Halloween and Thanksgiving 2011 have come and gone

So here I am, writing a blog post, almost two months after my last post.  I should probably work on being better about this.

We just had Thanksgiving at the Clark house last Thursday.  Of course, it was a vegetarian Thanksgiving with all the delectable items made by me.  I can't take full credit though, because I used recipes for everything I made, and my helpful husband was my sous chef for part of the time.  He did a great job chopping, stacking and cleaning.  A big thanks must go out to him for his help!

My mom and her husband, as well as my in-laws came to spend the day with us.  This is actually the second year we have had a vegetarian Thanksgiving at our house with these same people joining in on the festivities.  This year's menu consisted of butternut squash crostinis, blue cheese shortbread and cream cheese, and crispy chick peas for appetizers.  The main courses were stuffed acorn squash with feta, a root vegetable mash, wild rice stuffing with dried cranberries, roasted Brussels sprouts with grapes, and roasted garlic cauliflower.  For dessert I made pumpkin and pear crisps, Mexican hot chocolate and a cranberry-citrus cake with cranberry compote.  The in-laws also brought a pecan pie.  I also made a hot spiced apple cider to start the meal.  One point I failed to mention is that I intentionally made a "healthy" vegetarian Thanksgiving since Mike has high cholesterol and both sides of the family have heart issues.

Although I feel that this year's Thanksgiving meal was not as successful as last year's, I think this mainly is due to me using plenty of butter and high fatty items in last year's meal, and being sure NOT to use these items this year.  But I feel that everyone enjoyed the dishes I made and were plenty full when they left.  I know I am my toughest critic.

One thing I regret the last two Thanksgivings':  not taking any pictures of the food.  If we do this again next year, I will be certain to commemorate the experience in photos.

It's been two years...and I'm still alive!

Yes, I have been absent from this blog for almost 2 years now. I've had more important things to do then post on here I guess. But now, I am back to not working and trying to fill my days with something to keep me from getting too bored.

Since you last heard from me, I got a job as a microbiologist in Houston. I spent about 7 months driving 50 miles one way to work and then couldn't take it anymore...I quit. Then I got another job about 30 miles away working as a business manager of an analytical company. Good experience, but still not quite the right fit. So I quit after 1 year. Now, I'm a stay at home mother of 5 cats and 1 dog until the next good opportunity shows itself.

We are still living in Baytown, TX where the mosquitoes are still horrible. We are currently in limbo while waiting to hear if we will be moving to California or another state soon. I sure hope we get the opportunity to get out of here. As nice as it has been to not worry about money since it's so cheap to live here, I absolutely cannot stand living in Texas. If we were to live in Houston, our time spent here may have been more enjoyable, but I expect not by a large margin. I miss DC where the people are multicultural and fit! People here are grossly overweight and it makes me sad to think of what is going on inside their body...I can see what is going on on the outside.

As the weeks pass, I will try and post updates on our living status. Hopefully there is still someone out there who subscribes to this thing!

The mosquitoes are improving

This past weekend the temperature finally broke below 80 degrees. It has consistently been in the 80's and 90's since we moved down here, but the weekend my friends come down from apparently cold and wet Tennessee, we get into the 70's. Seventy degree temperatures were actually a nice break from the heat and humidity that I've found in Texas, but at night, it got a little chilly for me. I have the windows open today, and a couple days ago I aired out the house as well. I actually could probably put the A/C back on today since it feels like it's back in the low 80's, but I figure I'll wait until I can no longer stand the temperature. And, I just officially checked the current temperature in Baytown, and we are at 81 degrees. I can't complain about the warmth in mid-October.

I've noticed since the temperatures reduced quite a bit over the past weekend that the mosquitoes have not been attacking me when I leave the house. I haven't attempted to stay outside for a very long time, but the trip to the mailbox and to the car when I'm leaving the house has not been bad at all. I'm thinking about actually attempting to maybe sit outside sometime soon and enjoy the nice weather. I may wait until after I buy a couple citronella candles though just to be certain.

Even with the improvement of the mosquito situation, the fire ant problem has not improved. Last week I went into the garage to move the trash bin outside. I wasn't able to see since it was nighttime and once I realized what was happening, it was too late. Apparently fire ants had discovered something yummy in the bottom of the trash can (I haven't officially blamed Mike for this, but I have my suspicions. I sometimes notice a fast food drink container in the bottom of the empty trash can. Instead of throwing his cup into a trash can with a bag, he thinks it's OK to just put it in the trash bin. I'm sure ants would just love a little high fructose corn syrup to bring back to their mounds.) Once I started moving the trash bin outside from the garage, I started feeling my hand getting stung, and then I felt my toe getting stung. I looked down and had a swarm of fire ants trying to kill me. They failed in their attempt to remove me from this Earth, but I do have 4 lovely blisters on my left thumb, 2 nice bumps on my right big toe, and three formally pussy but now scabbed over blisters on the back of my right arm. I am so tired of that stupid species of ant. I look like I have warts on my thumb with the way they've bubbled up. It's pretty gross and quite annoying as everything I seem to touch hits directly on my ant stings. We really need to hire a fire ant guy. I just don't want to kill the other insects outside. I like the multitude of crickets out there. I think they are cute. And we also have lots of frogs and toads. And I don't want them harmed either.

So currently Mike is in Houston for a 3 day meeting. They have him in a hotel so he doesn't have to drive the hour each way to the location. We had talked about me going out there for at least a day to explore, but with him having meetings all day and then events scheduled with work every night, I chose to stay here with the cats who have thoroughly enjoyed their momma time. I woke up this morning with all three girls sleeping on the bed with me. And I'm pretty certain that at some point I had four cats with me as I tried to move my legs into a more comfortable position, but had many weights on the comforter making it nearly impossible to move.

I don't have any plans for today. I'm trying to hold off on cleaning until a little later in the week so that when Mike's parents come to visit on Friday that there will be the least amount of cat hair floating around as possible. I might make today "wash the dirty sheets" day. That is something I can do in advance of the parent-in-law trip. I've already washed all the dirty towels from when my friends came to visit so that's one thing off the list. I'm not sure what the plan is when Mike's parents are in town, but we have talked about going to the local racetrack down the street and watching a race. Mike has also talked about going to Kemah Boardwalk which we have been to a few times now. I'm sure we will also go into Houston for some good food somewhere. I think they are staying with us this time, but I can never be quite sure. I've always thought since the first time they stayed at our place in Wilmington that the cats were too much for them. Ever since that time when they've come to visit they have always stayed at a hotel. We definitely have plenty of room for them here, but I haven't gotten confirmation as of yet.

I will leave you with a picture of Mike with his birthday gift from me this year and a picture of me with a very happy shark.

Life in Texas is ongoing

So it's occurred to me that I haven't posted in a while when I spoke to my Grandmother this morning, so I thought I'd write today. I guess nothing too interesting has happened since the move, so it's hard for me to find things to talk about. We did get another car...a 2010 Toyota Prius. So now we have two hybrids. I am happy about our purchases. We are taking one step more to helping save the planet, but no, we didn't buy American. It's all about give and take.

Today I turned down my first interview for a job. This was for an analytical position that didn't even require a Chemistry degree. Although they paid decent, I don't want to get stuck doing something I don't like just because it was the first opportunity that paid decent. So I told him to keep me in mind for future opportunities, but I was going to pass on this one. I have a feeling other opportunities will arise. I've already applied to about 5 jobs myself, and this guy found me on Careerbuilder.com. So if I'm patient, I'm sure a good job will come along that I would enjoy. I definitely need to start doing something because this just sitting around the house all day long is starting to get boring.

The mosquitoes haven't gotten any better. We went to Galveston this past weekend, and after 10 minutes of getting bitten by mosquitoes on the beach, I had to leave. And a few days ago while it was raining at the house, these guys were still out searching for blood...and they got me too! I've never heard of mosquitoes on the beach OR out while it's raining. These are probably mutant mosquitoes that have super-mosquito abilities since living around all these oil refineries and chemical plants. I'm just waiting for one cold front to come through and freeze all these buggers off. The problem is that the first cold front may not come for quite some time.

I'm currently fighting a little cold. I don't think I have H1N1. I don't have a fever (or at least not a high grade one). I have some chest congestion and body aches. And I'm tired. But I think today is a little better than yesterday, so I think that if I keep resting, I'll get back to 100% soon.

Tomorrow we have the garage door people coming for the second time in a week to fix our left side garage door...again. One of the wire bands that raise and lower the door keeps coming off of the spool. And since last time they "fixed" this by just putting the wire back on the spool and the problem happened again so quickly, I'm sure there's an underlying issue. Hopefully tomorrow they will send someone who can actually speak some English so I can communicate to the guy better than last time.

So I guess I'm a Texan...

Since my last blog, we have made the two day drive to Baytown, lived in a hotel for 10 days, closed and moved into our new 3800 sq foot home, bought a bunch of new furniture, bought a new car, sold the Honda Civic since it's transmission was about to die, started putting away our stuff, got bitten about 30 times by the ferocious Texan mosquitoes, got my stitches out of my thumb, found out I can't feel anything on that spot that was cut, and eaten a lot of Tex-Mex.

We are liking our new home even though we have a ways to go before it is completely put together. Since our new furniture has been brought in, it's starting to feel whole, but we still have pictures to put up on walls and stuff to put away. The move in was pretty painless, but we had the movers dump out all of our stuff on the floors so they could take all the boxes and packing paper with them, so putting our things away is taking some time. The kitchen is the room I worked on first so that I could start cooking again. It's the only room that's really complete. The rest of the rooms will be finished in due time. I'm not one to rush anything...quite the opposite as I am the ultimate procrastinator.

Mike's 2005 Honda Civic VP started having transmission problems on the way down from VA, and when we brought it in to check it out, the estimate to fix it was going to be around $3000, so instead, we traded it in for a new 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid. This car gets 34 mpg on the highway, and 33 mpg in the city. And Mike has already said he's surpassed those numbers. Pretty good for a large sedan. We are still looking for another car to replace my old Pontiac, but so far have not purchased anything. We are going to be back in the hole again with our new home purchase, and two new cars. I hope I can get a job soon to help with all these unplanned costs. I know Mike really wants a couple flat screen LCD TVs, but right now would be difficult for us to purchase.

We now have satellite TV which gives us way too many channels. On the up side, I've gotten to view some movies I've been wanting to see for a few years now. HBO and Showtime are free for the first 3 months and Cinemax is 1 cent. The downside to all these channels is all the porn. It's pretty gross to be searching for something to watch and then you get to view some girl on girl action. Or on two occasions already, I've fallen asleep watching a movie only to wake up to more girl on girl action. No thank you. I don't think we will be renewing that service.

Packed up and ready to move

We are down to the bare minimum at the house now and we leave for the first leg of our move to Texas in the morning. We are stopping in Birmingham, AL for the night which should be a little over half way to Baytown. If Google Maps is correct, we should be to Birmingham in about 11 hours. On Saturday, it should take us about 10 hours to get to Baytown. The cats are not going to be having fun the next couple days. We did get a tranquilizer from the vet, so we will try those out. This is not the Valium that they had last time so hopefully this one will work better and not have many side effects. Half a day is a long time to be screaming in a car!

On Monday, I was replacing a pane of glass in a french door at our house. This pane has been broken since moving in and we had planned to fix it, then tried to get a new door and when that plan didn't work out, we went back to trying to fix it. I removed all of the broken old glass, took off the trim work around that pane, cleaned up the inside of the wood and got it ready for the new pane of glass. I was being safe and wearing gloves this entire time. Well, once I was ready for the new pane, I had to put in this puddy to make the glass stick so I removed my gloves. After placing the puddy inside the wood, I put the pane inside and was trying to maneuver it into place when it shattered on my right hand. I immediately had the thought that if I didn't get cut by that then I was really lucky. About the same time I started bleeding from my thumb. When I looked down I realized that I had a large flap of skin that was slipping back and forth beneath my other hand trying to grip it to stop the bleeding. I managed to get to the back door and call for help from Mike. Luckily he was home when I was doing this. All the blood and what I had seen on my thumb was making me queasy, so I laid down outside while Mike got together everything to head to the hospital. We got to the hospital around 9pm. Four hours later around 1pm I was discharged and had 11 new stitches in my thumb. They had gauzed and splinted me up and I was unable to take off the dressing until this morning. It looks pretty gross, but it really doesn't hurt. The only time I feel pain or discomfort is when the stitches get pulled or my thumb gets bumped. I get to have the stitches removed 10 days from the accident. I'll need to find a new doctor quick once we get down to Baytown!!!

So, I'm going to close this blog now. We will have no internet starting in about 30 minutes, so I will blog again once I'm an official resident of Texas.

Busy busy busy

Our trip to Costa Rica was a fun time. It was good to see Jamie and the family. Little Allison is very cute. She looks just like her daddy! Nathan is very smart. But he's still very small. He also thinks that the world is his toilet as he showed no qualms about pulling out his penis at any moment and peeing. Probably OK in Costa Rica. No so OK in the USA.

When we returned from Costa Rica, we had one day before leaving for Beaumont on our house hunting trip. We went that Sunday to visit the cats at the boarder's house. Well, upon arrival, the cats were being crated and looked so scared. They were not supposed to be in cages as the room I was told they would be in was a large one. No mention of ever crating them. They also had a bowl full of dry food (something I never mentioned in my feeding schedule) and a bunch of opened cans of wet food but no bowl to put the food in. After apparently insulting the lady who had been taking care of them, we immediately grabbed them up and took them home. Sabrina had acquired an eye infection so we had to bring her to the emergency clinic which is opened on Sundays. Whether the viral infection was present and never came up before, or she got it there, Sabrina's right eye had conjunctivitis. The vet told us that it was probably herpes viral eye infection so she sent us home with instructions to watch her. Since we were leaving the next day, I instructed the cat sitter who was coming by twice a day, that if she was not looking better by Wednesday, that she would have to be brought back to the vet per the emergency vet's instructions. Well, I was comforted middle of the week when I received a phone call that Sabrina's eye looked great. A couple days later I received another phone call with the same information. When we returned home the following Sunday, her eye looked worse than when we left and we had to bring her back to the emergency vet. I don't know if the cat sitter just didn't know what she was looking for, or if she just wasn't looking at all, but her eye was obviously NOT getting better. This time at the vet, they diagnosed her the same way, but sent her home with an antibiotic/antifungal/steroidal eye drop to fend off any secondary infection and help her red and swollen eye to go down. After day one, her eye began looking better. We are 3 days in, and although a little crusty still, I think we are on the right path. She will be on this for another 6 days. Hopefully at that time, once the medicine stops, her eye will be better.

Our trip to Beaumont was kind of a success. I hated Beaumont itself. We got there on Monday morning, drove around some and looked for things to do. We found nothing. There were hundred's of chain restaurants, and tons of Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants that I can't eat at because their food is not vegetarian friendly, so I was not a happy girl. On Tuesday we met with our realtor and looked at homes. We did the same on Wednesday and had narrowed our 20-something home choices down to 4. The houses were very nice and relatively inexpensive compared to the market we are in now in DC. By Thursday morning, I was mad at Mike and he decided to search for other cities to possibly live. He found Baytown, TX. This city is about 50 minutes West of Beaumont and about 25 minutes East of Houston. We cancelled our appointment with our realtor that morning and went out to Baytown. The few houses Mike had found online looked very nice and were even cheaper than in Beaumont. Once we got to Baytown, and looked around a couple communities of new houses, we decided to drive into Houston and eat some dinner. The first restaurant we came to I could eat at. I felt so much relief!! The next day, Friday, we informed our Beaumont realtor that we probably wouldn't be using her and had our relocation company find us a Baytown realtor on the fly. We searched around Baytown by ourselves again, and thought we had found the house we would buy. It was 2200 sq ft, on a little lake, new construction without any upgrades, for $150K. We figured, at that price tag, we would be saving like crazy living there. Plus the lot overlooked the lake which was a nice feature. And the neighborhood is close to everything we would need in the city: grocery store, Subway, Quizno's, etc.

While we were waiting to hear back from our new realtor, we made a search around the area one more time. We went to this one neighborhood a couple interstates stops East which was a more upscale neighborhood, but not as close to the grocery stores and little restaurants. We looked through the 2 homes that they currently had built and were not sold, and we really liked the model home that was in the beginning stages of being put on the market. It was big. Too big. But the upgrades were what we wanted. The downstairs is hardwood, the kitchen has stainless steel appliances that stay, the colors on the walls were nice, the master bathroom has two sinks and a separate jetted tub, the utility room is downstairs near the master bedroom, the house has surround sound built in, underground sprinkler system outside, and the upstairs has 5 other nice sized bedrooms and 2 more baths! In all, 6 bedroom, 3.5 bath 3823 sq ft home. And, if I had a way to make a drum roll I would, for a price tag of $260K. I think we are planning to put in an underground pool in the backyard which, by the way, is already privacy fenced. And is big. I think we did pretty good.

Obviously that is the house we decided to go with. Saturday morning we drove back to the house after taking a night to think it over, met with our new realtor for the first time, and signed a contract. I think that was the easiest commission that lady ever made. But I think she will have her work cut out for her on the back end since we aren't in town to do our dirty work for ourselves.

After signing the contract, we went to this little area on a Bay about 30 minutes away. There were a couple rollercoaster rides, several restaurants and some little stores. All of this overlooked the water. Pretty cool little place. Then we drove down to Galveston. We think from Baytown, it will take about an hour to get to the ocean. What another nice feature of living in Baytown!!! I think we made the right choice, but we'll see once Mike starts having to make that commute everyday.

This week back in Springfield, we had 3 showings on the house yesterday, and already have one scheduled for today. While we were out of town, we had numerous showings, and even an offer, which we ultimately denied after a couple counters. Hopefully one of these people will want this place. There must be something turning this many people off. Or maybe there are just a ton of people in this city so it just appears that we have a lot of traffic, but in reality, when compared to the population in other cities, this amount of traffic is not a lot.

We move to Baytown next Friday morning. The movers will be coming on Wednesday and Thursday to pack us up and start moving us. After cleaning up the place one last time, we will probably leave on Friday morning. A straight shot says it will take us about 21 hours. Yikes! I don't think we've figured out exactly the plan as of yet, but it's looking like the cats will have to be in their carriers the whole trip. I was hoping to get an SUV to let them run around the back, but it may end up being too expensive.