Quick and Easy Dinner #1: Tortellini with Black Beans and Tomatoes

In the pre-Tate days if we wanted a quick and easy weeknight meal we'd order Thai and call it a night. In the pre-Brad days (meaning I had no witnesses) I'd often come home from work exhausted and have a nice big bagel (or two) or a bowl of cereal for dinner. But now that we have Tate and we're trying to eat better, save money by not ordering takeout, blah blah blah, no matter how tired or busy we are I feel compelled to give him something a little more nutritious than a piece of toast for dinner (at least most nights). So here is one of my super-fast favorites.

You need:

frozen or refrigerated tortellini
1 can of black beans, rinsed
cherry or grape tomatoes, diced
parmesan cheese, grated
butter (or olive oil)

Prepare the tortellini as directed on the package. Add black beans, tomatoes, cheese, and butter. Voila, dinner is served!

I'll be back later with an update on what we've been up to lately. Hint: it involves a lot of half-finished Pinterest projects for our new place.

And now back to Tater

So while I've been ranting about other life events, my baby turned into a toddler and then a 2.5-year-old little boy. Today he took a shower for the first time by himself. Supervised, of course, but how did this happen? His speech has jumped right into sentences, colors, counting to ten (one, two, three, four, five, eightnineten). He even does a Sesame Street Count laugh at the end...AH ha ha. He knows a few shapes and an occasional letter. My favorite of his color words are yellow (yeddow) and purple (purtle). Adorable. Tate still has a ball obsession. We like to talk about ball, play ball, read books with balls in them, draw pictures of balls... Brad is taking him to a park district basketball class on Saturdays. We missed a lot of the session since we were out of town, but he got to go back today and was over the moon. Next session is T ball, which I know he is going to love.

Welcome to the suburbs: it smells like (liquid) ass here

Ok, so normally I am not a big bathroom humor person. Those scatological scenes in the movies that have the rest of the theater rolling on the floor? I'm usually inwardly cringing and waiting for them to be over. I'm pretty sure the reason people get divorced involves a) going to the bathroom in front of each other and b) something called Dutch ovens, so Brad and I do all we can to pretend neither one of us even goes to the bathroom. Ever. But when a friend suggested checking out the reviews for "Liquid Ass" on Amazon for a good laugh, I figured why not. And by why not I mean because I've been stuck in the far suburbs (of Detroit? of Ann Arbor? who knows) in the dead of winter by myself for almost two weeks with a toddler and no cable.

The phone rings in the middle of the night

For a brief period many years ago a late-night phone call was a good thing. I lived near two popular 4 a.m. bars, and it generally meant drunken friends were attempting to rouse me from my futon to join in their shenanigans. But those days are long gone. A week ago Friday movers had taken the bulk of our stuff. Brad and I were exhausted (I'm not sure why...it's not like WE carried all of our crap up two flights of stairs) and sleeping uncomfortably on a leaky Areobed. When the phone rang at 2 a.m. for the the first time I thought it was the alarm clock. But that didn't make sense because it was still dark out. Then it rang again, and again. By the time I found the phone I knew something was wrong. The caller ID was from my sister's place, and my mind was racing. Was it my nephew? He had been sick earlier in the day and his symptoms had seemed worse than your average bug. Was it my Dad? (My parents were in AZ visiting my sister.) Oh God, was it my sister? I hit redial and when I heard my sister's voice my mind was still racing, trying to figure things out (ok, the Bad Thing didn't happen to my sister, since she was talking...so then who?). She told me they thought my Dad was having a stroke and he was headed to the hospital in an ambulance. You know when someone tells you to sit down before they tell you bad news? Now I know why...I actually felt the ground being pulled out from under me. I never expected this. He is only 71 (and now that I'm getting older 71 really does seem young). He has high blood pressure, but doesn't drink, smoke, isn't overweight. I mean, aren't everyone's parents on blood pressure medication these days? With his family history I had always worried more about heart attacks. This just seemed so out of the blue. As Mary Schmich said in her 1997 commencement address column: "Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday." So true.

It was hours and even days before we got more answers, but my Dad did have a stroke. The neurologist said that despite being on blood pressure medication his blood pressure was "too high for too long." (Here's my PSA, if you know someone with uncontrolled high blood pressure nag the hell out of them until they get to the doctor to find meds that work. There are seriously like 20 different kinds, and sometimes it is just a matter of finding the right combo.) The good news is they caught it very early and got him help. My Mom knew the signs and called 911 right away. The other good news is that he started to improve rapidly. Initially he had problems with his speech and couldn't feel one of his hands. But that is all coming back (at first I couldn't understand him much on the phone, which was heartbreaking, but by Sunday he sounded like himself, just tired). He helped my sister come up limericks to try to infuse some humor into being confined to his bed at first (something about a man from Nantucket having to poop in a bucket), so I know his sense of humor is intact.

 He was in the hospital for almost a week, and is spending another week in rehab. After that he'll go to my sister's place and do outpatient rehab if needed. I came to their place in Michigan, partly to keep an eye on the house and cat (who doesn't really like people and mostly hides from us), partly because we needed a place to go while some lead paint issues get resolved with our new place. And it is just weird to be here without him. I never realized how much we all relied on my Dad to do stuff until he wasn't here. The power went out our first night here. Dad would have started the generator, and we all would have slept soundly and toasty warm. But for the 12 hours the power was down Brad and I (and even the neighbor) couldn't even figure out how to get the wonky garage door open to even get the generator, so things got pretty nippy. Fortunately, my Dad gathers and chops his own firewood and we were able to start a fire and keep ourselves from getting hypothermia. And I've wanted to have a fire every other night I've been here. but I'm hesitant to use any more of the firewood since I don't know when (or worst case scenario, if?) he'll have the strength to go back to chopping wood and I don't want to use up his supply. In the past I would have burned through firewood with reckless abandon. Dad will just chop more, right? I feel like I've had to grow up a little over this past week. It was humbling to realize that sometimes part of me is still a selfish teenager who acts like it is someone else's job to take care of things around here.

The crappy thing about strokes is that once you have one you are much more likely to have another within the next 5 years (that is what happened to my Mom's mom).  But I'm hoping with the right medical care my Dad will have decades of wood chopping, golf ball collecting, trash rummaging, arrowhead hunting, and fishing ahead of him. And maybe even a daughter who appreciates him a little more.

It does not suck to be Brad

Today Tate told me I had "wadoo hair," which in Tatespeak means wet hair. I had to tell him that no, it wasn't wet. Just very, very dirty since I no longer have time to shower with all of this moving business going on. And then I begged Brad to watch Tate so I could get a shower. After that he got a call from a friend's hair salon because they were doing a photo shoot and wanted him to come down and get photos taken while he got his hair cut. So Brad not only got to have a free haircut and clean hair, he also got to have someone else wash it. Harumph. And that's all I have the energy to write since I've been having moving-stress-related insomnia. Fortunately, my friend Mt. Prospect Beth loaned me the first two seasons of Monk on DVD so I'm going to go watch those and try to get some sleep. It's a jungle out there.

ETA: Brad failed to mention the manicure until I saw this photo. I'm pretty sure that would have sent me over the edge.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

What makes this time of year so wonderful? Is it time with friends and family, or people reaching deep into their pockets to find a little extra something to give back to those less fortunate? Twinkley lights, Christmas carols, or bright-eyed children who still believe in magic? No, what makes this the most wonderful time of the year is hours and hours of utterly craptastic holiday movies on TV. There are tons of them on the Hallmark Channel, ABC Family Channel, and lots of other channels that you probably don't watch unless, like me, you are a connoisseur of truly terrible television. Most of these movies walk the fine line between so crappy I can't watch them and so crappy I can't stop watching. My first of the season, "Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade," fell into the latter category.

Quick plot summary. Our heroine is a Chicago Thanksgiving parade coordinator. She's a long-time parade-loving purist who reluctantly falls for a consultant who has come to evaluate the city's parade spending. She wears quirky Mad Men-era garb, which we later find out is because she lost both of her parents and her mom's clothes were given away. She's hoping that by buying vintage she'll somehow end up scoring something of her mom's. Except she looks about 20something, so if her mom really died when she was little those clothes would have most likely been straight out of the 80's. But I'm guess a pair of skintight Jordache jeans and a Camp Beverly Hills t-shirt wouldn't have been nearly as charming. Anyway, at the beginning of the movie she is involved in a long-distance relationship with a marine biologist who doesn't appreciate her, and she has a deep, dark secret. She hasn't told him she's, gasp, afraid of boats! So so much for his plans for her to travel around the world with him while he examines otters, or whatever it was. After their breakup she gets drunk, like throwing-up-I-hope-I-didn't-do-anything-stupid-that-I-don't-remember drunk, from one glass of champagne. Fan-freaking-tastic. I can't remember what happens much after that (maybe I was drunk) except Parade Consultant Guy decides that even though it makes sense for the city of Chicago to start charging admission for the parade it goes against the spirit of the event so he recommends that it remain free to the public. He ends up dressing up as the parade's Santa and declaring his love for Quirky Vintage Parade Coordinator Girl. And scene. The best part of this was that it inspired us to go the parade for the first time, and it really was magical.

Good god, I so need to write one of these movies. Maybe it'll help us pay our mortgage, since after 13 showings we still have no renter. The only person we've turned down was a woman with three 50-lb dogs. I counted that as about six toddlers and said no way.
Anyway, back to the movies. I really do think I could write one of these. Much like romance novels, it really comes down to a simple formula.

Your hero(ine) is:
a. a young, perpetually single woman who doesn't believe in love
b. a single mom with a young child who has lost faith in Santa
c. a widower who no longer finds joy in the holiday season
d. orphans

who encounter(s):
a. a penny-pinching scrooge who wants to shut down the parade/town's landmark something-or-other
b. a lost elf who can't find her way back to the North Pole
c. a childless couple who long for children of their own
d. Tori Spelling

After they:
a. save the store
b. deliver presents to underprivileged kids before the clock strikes midnight
c. bring a soldier home on a last-minute holiday leave
d. survive being stranded in a Christmas Eve blizzard

they all live happily ever after.

Casting includes:
a. Beloved 80's TV moms (think Meredith Baxter)
b. That dude who played Randy on "Monk"
c. Melissa Joan Hart
d. Lots of other people you have never heard of

Look for my movie at 3 a.m. on a TV near you next Thanksgiving.

And P.S., if you have not seen Melissa Joan Hart and Mario Lopez in "Holiday in Handcuffs" you are totally missing out.

Things are going to the dogs around here.

We never heard back from great dane guy after I sent him the super-awesome video tour I made of our condo. But we had six showings this weekend, and the only guy to ask for an application so far has a pit bull. Our realtor has seemingly been advertising on muchmaligneddogbreeds.com. Next up, German shepherd!

On a lighter note, the web analytics indicate that at least one person found my blog by searching "middle aged bikini." I think I've found my niche! And a way to make the extra cash I'll need if we have to lower the rent to find a taker for this place. I'll have to go check to see if middleagedbikini.com is already taken and figure out how to monetize it. It beats selling your underpants on the Internet. One of the guys from our volleyball team who does web stuff I don't understand had a previously-worn-panty-seller as a client. I tried to sell Brad on the idea as my money-making stay-at-home mom gig. I wouldn't have to do laundry (just drop 'em in the mail!), I'd always have cute new underwear, and I could probably even write my underpants off as a business expense. Whenever I try to discuss ideas like this Brad just gives me a look that indicates that a) he's not taking me seriously and b) he's wondering how he ended up married to such a nut job. BTW, Happy anniversary, honey!

One of these days I'll get back to updates about Tater. He is sweet, wonderful, and crazy these days. He's not super keen on us dragging all of his toys down the hall every other day to hide them for showings, but he's hanging in there.