FoodieCLE Deck, Brewsters

So, our first outing for our foodie deck was kind of a cheater one, Brewster's is in our neighborhood and we go there occasionally.

We went with Dave and my brother Shig and both of the kids.  Unfortunately my phone freaked out and did not save most of the pics I took, it allowed itself to reset and then wouldn't load for like 10 minutes.  Not sure what happened, perhaps it didn't like the atmosphere.  Or was jealous of how good it was.  Cause it was pretty awesomely good.

Here's a pic of the card we used and the menu, the only pic my phone didn't eat...

I ate the Drunk as a Skunk Beef tips, they were AWESOME.  So tender, cooked perfectly (medium rare), flavorful and just overall really perfect.  I did ask for no onions and they didn't care, onions marring my beautiful button mushrooms, making them taste a little oniony but not ruining it for me.  And the mashed potatoes....chunky and garlicy, perfectly complimented the steak and mushrooms.  A real "man's mans" kind of dinner.

Ry got the philly cheese steak pizza, which he wasn't as pleased with.... his words: Eh...it was okay, I mean, it wasn't bad.

My brother got the Old man and the sea, a ridiculous amount of fried food from the ocean.  I had some of his fish, it was pretty good.

Dave got the Root Beer Chicken.  Their root beer bbq sauce is pretty awesome, I think dave liked his.

I think we are going out again tonight for the foodie deck, I'll let you know.  I had some really cool pictures of the dinner before I ate it.  Okay, you caught me, I lied.  I forgot to take the pics before.  I took some really good ones after I ate most of it but...I guess even phones need to eat.

My score:  Yeah, I'd eat there again.  Partially because it's so close to my house and partially because it's a decent place to eat.  Sometimes we have had not so good nights there, though, so we don't go that often.  But, occasionally, it's a good place to eat.

Highly caffeinated and the most celebrated for connecting it

Awww yeah... One night of uninterrupted sleep and I feel like a boss.  Except for the crown I broke two days ago.  Which sucks balls.  Pretty bad.  It doesn't hurt but it's sharp and it's awkward (man, awkward is such an awkward word.  I guess it's pretty fitting...) and it's annoying as all who-ha.

I wrote a little poem about it.  Eh-hem, here it goes:
Asher and Seiry refused to sleep
and that upset their mama
she bit down and broke her crown
which only caused more drama.

And who said I wasn't able to be creative anymore and that I could only (poorly) write annual reports for the EPA? Oh, wait, that was me.  My bad. Disregard the previous statement.

Also, I fired myself yesterday for not writing a better annual report draft two years ago to copy now.  And I fired myself also because WHY IS IT SO HARD TO WRITE A SECTION ON BMPS?!?!?!?  Ah, that would be because you're FIRED.  I think that's how it went down.  It was quite a scene in my cubical.

So....yeah.  I'm funny.  Actually, the opposite.  I'm not funny.

Today ry is getting THE surgery.  Good luck to him.  Score one for glow family planning.

Anyway, I am now on the way to get my tooth fixed.  Stupid tooth.

I've been burned out living with the way you've turned out

Hello world.

Been thinking about new years resolutions.  I'm not that great at them but this is, what, I think my third year of writing this blog so that's at least one New Year's resolution I stuck with.  Should I make some type of health goal, the most stereotypical of all resolutions?  I was thinking about trying to run a 5k this year....but should that be my resolution?  Meh..... I would like to make a resolution to have no more sick children for the year but I think that's asking waaaay too much.  It could be something that I know I would be able to do, like a resolution to continue breathing for the whole year.  That's a bit easy but very obtainable, and if I failed, well, I wouldn't be around to know it... Eh, that's a bit morbid now that I re-read it.

I'll keep working on it.

By the way, the Foodie Cleveland cards came last week.  I'm pretty excited about it. :) Here's what they look like.  There's a Brewster's card, a card for this new wine bar in Hudson, lots and lots of cool stuff.  I'll try to take pictures of the cards and the dinners we order with them as we use them.  :)

I think she's ready to go

Dear lord, when do things get easier? 

The beginning of 2013 has already been stressful and tumultous.  Today is my first day back to work.  Writing this on my brief lunch break.  Why is it brief, you might ask?  Well, forgot a key component of my breast pump today.  So, in order to pump today I had to go and spend $40 on a cheap electric pump at 9 am this morning, using my lunch break. And let me tell you, you get what you pay for...Yea buddy.  And I got a stupid stupid email from someone at work which made me mad this morning (probably more mad thank i would have been if the next part of this blog wasn't also happening).  And the baby is sick. Really sick.  Not sleeping for almost an entire week sick.  And a whole week, not a work week.  She is almost sleeping now.  But I am tired.  And perhaps almost the most depressed I have ever been.  And I have an annual report to finish.  And job specs to write.  And meetings to have.  And interviews to conduct.  On top of all of the other stuff I have at work.  I was excited to come back to work today after having so much time off with whiny children.  And now I am wondering why I was excited to come back to work when I have to deal with stupid crap like childish and petty emails.

Oh well.  Here's to hoping that 2013 is like the month of march, in like a lion, out like a lamb.  That should be my new mantra. 

On the plus side, I'm getting a huge new office.  With lots of windows.  It's gonna rock.   

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch

So...yeah.  I officially hate Christmas.  I'm done with it.  And I know that makes me the Grinch.  What can I say, I'm extra grinchy.  Here is the recipe for making a grinch out of someone who generally loved this time of year for her whole life:

Start with my package to the Mos in beautiful CA getting manhandled in the post.  Probably my fault but I thought the word "fragile" meant something.  I think it's an illusion that the postal service grants us to make us feel better.  It really means something like "please drop kick this package all the way from Ohio to California, oh and make sure you run it over with a vehicle at least twice as well", exactly the opposite of what I thought it meant.  Strange.  I guess sometimes you use a word for years and no one ever tells you that the word doesn't mean what you think it means. 

Add to that the fact that we end up traveling to five different places to do Christmas at each one.  Seriously, I did Christmas for four days straight.  I'm so tired.  The kids are tired.  Asher looked at Ryan on actual xmas (our last day of running around doing the whole condensed 12 days of xmas skit that is our yearly ritual) and said he was tired of opening presents, that he just wanted to go home and play.  My child, tired of opening presents.  That has to speak more loudly than anything I can bitch about on here...

Stir in a heaping helping of gifts.  So many gifts.  Please don't take this the wrong way.  I appreciate that all the grandparents love their grandchildren and want to make them happy.  But more isn't always better. Seriously.  They don't each need more gifts than we gave them at home from each grandparent.  I've been trying to get the grandparents to cut down on the gifts and they pretty much just laugh at me.  We have more toys than my children will ever play with in their entire lives.  I don't have the time to figure out where everything came from and return it, and if I were to ask the grandparents to return stuff, then feelings get hurt.  When I was a kid my grandparents got us one article of clothing and maybe a book or a toy.  Those were the good old days.  I really don't mean to bitch about presents but...it's just too much from the grandparents.  Also, it makes me feel like shit that they give my kids more than they open under the tree at home.  Oh, and of course I don't want my children to turn into self entitled little assholes, too. 

Shake up vigorously with all the trash and children's toy packaging and mountains of junk. 

Add a dash of too many people smoking around me and my family. 

Just a pinch of too much driving with a screaming, teething baby.

3/4 a cup of little to no sleep.

2 TBS of general holiday stress combined with exhaustion due to the fact that I absolutly hate the consumeristic-ness of the holiday.  Yeah, I made that word up, deal with it.  I'm adding it the English lexicon. 

Bake for 4 days of christmas travel and  you get the perfect grinch recipe.

Oh, and add to all of that...the first present I got for xmas...was my period.  Thanks world.  Thanks a lot. 

I officially hate the holidays.

Hello, it's me. I've thought about us for a long long time

So, yeah.  I missed two months of blogging.  What a bad girl.  I've really thought about blogging a lot.  But...I take for granted that you're always there, I take for granted that you just don't care. 

Thanksgiving was par for the course.  I liked the food.  Got to see my Korea cousin briefly.  The fink was supposed to come hang out with me but was too busy with her friends from Kent, understandably so, I mean, she was  only here for such a short time...but it was a little sad for me anyway.  Now it will be a whole nother year before she comes back and I'm sure I'll only see her for 15 minutes then, too.

Oh well.  It is what it is.  And I never want to make you change for me. 

Someone had Todd on the mind...

Asher had the flu, like the real official flu last weekend.  It was rough.  Half of his class was out with it.  Seiry didn't get it, thankfully. 

I ordered this thing from foodie cleveland, it's a coupon book for a bunch of local restaruants.  JJ suggested I blog about it, and I think that's a great idea, so I'm going to try really hard to do that. 

I need a hobby.  I need to feel like a real person again.  All I feel like is a care robot.  And it's my own fault. I know this.  But I still can't stop myself.  So I need a "non" parent thing to do, something for me.  Maybe after we get through the holidays. 

I'm feeling disillusioned with the holidays this year.  I'm not sure why.  I just can't find the holiday spirit.  I hate the consumerism of the holiday and yet I feel dragged into it and responsible for the commercial happiness of my children.  How do you get out of that?  Also, how do you make the grandparents stick to a 1-2 gift limit for their grandchildren?  I'm tired of the grandparents giving my kids 50 presents at each holiday, it's sick.  It's too much.  It makes them expect shit all the time.  And I don't want my kids to be self entitled assholes.  I mean, any more than most 3 year olds already are naturally...

Sorry, this is a bummer blog post.  I'll work on it...

So I'm changing my lines and going into it blind

Hello.  Long time no talk.  It's so hard to find a few minutes to myself in which I can spend doing something that isn't personal or household hygiene related.  It's been a hard transition back to work for me and the kids, too.  So, frowny face on that.  I think Asher held the award for the most accidents in one week at school last week.  Four in one day.  I was sooooo mad at his school last week, too.  I'm not going to get into it right now, let's just say there was a complete breakdown of communication and it ended up in one really pissed off mom and an angry phone message for his teacher.  I'm waiting to hear back.  Maybe if I get a chance I'll write about it after I hear from her.

Gotta love City holidays, I got Asher off to school (you should have seen him go in, Ry told me about it because I had to drop off Seiry at Granny's house and then drop my car off for service), all hunch backed and glum.  Ry said if there was a can to kick he would have done it.  I have no idea why he's having such a hard time...he tells us he loves school but then when we take him he's all whiny.  We are planning on playing Borderlands today for more than an hour at a time, it's gonna be crumpets.  Cause crumpets are CRUNK!!!

By the way, terrible twos is totally an incorrect misnomer.  It's the "wish you could bypass the whiny misery" threes.  For real.

For those of you who don't want to know this, tough luck.  I had my first encounter with mastitis and it was freaking awesome. And by awesome I mean it felt like someone had used my breast as a punching bag for hours and when I nursed it felt like I nursed hot lava.  As if there is some other type of lava.  I mean, I was kind of quoting the Chapelle Show but still, hot lava?  I mean, cold lava is just igneous rocks, right?

My mom is getting married the first weekend of next month.  It's all been kinda whirlwind.  I got my dress yesterday. Seiry had a total meltdown in the dress shop and we hadn't even been there for 20 minutes.  I had to call Ry to come help.  And of course the minute he gets there she is totally cool.  I don't get it but it had me frazzled the rest of the time.  I did get a really beautiful dress for $99 though so that was cool.

I'm taking my water II license test next month, too.  And I haven't even begun to study for it. I'm going to try really hard to study for it this week but my calendar at work fills up so fast it should be in NASCAR.

And the first two haunted houses this year were both pretty good.  The first week we went to Spooky Rocking Ranch in Columbia Station which was fun and had some pretty great puppetry (also, if you go, play the "how many rocking ladies can you spot" game.  It's pretty boss).  Over the weekend we used our groupon for the Hinkley Cornstalkers, which was good again this year.  That one is pretty worth it, especially when you get the groupon.  Good times.

Thinking about taking Asher to the "shoot zombies" hayride thingy this weekend....he's pretty keen to go. Anyway, time for Borderlands...