Stop & Chat: February 11

Man, I don't think this picture shows how clean the kitchen is! Nor does it portray how much work I put into it. Bah, you'll just have to take my word for it! Anyways, on to my day! Complete with a little food experiment for me!



I woke up a little before 8, when M got home from PT and came to check on me. Have I mentioned that this has always been one of my favorite things about his work mornings? The first thing he does after he comes home from PT is find me and give me a little kiss, whether it's on my forehead or head or lips if I'm coherent enough to greet him. It's almost like he loves me or something. :P

I felt energetic enough to wake up and get out of bed, so I went ahead and got up. For the past week or so I've been sleeping in until 10 or 11. I've been wanting to reset my sleep schedule to wake up around 8, and M's new day shift schedule is helping with that since I tend to wake up when he comes in to check on me.

I spent the first bit of my morning playing some video games and catching up on blog reading. I still need to catch up on commenting. The past week had me fall waaaaaay behind.

I hit a roadblock at about 10:30 and decided that I should go ahead and go take a nap. I went to the kitchen to refill my water and decided that I would clean some dishes first. Once that was done I thought the counters looked awfully cluttered, so I cleaned them off and wiped them down. Then the stove looked like it needed a cleaning and I took the top apart and completely cleaned every part. Then the table called my name and asked me to wipe it up and clean off all of the newspapers, receipts, bags, and general trash and clutter that had accumulated on it. Then I figured I would put some rubbermaid containers away that had been sitting in the middle of the floor for no reason. Then the bags of non-perishable groceries on the floor were begging me to put them away. Then the floor demanded to be swept and cleaned. Then the rest of the dishes begged me to finish washing them.

Two hours later I finished up the kitchen and found myself no longer sleepy. I made sure to tell M about my accomplishments and take pictures to send to my Mom, even though I knew she was probably either getting ready for bed or already in bed. Someone needs to acknowledge what I did today, dangit!

I spent a good 10 minutes admiring my handiwork (not even kidding, I just sat there and looked around with a feeling of happiness) and decided to reward myself with some more video games. What video games? The Sims 2 was my pill of choice today.

I decided to try and play the game with no cheats or mods whatsoever. I have not done so since 2004, when the base game first came out and before I'd figured out all of the cheats that the game had.

My sim decided to hit it off with a great guy. Nice, they got along well, he was always available to talk and didn't mind coming over and hanging out. They fell in love fast and she really wanted to get married to him. So I got ready to try and propose.

That wasn't an option. Instead there was 'stay the night' and 'move in.' I decided I'd ask him to move in and figure out the lack of marriage option later. Guess who was married and didn't care to tell my sim? That's right. Romantic interest guy. So he moves in with a very pregnant wife and I decide that I've invested too much time in my sim's relationship with this guy to just give up on him. So, like the decent human being I am I distracted my sim with some tasks inside and took control of the guy and had him nag his pregnant wife until the option to break up appeared. He broke off the marriage and the pregnant wife ran off crying, disappearing from the household menu.

Turns out, Love Interest is a politician, and a high ranking one at that. I shared in some giggles with M about that. So they got married like nothing happened and my Sim gets pregnant. While she's pregnant New Hubby proceeds to almost burn down the house making some hamburgers and manage to lose his job because he voted for something unfavorable in the public's opinion. Fantastic.

The screenshot is of my pregnant Sim deciding that the food looked good enough to sleep in. Right after I took this screenshot and sent a pic to M she woke up and decided to give birth to a daughter. Okay, then. Welcome to The Sims, everyone! LOL.

After that lovely fiasco I decided that I was done with that for the day and got to making myself some food. Enter my crab-veggie soup concoction thingy!

BAM! MAGIC! I sautéed some yellow onions and jalapeños in some butter and garlic, then added in bell peppers, mushrooms, potatoes, and water. I left that for a bit to soften up the veggies and looked at the crabmeat we had available.

We  picked up a double pack of this from the Hypermarket a week or so ago because I've been wanting to start cooking with crab meat. It's just so delicious!!

Each 'log' is a chunk of crab meat held together a plastic wrapper that is crimped together. It's really easy to open up.

I did that with one hand. I was so proud! This serves no purpose besides to inform you that I am, in fact, a master at one handed activities :)

The log is easily squished/separated into little stringy bits that is typical of crab meat. Yum!

I used the entire package and added in the squished up meat to the pot.

See? It falls apart quite easily.

I took this time to add in some lemon juice, sea salt, black peppercorn, and blackened seasoning.

After letting the food simmer for a bit I decided to add some corn. I also added some chili powder because one jalapeño is just not spicy enough. While the food continued to simmer I washed all of the dishes that I used and put some dishes that had dried away. I'm pretty consistent on doing dishes every day but something about today just had me super proud of everything I was doing. M joked that I must've been channeling my inner housewife, something I am most definitely not on a day to day basis.

That's the last picture I took - not that I needed to take that many pictures - because I thought nothing new was portrayed once the food was in my bowl. I added a little extra seasoning salt to my own bowl, but I don't think the soup needed it. I just got overly worried after taking a small bite of an onion and thought it didn't have much flavor. Silly me.

I informed Mom of what I was making and after hearing about all of the veggies I had added she started accusing me of taking credit for something M was cooking. To be fair, I don't particularly like mushrooms or bell peppers, and I don't typically cook with a lot of veggies. My exact phrasing to Mom on the matter was "trust me I still don't like mushrooms or fucking bell peppers. But I'm adding them because I'm a fucking healthy and well rounded human being." With a big potty mouth. Sorry if you don't like the language. It's part of the humor that is my relationship with my parents. :) Also, I really don't like bell peppers.

I finished up my two bowls of food and found myself incredibly tired, so I laid down for a mid (late) day siesta. I slept from about 4:30 to 7. I woke up, got on the computer, and typed up this post. I think my plans are to continue playing The Sims until M gets home, then spend some time with him as he has the next two days off.

I'm thinking I'm going to tackle the rest of the house the same way I did in the 2nd place we lived in Georgia. I assigned myself one room to clean and organize per day and did no more, no less. In about a week I had the entire house cleaned and organized from only a few hours of work put in each day. That way I also have a sense of accomplishment and a finished product to look at each day. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll work on the living room. It's pretty much done, it just needs a good hour or two of TLC and finishing touches to the random things I have laying around without a home. I'm going to have to dig through my stash again to see if I have any clean type scents to help set the mood!!

How has your day been? What's the most experimental food thing you've done? I've got to say that this meal today was the most I've ever gone out of my comfort zone with my own cooking.