand will do - cheap is good)
Okay, here's how you do it:
Saute the chicken pieces until cooked. (I do this with a little garlic and onion powder and a dash or two of pepper, plus a tbs or two of olive oil. However you want to season/cook your chicken boobs, go for it.) Nuke the veggies per cooking instructions, if they are slightly underdone that is fine. Heck, I've even done it with them still frozen.
In a glass baking dish (I use the 8x8 square, or double the recipe and do it in a lasagna pan), combine cooked chicken, can of soup and veggies, mixing well.
In a separate bowl, make the cornbread batter, adding a little extra milk (the recipe on the Jiffy box calls for 1/3 cup, I usually add closer to 2/3 cup) so the batter is slightly runnier than usual.
Pour the cornbread batter over the chicken/veggie mixture and bake at 400 deg (or whatever temp the cornbread box calls for) for 20ish minutes - you want the cornbread to be golden brown on the top and cooked all the way through.
Serve it up and it is a one dish meal of deliciousness! You can see where substitutions can be made to the basic recipe, it is quite forgiving that way.
During dinner, we listened to my copy of the giveaway prize for my big giveaway tomorrow. More about that at midnight! Yes, it is a musical prize, and it earned major thumbs up from Kiddo and parents alike!
So, after the delicious dinner, I gently carried my injured finger upstairs to finish up my SITSmas card for tomorrow's big event. I popped over to SITS to see what was up and lo and behold, I found out that the grand prize for tomorrow's big SITSmas event is
a $200 Target gift card!!!
WOO!
Now, I had the giveaway mojo going on strong for a while there, earlier this summer. That's what won me that adorable camera (love it!) and a Target gift card in back-to-back weeks. Then, I lost my mojo. Yes, I offered to pass it on to many of my less-winning SITStas, but when SITS did a big Blogathon back in October, I tried my hardest to conjure up my mojo again so I could win the grand prize that day. You know the prize.... a certain autographed photo of a certain George Clooney..... Yeah, that would be the prize I did NOT win. (sob sob) However, my mojo seems to've returned to me, as I eventually did win George when the Blogathon winner gave the picture away a couple weeks ago. So, now that George is safely home with me, I am hoping to crank up my mojo and win that gift card! I've spent every last penny already in my mind... So, if you haven't joined SITS already, hustle yourself over there and join up so you can participate in the SITSmas event with giveaways every hour tomorrow, all day long! Just don't win the Target card, 'cause that is mine, mmmkay?
Anyhow, I've finished up my SITSmas card and my giveaway post, so they'll be going live at midnight. Now I'm off to nurse my injured birdman with a bowl of ice cream. At least it'll numb my pain... See you in a few hours!
I sat down to write a post at least a half dozen times yesterday, but never could gather the various strands of thought into anything coherent, so each time I found myself playing Wordscraper or looking at lolcats instead.
There are BigDoings going on here tomorrow though, so I want to get all the rambly bits out of the way for that. By Big Doings, I mean my very first giveaway as well as a special holiday greeting for The Secret is in the Sauce's first ever SITSmas Celebration. So, if you want to skip the mindless meanderings, feel free to just pop by tomorrow instead!!
And now on with the ramblings. Probably going to be a long one, just so you're warned....
We went to church yesterday for the first time in a while. We are in a sort of church limbo right now, as we want to find a new church home that better meets our needs than where we have been members but we can't find a new, permanent church home yet because we aren't sure where exactly we'll be living in the spring. We don't want to find a new church and then discover it is nowhere near our home in six months, but we don't want to just not go to church for the next six months either. So, we decided we'd go back to the church we belonged to when we first moved to town. We'd left that church ultimately because of the pastor, not because of the people in the congregation or anything else. Well, that pastor is no longer there and we'd heard from friends that still belong there that the new pastor is great, so we decided to give the new pastor a try. Yesterday was the first time we'd been back there to worship in several years, and it wasn't nearly as weird or awkward as we'd thought it might be. We stumbled about a bit in trying to explain to the new pastor (who was eager to welcome potential new members, as pastors usually are) what our exact situation is - "Hello, we used to belong here but haven't for several years and now we're planning to worship here for the next 5 or 6 months, but then we'll be moving and aren't sure whether we will keep attending here or where as that will depend on where we move exactly..." But as we'd figured, the folks that remembered us welcomed us back with open arms, the pastor and his wife greeted us warmly, the service was much more satisfying and uplifting than any service we've attended in ages, and I even was offered my old spot in the choir back. There also were several other children Kiddo's age so when she went to the "Discovery Center" following the Children's Moment during the service (you know, where they take the kids out so they don't sit through the sermon and do an activity with them elsewhere), she wasn't the only kid her age - there even is another kindergartner from her school who goes there. That was one of our issues with the church we've belonged to for the past few years - there are very few children and even fewer who are close in age to Kiddo. It has been hard to make the decision that we were not going to continue worshiping at the church we've belonged to for the past several years (I miss the choir and the people in the congregation especially), but it got to the point where we had to do something, and I'm glad we finally did, even if it is just a temporary stop until we settle in to a new home in the spring. At that point, we will begin to look for a church home that will meet all our needs and hopefully be close to our new neighborhood as well. I grew up going to church every Sunday and our family was very involved in the church. I went to Sunday School and was in the youth group and the choir and all that good stuff as a kid. However, the church we went to was a few towns over, so there was always a bit of a disconnect for my siblings and me, as the kids we were in Sunday School and youth group with at church all went to school together in a different school district than the one we attended. I'd very much like it if Kiddo could go to Sunday school with the same kids she goes to regular school with, so she doesn't have to have "church friends" and "school friends" the way we did. So, we'll see where we end up in the spring, but for now, I'm just glad we have someplace we can attend until that point. Especially so since Advent started yesterday - Advent and Christmas are my favorite times of the year. I mean, yes, Easter is definitely a more important holiday, but I love the anticipation and joy of Advent and Christmas. I especially love singing the Christmas hymns each week and seeing the sanctuary all decorated for the holiday.
Speaking of the holidays, today marks the beginning of the countdown to Heather's Holiday Extravaganza. You see, my birthday, Christmas and my wedding anniversary all fall within the next six weeks. While the bloom is well off the rose with my age rapidly advancing towards the big 4-0, I still enjoy my birthday nonetheless. I am wondering if I can still claim to be in my "mid-thirties" once my birthday rolls around this year, as I will be 37, which could go either way - mid or late. Hmmm. I suppose I can get away with "mid-thirties" for one more year, dontcha think? Mostly, I'm looking forward to the birthday cake. This year I've chosen a carrot cake from a local establishment known for two things: cheesecake and carrot cake. Kiddo and Hubby love this carrot cake as much as I do, so I am sure that there will not be leftovers for long after the candles are extinguished. Hubby has made all sorts of fantabulous cakes for my birthday in years past, everything from chocolate wonders with a delectable ganache to lemon and raspberry confections complete with homemade lemon curd and raspberry coulis. While I have always appreciated his heartfelt and amazingly tasty efforts, this year we're going store-bought and as my birthday is less than two weeks before Christmas, having one less thing to worry about doing is always a good thing. (Oh and PS to LL Bean: if you feel like sending me one of these for any one or all of my upcoming holiday celebrations combined, I will gladly mention it with raves and exclamations of joy even more than I mention George Clooney, okay? Pretty please? I've been drooling over it for ages now, but can't justify such an expenditure for a purse with our budget, so I will happily be a walking advertisement for this bag if only you'd send me one, preferably in the brown leather... Well, a girl can dream, can't she?)
Kiddo is presently obsessed with all things Christmas. She spends most of her spare time making new ornaments for our tree, which we put up on Friday. The cat also is obsessed with the Christmas tree, in that she enjoys climbing it, batting ornaments off of it faster than Kiddo can create and hang them, and sleeping on the tree skirt underneath it (which is made of a cozy felt...) when she needs a rest from her tree-destroying labors.
When Kiddo isn't creating masterworks of art for the Christmas tree, she is in her room playing with her VeggieTales nativity set. I wouldn't have a problem with that at all - better she plays with the set that is made to be a child's toy than the way I used to like to play with my mother's antique, porcelain, fragile nativity set when I was young - except that when one presses the Christmas Star at the top of the stable, one hears a little song, and that little song is more annoying than any other song one could imagine at this time of year, especially when repeated over and over and over again. Seriously, it is worse than The Christmas Shoes, which is my all-time least favorite Christmas song. *shudder* Oh the treacly, overwrought melisma of that song, ew ew ew! I'd rather listen to Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer on repeat than hear The Christmas Shoes just once. By the time the angelic children's choir joins in, I'm ready to start throwing elves or jamming candy canes in my ears. And the little ditty that bursts forth (sung by Junior Asparagus in a tinnier-than-usual voice) from the VT Nativity? Worse than The Christmas Shoes, I tell you! It turns me positively Grinchy Green after enough listenings...
Which reminds me, I have all the Christmas specials set to record this week so Kiddo and I can gorge on Rudolph, Frosty, Charlie Brown and the gang for the rest of the season. We own the Grinch (I mean the *real* Grinch, the original, animated version) on DVD so we can watch that over and over without having to FF through the commercials as well. Kiddo's still a few years away from being old enough for A Christmas Story, though I can't wait until she's old enough to watch that with us (we own that on DVD too). This is the 25th anniversary of A Christmas Story's release, which I saw for the first time for my birthday, along with several of my friends and my dad (Mom stayed home with the too-young-for-the-movie young'uns). I still remember how hard we all laughed, especially my dad, that first time we saw it. Hubby and I quote lines from the movie year-round, too, I mean, doesn't everyone?
In non-holiday related items, Kiddo's principal called me this morning to say there are four candidates for the sensory diet aide position, and she hopes to have interviews scheduled for this week. This is a short week with no school Thursday or Friday because of conferences, and there is supposed to be a substitute in place until the permanent position is filled, so hopefully Kiddo gets her full sensory diet in the interim...
Well, I need to get to the post office and mail off the final batch of holiday cards (I never can figure out the proper postage for international mail, so I need the post office employees to tell me) and also to mail the ornament to my Christmas ornament exchange person, as well as running a hundred and three other errands, like returning books at the library, doing some Christmas shopping, getting the oil changed on the car, etc. Since I have such a busy Monday ahead of me, I'd better stop rambling here and get to it! Congratulations if you've read this far and please do come back tomorrow for all the excitement!
Pssssst.....I'm going to be having my very first giveaway sometime next week! (Hopefully Tuesday!) It involves something wonderful from this site, in case you want to peek ahead of time... Stay tuned - oooh, and that's totally a hint, too, since the giveaway is music related!
It's that time of year again - holiday card season! I, for one, am a huge fan of holiday cards. I mean, what's not to love? You're getting fun mail in your mailbox every day for weeks - something other than catalogs, bills and junk mail, you get to catch up with family and friends (even if it's just at this one time a year), it's a dash of daily holiday cheer delivered to your doorstep, or at least your mail collection spot. I also love the holiday card update letters. I get extra excited when I open a card and a folded-up piece of paper falls out. I love reading everyone's news, I love pictures of families or kids or pets. I *am* a Christmas nut, after all, and this is one of my favorite parts of the season.
I realize, however, that not everyone adores the holiday update letters as much as I love them. Hubby, for example, isn't as much of a fan. He put the kibosh on our own update letter several years ago and has lobbied against its reinstatement successfully every year since. So, I'm curious - which one of us is in the minority, him or me? I've put a poll over yonder in the sidebar, feel free to voice your opinion on the subject there or in the comments or both!
This? Is heaven on a plate: the Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich on a fresh bakery roll. (That'd be turkey breast, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy, all warmed, then topped off with some cranberry sauce.) Finish off the meal with a slice of whipped-cream topped, chocolate pecan pie and the perfection is complete. It is somewhat messy perfection (a spoon was ultimately required as I overloaded my roll and had what Hubby called "Lunch Fail" as I lifted the deliciousness to my mouth for the first bite) but perfection nonetheless!
In other news, I ordered our holiday cards and they'll be ready to pick up in a couple of hours, so this year I am determined to have them all mailed by December 1st. (This is my usual goal, but that modifies into "before my birthday" which then further is revised into "before Christmas" as things get increasingly hectic.) I'm going to be on top of things this year, oh yes indeed! (Oh, if anyone out there in the blogosphere is dying to receive a Smith family holiday card, email me your address and I'll add ya to the list! True, it's no autographed George Clooney picture, but it is Kiddo in her Christmas dress posing with the Jolly, Old Man in Red...) There are some things that I can't do way ahead of time, like all the baking and candy-making Kiddo and I do for presents each year, but other than that, I will not be a Last Minute Annie (as my mother nicknamed me when I was a kid) who is panicking and overwhelmed by the to-do list come December 21st or 22nd... Nope, I'm going to be on top of things and have a relaxed, un-panicky Advent season. *deep breath* Here I go!
RED and GREEN Friday for my family! This is our traditional day to put up and decorate the Christmas tree, hang the lights and get reacquainted with my snowman figurine collection. (Have I mentioned I love snowmen? LOVE snowmen. I visited our local craft/antique co-op the other day and could easily have spent hundreds of dollars on the various snowmen figurines, ornaments, wall hangings, etc. Ohhhhh, how I love snowmen, especially the cutesy, country-crafty kind.) Today is also the day when Kiddo and I, who have been listening to Christmas music for weeks already whenever Hubby isn't in earshot, are able to crank up the holiday tunes in Hubby's presence without him being able to grouse about it. Woo! (Technically, we cheated a little bit - I sat down at the piano after dinner last night and Kiddo and I sang a few holiday tunes while Hubby was carving up the remainder of the turkey. Did I mention we roasted a 16 pound turkey for just the three of us, well, plus the cat who would gladly eat twice her body weight in turkey... But twice her body weight in feline turkey toots is lethally noxious, so we kept her consumption to a minimum.)
I do love Christmas music, even more than my snowmen. It's my favorite part of the Christmas season, actually. One of my favorite Christmas albums is one I first owned in vinyl record format back in 1979. Today, it's on my iPod and also in my CD collection, and Kiddo loves it, too. Here's a little video clip (not the greatest quality, but the best of the available options on YouTube) of one of the tunes on this classy, classic album:
And on that note, I'm off to start hauling the Christmas boxes out of the basement! Happy Black - or Red and Green - Friday, everyone!
