The Pooka Life

I am the queen of sleep.

There is no dispute, ask anyone who knows me, I have a gift. I can sleep for days. In highschool, my parents thought I might be anemic due to my sleep schedule. I think they even had me tested for it but it was a no go. My blood work was fine, I just loved to sleep.

I remember, on weekends, my dad would make breakfast. He’d come into my room and tell me to wake up. I’d mumble something and just fall back to sleep. Eventually, he’d come in and take all my blankets. That would usually convince me to get out of bed and join the rest of the world.

Now that I’m an adult (at least in the eyes of the law), I’m able to sleep to my heart’s content. On a typical weekend, I’ll hop into bed around 11pm and awake the next day sometime around 1pm bright eyed and ready to get going. This presents a strange time warp because by the time Kevin is ready for dinner at 6pm, I’ve only been up for a few hours. Oddly enough, I can fall right to sleep at 11pm and wake up the next day at 1pm with no problems for two days back to back. So on a typical weekend, I spend 28 hours sleeping and 18 hours awake. What can I say, it’s a gift! If I’m really tired, I’ve been known to sleep through days. I’ll hop into bed on Friday and won’t arise until Sunday afternoon. I think I was a bear in another life.

Kevin, however, cannot join me in restful slumber. He is plagued by Blitz. That’s right, big fat fatty has Kevin trained. At 7am every morning come rain or shine, fatty sits by the front door and begins to meow. She wants out. Now. Kevin will hear her mournful cries wafting up the steps but can bury his head under the blankets and tune her out. After a few minutes of no response, fatty moves to the bottom of the stairs and continues to wail. Again, Kevin will bury his head and hope she gives up. Next thing he knows, the crying has moved closer – she’s on the railing at the top of the stairs. He can almost feel her glaring at him through the comforter. He lies very still and hears a thump, the bed shakes, and before he can save himself, fatty is squatting on this shoulder, bellowing into his ear. At this point, Kevin gives up. He stumbles out of bed, bleary eyed, and drags himself to the stairwell. By the time he gets there, Blitz is at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him, thinking, “Come on tubbo, move it, I want out.” She continues her cries while Kevin plods down the stairs and opens the front door. She slips out without a backward glance and Kevin hauls himself back upstairs where he tosses and turns for 20 minutes before giving up and getting up for good.

We tried to alleviate Kevin’s misery and installed a cat door in a basement window. Unfortunately, Blitz doesn’t like to use it in the mornings. We think she is too lazy to walk down the stairs. Instead, she prefers to continue to sit and cry at the front door for Kevin. I asked him today why he doesn’t just pick her up and walk her down to the basement cat door. He said, all he’s thinking about on 7am on Saturday morning is killing the cat. It takes all this strength not to drop kick her out the door in the morning and trying to catch her and walk down to the basement is just too much for his sleep addled brain. Myself, I don’t even hear her, even when she perches on my stomach and cries at my face. For this reason, she doesn’t even bother trying to wake me from my hibernation. She knows who’s the softy and heads right to him every time.

Talk about a well trained owner. You’ve just got to admire my fat fatty! And so, if you are to call my house on a weekend before, oh, 1pm, don’t expect me to answer the phone. But don’t worry, I can sleep right through the ringing!

The Pooka Life

For Christmas, my old buddy Erica sent us a card game called Battle of the Sexes. The idea is you break up into teams of men vs women. There are two decks of questions that are used – one consists of knowledge women would know, the other stuff men know. The men read the women a “manly” question and the women read the “womanly” questions to the men. If you answer three questions correctly in a row, you get a point.

So when Kat & Josh invited us over for dinner, I dropped the card game into my bag and headed out. We decided to give it a shot and Kevin & Josh teamed up against Kat & I. I suppose I’ll just jump straight to the heart of the matter and say Kat & I cleaned up. The only questions that tripped us up were the ones related to chewing tobacco. Everything else, we could pretty much reason out. Also, the fact that Kat grew up with a ton of older brother meant she had a really incredible knowledge of sports. We were roaring through the questions. At one point, Josh grew a bit disgruntled and stated that we were just too butch. But the boys picked up toward the end and actually made a decent showing.

What I wanted to share with you was, by far, my favorite question given to the boys. It was something like….

What is the first line to the song, “I Will Survive”.

Now, I knew Kevin had heard this song. I must have played that song 100 times in the car just rockin out and singing away while sat resignedly in the seat next to me. But the questions was, had he ever paid attention to the words?

Josh & Kevin looked at eachother and started humming. “Wait, wait, I know this. Something something I will survive…..” Then Josh, who has more illegal MP3’s than the entire Napster site during its hayday, had a break though.

“I got it! At first I was a woman, I was terrified!” he shouted in triump to Kevin. I think Kat and I both lost it then. At first I was a woman, I was terrified? That sounds like the starting for a song about a gender change to me. I mean sure, I guess if Kevin woke up one day as a woman he’d be terrified. But really, it’s not that bad.

“I don’t think so Josh, I think it’s petrified, not terrified. You know, ‘At first I was a woman, I was petrified'” Kevin sang out.

Kat couldn’t contain herself and chimed in with, “Actually Kev, I think that’s trees, not women, who are petrified.”

After a few minutes more of our snide remarks, the admitted defeat. It was a classic Josh & Kev moment though. They just crack me up.

The Pooka Life

For the last couple of days, publishing to this site has been tough. The service I use, Blogger, hasn’t been able to support the number of people using it and as a result everything bogs down. This has lead me to search out other web publishing alternatives. Of course, I probably don’t have the time or technical know-how to host my own stuff but hey, it’s fun to learn about what else is out there.

Kevin is coming out of his hectic shift schedule at WT and moving into his off week. I’ve been concocting a nice long to-do list to keep him busy. You know what they say, idle hands are the work of the devil or something to that effect. I’m particularly uneasy because for Christmas, he got his first real power tool. Before Dec. 25th, his biggest baddest tool was a cordless drill and a couple to of pull saws. However, my dad was kind enough/crazy enough to get Kevin a bansaw for Christmas. Lets just say it’s big and could easily cut off your finger in about .2 seconds. The idea of leaving Kevin alone with it unsupervised for a week gives me the willies. So far he’s been pretty good except every time I see him working with it he isn’t wearing his safety goggles. I shudder to think what else he’s doing when I’m not around.

So maybe I’ll but Kevin on the quest to find a new web publishing replacement. When he’s on the computer, my only worry is how big of an ebay charge we’re going to get hit with. I’d rather deal with Visa statements than drive to the hosipal with a finger wrapped in ice. Bleck.

And maybe, if your REALLLLLLY lucky, he’ll even turn of the web cam tomorrow and you can watch him as he watches his computer. Ohhhh, how exciting would that be!

Resolutions

So people have been asking me what are my New Year resolutions. At first, I really didn’t have any aside from survive another year of Kevin’s cooking. But upon further reflection, I think this year I’m going to try to finish more.

I’m notorious for great ideas that sort of overlap. I’ll start some project, spend a few days/weeks collecting all the necessary items, hunting for bargains and advise, organizing and preparing, and then when it’s all set, I’ll sit down to actually Do It only to discover my attention has wandered onto something else. And I’ll shelve the current project to start collection, hunting, organizing for something else.

I mean, this list really is impressive. Last year I started and peetered out on the following projects…..

Creating a cookbook of favorite recipes – learning to play the guitar – learning to watercolor – re-learning how to play the piano – working on my stamp collection and first covers – creating a scrap book for my photos – cross stiching various patterns – knitting scarfs, hats, sweaters – sewing curtains, dresses, skirts – learning calligraphy and copper plating – selling my used books online – finishing various short stories/books I’ve begun – planting a veggie garden – making a quilt – making a greenhouse – painting the guestroom.

And that’s just for the last year!!! I’m sure there are more things – I mean, I have a whole ream of paper full of ideas and projects I’ve seen and want to do from organizing my CD collection to creating a craft room in the basement. Unfortunately, my eyes are bigger than my free time.

Strangely enough, whenever I mention to people that I’d love to stop working they all tell me I’d be bored. Um, hello! Bored??? I have a list that would keep me occupied for at least 5 years of neat projects and the list continues to grow.

So this year, I’m going to try very hard to stay on target. Sure, I’ll continue to collect ideas but instead of acting on every impulse that passes my way, I’m going to calmly add them to a project binder instead of chaotically rushing to begin them willy-nilly. Of course, that means I’m going to have to set up a project binder. I’ll need a binder with pockets and dividers – maybe a color coding system? And I can arrange alphabetically or chronologically or by subject matter. Maybe time needed to complete? And a supply list for sure.

I’m thinking this is going to be another long year. Ah well, resolutions are meant to be broken, right???

The Pooka Life

Sometime, Kevin cracks me up. Actually, it’s either I laugh or I cry and I’ve decided laughing is probably healthier for me.

Take, for example, last night. I made this *incredible* soup from scratch and left some out for Kev since he was working late. He comes home, sits down, eats his soup, and I sit across the table from him listening to his day and telling him about mine. After the soup (which he also felt was incredible), he decided he needed to relax in front of the t.v. I, however, was not in the mood to veg in front of the boob-tube. Instead, I set up shop at the kitchen table. I took out the Zen garden we got for Christmas from Jean & Ben, arranged the smooth river rocks in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, stuck a few sticks of incense around artistically, lit one for ambiance, and pulled out my new Naked Chef cookbook to inspire my newly fanned cooking desire.

And so there I sat, relaxing in the kitchen, dreaming about fresh mozzarella and twice bakes potatoes when suddenly Kevin shouts out…”Hey, here’s that special on Carrie Otis. Did you know she used to be married to Micky Roarke?”

My moment was shattered. I replied in the negative and re-settled myself as I rummaged through the joys of baking your own bread when….

“Oh man! Guess what they’re doing to these guys?? They’re hitting them with baseball bats. Oww! Can you believe that!” my husbands yells to me from the living room. “I’m trying to read here” I sweetly remind him.

This continued for then next twenty minutes. Every time Kevin saw something interesting on the t.v. he felt compelled to shout out a description to me in the kitchen. Finally, I admitted defeat, snuffed out my incense, shelved my book, and spent the rest of the night on the sofa enduring Kevin’s feeble attempts to channel surf. (Lets just say, he surfs like a weenie.)

Such is my life. I will, however, leave you with the recipe for my awesome soup courtesy of my mother. It’s sooooo easy, you won’t believe it.

You will need…..

1/2 onion diced
2 tbs olive oil
1 1/2 cups water
1 can of chicken broth
1 can of garbanzo beans, drained
1 can of chopped tomatoes, undrained
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 cinnamon
1/4 ground black pepper
1/2 cup ditalini pasta (this is a very small tube pasta about 1/2 the size of macaroni- bigger stuff probably won’t work)

Here’s what you do. In a medium pot, add the olive oil and saute the onions until tender for a few minutes. Then add everything but the pasta. Turn it to high until it starts to boil. Then reduce the head until you have a nice steady boil and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Finally, add the pasta and cook until the pasta is tender. AND THAT’S IT!!!

Personally, I love pasta in my soup so I added more than 1/2 a cup. If you do this, be prepared to add more water/chicken broth as the pasta really sucks it up as it cooks. This isn’t a really liquid soup which makes it good enough for a dinner. Yum yum. I’ve decided to keep the big ingredients on hand – ditalini, chopped tomatoes, and garbanzo beans – and then I’ll be ready to make it one a moments notice. And I don’t even like garbanzo beans!

That’s all my culinary knowledge for the moment. Trust me on this one, make this soup. You’ll thank me!

The Pooka Life

I was talking to Kevin last night and told him that Eric Clapton had just married his 25 year old girlfriend. Kevin’s response?

“Man, I’ve got to learn how to play the guitar.”