Go Dynamo!

Sweet.

Dressing Up (with my great grandmother's traditional cornbread dressing recipe)

By popular demand, I give you my great-grandmother's traditional Texas cornbread dressing recipe. Only there's not really a recipe for it. It's just something that every female in my family magically knows how to make....not because we pick it up in utero or anything like that, it's more just because it's just so darn easy. Easy and inexpensive. At least that is the case today. Perhaps it wasn't so when my GGM made it all from scratch, but today's modern version has a lot of inexpensive short cuts that make it oh so easy, just as good as (if not better than) the all-from-scratch version, and less than $3 to make a batch. Seriously. Fast food is more expensive. Plus, people always RAVE. In fact, serving a pan of this is an almost foolproof way to make people think you're awesome. My GGM was really smart.

Grandma Allen's Cornbread Dressing
with Modern Simplifications

1 box cornbread mix
(and whatever your mix calls for: usually eggs and milk)
About 22-26 oz of heated chicken broth
About a half of a sweet onion, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Make the cornbread mix. Follow baking directions, etc. Once you have created cornbread, take it out of the pan, put it in a large bowl, cut it up into small pieces or just mash it up with a potato masher or something. Add the onions to that. Move over to the stove top, put the chicken broth in a pot and bring it to a boil. Then pour the hot chicken broth into the cornbread mashup. Then add salt and pepper to your liking. I do less salt (because the broth is plenty salty for me) and more pepper (because I like it). But you do what works for you. The cornbread/broth mix should be pretty soupy. That's how it should be. Pour the mix into a baking pan and bake it uncovered at 350 for about 45 minutes. At this point, it should be perfect, your house will smell great, and everyone will think you're fab. Enjoy it while it lasts! And Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm Feeling Daring.

I have 18 meetings to attend today. Okay, so maybe not quite that many. But it feels like it.

I'm wearing a gray suit for heaven's sake.

So while you're out playing in the happy autumn air, frolicking about while you smell the roses and seize the day, I'm in a conference room. Wearing a gray suit. Did I mention the suit already? Oh sorry. It's just that these florescent lights are making my brain shrink.

But if my brain was still large because I was outside, I would be practicing the five karate moves I just learned yesterday. Or the fourteen games of tag. Or perhaps I'd even be doing a back walk-over. Yeah, that's right. You heard me. A walkover. But backwards. Because I just read The Daring Book for Girls. And it's fantastic. And we're giving one away over at Cool Stuff. (Plus, I also found some crocheted eggs, so there's that too.)

However, in the meantime, I'll be inside. Wearing gray. Secretly making the coolest paper airplane ever. Because that's covered on page 134, and I'm feeling rather daring.

Bookish.

I spent the better part of 1998-1999 with my face buried in books. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I could ramble on and on as to why this happened to be the case, but the bottom line is, I currently have loads of very full bookshelves.

During the early 2000s (now, how exactly are we saying that? The early aughts? Early 20 hundreds? Early double zeros? It all sounds weird.) the reading tapered off just a bit, and then when The Hurricane hit our house...well, I almost gave up the books completely, went online, and got sucked into the blogtastic vortex of blogginess. But then my computer exploded. And then this weekend, I read a 638 page book in less than 46 hours.

It all started innocently enough on Friday night. I pulled out this one book by Susan Howatch that I'd been meaning to read for, I don't know, forever, and I started reading...

And I just finished the last page.

Because for some odd reason, I just couldn't put the blasted thing down. I read while I cooked lunch. I read while I walked. While I played soccer and "watched" Elmo with The Hurricane. While I did lunges in the kitchen while making dinner (yeah, you read that right). In fact, besides going in the back yard and for a walk, I didn't leave the house all weekend (oh, yeah, except for the playoff game...go Dynamo!). Just puttered around. And read like it was 1999.

It was incredible. Not so much the book, but just the block of time to lose myself in the reading. I can't even believe it happened. And I'm not sure when it will again. Of course, I have way too many things going on to even begin to think about doing nothing. But reading. And of course, it was incredibly irresponsible of me to be so selfishly book-absorbed for two days straight. But wow, was it fun. I'm thinking of planning to do that again before 2015. Like maybe again next weekend.

Or not. Because I just realized that next weekend I'll be getting ready for Christmas. See, while the big X-Mas may be only 43 days away for you people, it's only 13 days away for us. Don't even ask. So it seems that I'm already in full-fledged Holiday mode (as you will be on Dec. 12), and so I've decided we're celebrating with lots of Holiday inspirations of Cool Stuff from now until your Christmas. Plus, a giveaway today. Happy Monday.

Grocery Store Drama

This morning I went to the grocery store closest to my house to get a few items to make something for lunch. Because I work somewhere where sometimes people all bring gourmet items for lunch and pool resources. Don't ask. I usually bring the drinks. But today I was making one of the few excellent items I can throw together (watch for Friday's recipe) which is what brought me to the store at the dawn of crack. And as I was walking across the tiny parking lot a man and his wife were doing the same. And then he swung back and hit her. Backhanded slapped her. Across the face. In front of God and everyone. And she just took it, and kept walking.

I stopped.

I couldn't move forward, and I couldn't believe what I'd just seen. A man in struck a woman right in front of me, and I was shocked still. I didn't know what to do. So I did nothing. Nothing. I'm still reeling a bit from it, so I can't imagine how much she's reeling. Even if she's used to that. You never get used to that.

Happy Halloween!

May your day be filled with giant spiders.

And cookies as big as your face.

Shots Are For Espresso.

Or bachelor parties. Or gun shows. They aren't however for mothers who are confused by the hype.

And I currently fall into that last category.

I'm talking about boosters here. And not the seat kind. The annual kind. The scary kind. The lifesaving kind. The kind that may contribute to autism. The kind that former MTV game-show hosts now talk about on Oprah.

That kind.

Although frankly, for me to say I'm confused about this topic is probably taking it a bit too far. I'm actually not confused as much as I'm just too damned subconsciously anxious about the possible unknowing, speculated potential, and potentially related or unrelated ramifications to just even deal. In other words, like a lab rat, I'm in unfamiliar territory, so I'm not moving.

All that said, I should know a lot about this topic. Once upon a time in a lifetime far far away, it was basically my job to know this. To communicate it to many. To go on and on and on about the importance of...no, the essential need for... immunizations. In fact, for almost a year I did everything but bribe politicians to get the word out about the need for kids to get shots. Shots. Shots. And a few more shots for luck. That was my job. See, I worked for a really swell non-for-profit organization that educated immigrants about the importance of childhood immunizations. Oh, the importance.

Back then, I knew every reason children should be vaccinated. And I could (and frankly, still can) spout off the many essential benefits of the shot. Shots.

But that was 10 years ago. I was 26. And I knew as much about children then, as I know about Quantitative and Computational Finance now. And you should know, that's less than nothing. More importantly and more honestly, I knew much less about what it was like to be a parent then than I will ever know about any graduate-level mathematics. Or even middle school mathematics for that matter.

I knew nothing. Which is too bad, because if it's true that the first rule of communication is to know your audience, I really should have shut the hell up.

Because as well intended as I was...me Ms. Let-me-tell-you-what-to-do here, it's easy, no biggy, just get the shots...well, I just knew what I knew. And that wasn't everything.

For instance, I didn't know about the whole immunization controversy. Hell, back then, no one knew there would be such a thing. And I sure didn't know what it would feel like to consider that possibility as the parent of a little boy. Because I still don't know what I think about all of it. I don't even feel confident in my ability to explain my confusion and discomfort to a physician with whom The Hurricane has an appointment tomorrow. For a two-year-old check up. And for shots.

So I'm canceling.

Canceling tomorrow's appointment. Not avoiding forever. Just postponing for now. Until I feel like I know more. And more importantly, until I can whole-heartedly understand and explain my discomfort zone well enough to find a comfortable resolution.

And so, instead of going to the doctor on schedule, we're going to the park. At least for now. For tomorrow.