Changes for the New Year

Well, it's that time again. Time to reflect on the past year and look toward the new year with a refreshed outlook, and hopes of making positive changes. Thinking back to last year at this time, I remember that I resolved to focus on "simplicity." That was supposed to be my theme for the year. I think I failed miserably. It was just a challenging year on so many levels that simplifying was just not possible. But this year brings new hope. It's a fresh clean start and I feel as though I have a blank canvas and can pick any theme I want. Part of me wants to revert back to the theme I used two years ago (FUN). I somehow managed to accomplish that one and it felt good at the end of the year, knowing that I made an effort and I was successful. I guess I better choose my theme carefully this time so I have a chance at accomplishing it. So what's it gonna be?

I'm not sure I should try the whole "simplify" thing again. This will be the first year trying to manage my father's house and I dread that on so many levels. I just don't see how adding this to my life can help me simplify it so I need to pick something else. It's so hard . . . to pick just one word to sum up a resolution. Oh, but wait a minute . . . that just gave me an idea for next year's photo project. I think I will continue my "Photo of the Day," but instead of capturing the one thing that I want to remember from the day I will capture something (anything) that I can describe in just one word. No more long winded captions, just one word.

Now that I decided on my photo project for next year, well, that's all that really matters. I will continue to ponder my resolution theme for the year and see what comes up.

Another big change for 2012 will be the discontinuation of this blog. OK, let me rephrase that. I am no longer going to be posting to this exact "Paula's Brain" page. I will, however, be moving my blog to my new web site www.paulaapro.com. The new blog can be found here: http://www.paulaapro.com/blog-2/ and I will start to populate it next week.

Oh, and here's Karlo's New Years resolution . . .

He is resolving to clean the hounds' nasty teeth in hopes of destinking them. Hmmmm, maybe 'destinking' can be my word for the year.

Shopping With Friends

That picture is the result of me shopping with Karlo, Penni, and Tina yesterday. It was quite and exciting day. After not leaving the house for several days on end it was hard to adjust to the hustle and bustle of civilization, but it sure was a fun day. I left the house shortly after 11 with a long and precise agenda. I had a lot of errands to tick off my list in between meeting up with my buddies. My first meeting was with Karlo (who, unfortunately had to go back to work). We met at the office and had a nice lunch together. There is no shortage of free great food hanging around the office between the holidays so we scored a yummy meal. From there Karlo and I went to the motorcycle store to return/exchange several of our gifts to each other. OK so there's no doubt which part of my new outfit Karlo can take credit for!

Next I had to run to Kohls to try to solve that coat disaster that I blogged about last week. This story deserves a blog posting all to itself and I'm not even sure I can conjure up the appropriate words (adjectives) to describe that entire ridiculous scene. Let's just say that I wasted THIRTY MINUTES of my life in what felt like a root canal. I don't think I ever witnessed anything more up surd on a consumer level. Thank GOD for my meditation because I kept my cool and didn't kill anybody. I can not wait to see if the proper coat ever arrives after all that.

Kohls made me late for my date with Penni, John, and Nicole. Well, that and the fact that I had no idea that DSW moved it's store location in Manchester. I was already late, driving like an idiot, and imagine my surprise when I pulled into what used to be their parking lot only to find the store gone. Penni and I had to meet to exchange a number of important items, the most important one being the AMAZING array of Christmas cookies that she spent a week baking and then forgot to bring to Christmas dinner. Check this out:

And now I'm sitting alone in the house with these cookies just begging to be eaten . . .

I was on a mission yesterday to find a pair of black suede wedge heel tall boots. I don't know why I suddenly decided that I needed a pair, but I knew I wasn't going home without them. I tried on every pair on display at DSW and totally struck out on every account. The boots either didn't fit, didn't come in my preferred size and color combination, or I just plain didn't like them. I finally gave up and resolved that I was not getting my boots. Then Nicole appears with a pair of boots on begging her Mom to buy them for her. She pleaded that the boots came from the clearance section and were a good deal. Clearance section??? I didn't know there was such a thing. I only had 5 minutes to spare before I needed to leave to meet Tina, but I ran back to check it out. In the first 45 seconds Penni pulls out the fabulous black boots that I'm wearing in the picture above and I instantly fell in love with them. Everything about them was perfect. Penni was my hero of the day. I didn't even think twice, grabbed them and ran to the check out.

Then I met Tina at the Evergreen Walk. I have been dying to take T to that jewelry and accessory store that Lisa introduced me to and of course, she loved it. I told her that she had to pick out something for me and we couldn't leave until she did. She didn't let me down and picked out the purple sweater and jewelry to match. Another total score. We had a grand ole time shopping in all the stores . . . until Karlo crashed our girl party ;-) He met us at Evergreen and we all went to dinner together. I had a great time. What a fantastic day. I really should leave the house more often!

Christmas Video 2011

Biscotti Disaster

 

I have no idea whatever possessed me to decide to bake biscotti from scratch. One night I was flipping through a magazine and found a recipe for pistachio cranberry biscotti. The picture looked so good and after reading the ingredients and directions I thought, "That doesn't sound too hard." I figured that if I could find the dried cranberries and the shelled pistachios in the grocery store, with very little effort, then I would give it a go. Of course, I truly thought I would have trouble locating the items and therefore would give up on the idea quickly and NOT have to actually do the baking. But to my surprise I found the darn ingredients with no trouble.

So off I went on my baking adventure. And an adventure it was.

The first thing I had to do was beat, blend, or mix . . . I'm not quite sure what the difference is between those terms, and as Penni pointed out, that may be my first problem. But non-the-less, I threw the sugar, baking powder, and whatever other dry ingredients into my mixing bowl along with the 2 eggs the recipe called for. I turned on my trusty little electric mixer and all the ingredients proceeded to bunch up into one huge ball of mess, wrapped around the mixer do-hickies. Now what? How the heck will I get it off? Uuuuugh. I tried the trick of slowly lifting the beater up and managed to get most of the sticky mess off the beater things without having too much fly around the kitchen.

Now I'm left with a big slop of super sticky, not quite mixed dough and another pile of dry ingredients that I can't get to mix into the wet slop. Did I mention that I only really have one hand to work with (my left one no less) due to the stupid sores on my right hand?

 

So I try like crazy to mix this cement with my left hand, but it just doesn't work. I'm forced to break the recipe (God forbid I don't go by the book) and crack another egg in to give it more stick.

By (left) hand, I manage to get all the ingredients wet and sticky and then I threw in the nuts and berries. OK, maybe I'm back on track. Next step was to transfer the sticky mess to a "prepared work surface" and form into two logs. Unsure of what I was supposed to do to 'prepare' my work surface because NOTHING could have prepared me for what I was about to face. I threw some flour all over my immaculately clean counter (and that hurt, let me tell you). I tried to grab the sticky mess with my one good hand and that quickly went nowhere. I was forced to use my preciously tender and un-bandaged right hand and now I was stuck. The slop was impossible to move or work with. I ended up with literally half of it stuck to me with no idea how to get it off of my hands. I wanted to cry.

Two logs? The recipe HAD to be kidding. I tried to just grab everything off the counter and put it onto the freezer paper-lined cookie sheet. What the point was of first putting the slop on the counter just baffles me. I'm not even sure how I managed to get any of the stupid slop from the counter and onto the cookie sheet, but I did it. It wasn't pretty, but I did it.

I would say at least 25% of the batter was still stuck to my hands and you should have seen me trying to get if off my poor painful right hand. What an ordeal that was. Then I had to turn around and figure out how to remove the cement from the counter.

At this point I figured I had to just give it a go and bake the darn thing. I got this far and no matter how bad they came out, I was eating them. Dammit! So in the oven they went . . .

They came out not so bad. The recipe said it would yield 30 cookies and I only got 10, but that was understandable considering how much batter went down the drain. To remedy the problem I cut them all in half.

And after all that work, nobody tried a single one on Christmas day. I weeped.

The next day Karlo decided to try one out. He asked if "they were meant to be dunked into coffee" and I said yes, but mine weren't like real biscotti and they weren't that hard and crunchy. So he proceeded to DUNK ONE INTO HIS COKE. I threw my arms up in complete disgust. Who dunks biscotti into Coke???? What a waste of all my effort. NEVER again. I got up and pitched the recipe into the wood stove. There will be no further urges in the future.

The Christmas Greyhounds 2011

Christmas Eve at the Mastrios

Week 51 in Photos

Holy cow, I can't believe I only have one more week to go with this project. I better make an effort to take some good pictures this upcoming last week. Here's a festive look back at last week.

#352

I started off the work week very busy . . . downloading Snoopy Christmas apps on my iPad.

#353

On Tuesday my manager left this on my desk. I've been borrowing his nail clippers for the past decade so he finally broke down and bought me some of my own.

#354

Karlo's publisher always thinks of us around Christmas time. By now he feels like extended family. He sent us this tower of goodies from Harry & David . . . and it's been sitting unattended under our tree ever since. We obviously own "sight" hounds and not blood hounds.

#355

What a ball this was. We attended a super fun work happy hour and had some drinks with our silly co-workers.

#356

I spent this evening running around the house taking pictures of our holiday decor. I'm supposed to be practicing with my new flash, but I just refuse to attach it to the camera.

#357

We spent an early Christmas Eve at my cousin Jamie's. Always a great time with those folks!

#358

And Christmas was at our place this year. It was simply perfect and I couldn't have asked for a better day. More details to follow . . .

Shopping Craze

I'm ready for it all to be over. I'm on both ends of the shopping craziness and I've had it. As a consumer it can be frustrating and exhausting. I just spent the last few minutes trying to track down an email from an order that I placed on Thanksgiving and have yet to receive the item. Of course it's a gift and it just makes me wonder how many other things I ordered and never got . . . and don't even know it because I can't keep track of all my shopping.

One purchase, however, I kept good track of. Remember my story about my 'old lady coat' and how I was going to buy a new one and charge it to Karlo? Well, I did. The very next day I fell in love with and purchased this coat...

 

I was so excited to hear that it would be delivered by Christmas. It was going to be a bonus gift for me. Yeah! And then imagine my dissapointment when this ugly thing arrived on our front porch yesterday.

Granted the photo and the lighting are horrific, but so is the coat. Does that look ANYTHING like the one I bought? I could scream. It also arrived with no paperwork and there's no way in Hell I'm paying to ship it back, nor will I drive to a store. So it will be days of back and fourth with customer service to settle this. The coat is hardly worth the aggravation.

I can't really be too hard on the poor customer service people because I know this sort of stuff happens. I am also in the middle of trying to figure out why my warehouse shipped an order for a Michigan customer to Florida. sigh. I really look forward to the end of the holiday season.

My Academic Show N Tell

This just cracked me up. I was flipping through my grammar school records and noticed that my mother saved all of my report cards. I found it amusing that even way back then I already displayed my aversion to History and Geography. Well, I should rephrase that. I never cared for history because I always had an attitude of, "Why should I waste my time learning about stuff that happened a hundred years ago when I can be focusing on science and technology?" My sights were always set on the future, not on the past. That has not changed since childhood. I couldn't tell you the date of a single significant historical event. I even struggle to remember what year I got married, but I will soak up and retain new technology knowledge in a heartbeat. As far as Geography goes . . . no aversion there. I love geography. I'm just not all that good at it.

And without any further ado, here's what most of report cards looked like way back then.

On one hand I think the teacher must have been pretty sharp to nail my weaknesses with Geography and History (while clearly recognizing my brilliance in everything else ;-) But HELLO, what is with the B in Art????? And that comes the year after this. Go figure.

Week 50 in Photos

#345

I was supposed to take a picture of the plate of cookies that I made and brought to our dance class, but I forgot and by the time we got home, well . . . the dish was empty. I guess that means the cookies were good! And I finally used the cookie dough that went from my brother's freezer, to my father's, to my office, to my friend's house and eventually made it's way home.

#346

This is a very dangerous combination sitting on my desk. It's Scott Kelby's (one of my favorite photographers) "Holiday Gift Guide" (better than "Oprah's Favorite Things") and a catalog from a large camera supply place. Just for the record, I was good and didn't buy a thing. Yet.

#347

Waiting in line at Big Y I was flipping through a magazine and wanted to make this drink. Instead of buying the magazine, I took a picture of the recipe. Is that stealing? Ooops.

#348

My new boots sitting on my office chair. Since I no longer sit on it, I figured my shoes should put the chair to good use.

#349

Here's my new Christmas party outfit that Karlo helped me pick out in Orlando. Too bad the photo is too dark to really see the outfit. My plum scarf gets totally lost and you also can't tell that there's plum in the skirt. Oh well. At least Karlo approved.

#350

We went to a fun Christmas party this night. The house was decorated so beautifully that it was really hard to decide what to photograph for my photo of the day. This little plaque was just too cute and irresistible.

#351

Early Santa strikes again. While Karlo was at Swarovski buying me my necklace he also picked this up. He wanted to give it to me before Christmas so I could decide where to display it on Christmas day. The picture doesn't do it justice. It's super sparkly and pretty. Hopefully there will be something left under the tree for me on Christmas. At the rate Karlo is giving my presents, I'm not so sure.

More Fashion Follies

Yesterday I wore a pair of gray pinstripe dress pants and a gray wool coat to work. Nothing out of the ordinary. I've been wearing this dress coat for a year or two and I always liked it. I like the length. I like the style. I even got compliments from strangers on the cute 3 button (placed high on the coat) style. But suddenly yesterday afternoon something came over Karlo where he just couldn't take it any more and he told me that I looked like "an old lady" and that I needed better clothes. I questioned what was wrong with my pants and he said, "nothing." So I asked what was wrong with my coat and he said he hated it. He hated the color . . . (It's dark gray for Heaven's sake. The same color as his dress coat.)  . . . and he hated the style. Well, this came as quite a surprise. Suddenly I felt self-conscious and miserable. But on a bright side I decided it was time for yet another new coat (like I need that - I have 4 dozen coats in my closet) and Karlo should buy it. Karlo pointed out the fact that I, of all people, should not be wearing a gray coat. "Why don't you own a bright pink coat?" he asked.

So that was it. First thing this morning I googled "purple winter coat" and I just had to laugh when this came up in the google images search:

I think it's perfect for me! And Peanut can borrow it when I'm wearing one of the other 4 dozen coats I own. I guess I'll keep searching.

My next fashion dilemma is my desire for these UGG boots.

I haven't been able to forget them since the day I first laid eyes on them. I don't know what it is about them that has me so captivated, but they got me. I decided that I would buy them for myself after getting my Christmas bonus (seeing as they cost $200). But then Black Friday came and I couldn't resist snagging these for $25 plus free shipping from JC Penny.

Today was the first time I wore them and I'm shocked at how comfy they are. That was a huge selling point for the UGGs. I wanted comfy boots. Now I'm torn trying to decide if these boots that I already own can satisfy that itch for comfy cute boots, or if I still need to splurge on the UGGs. What's a confused girl to do?

Christmas Letter 2011

Well this will be a challenge. I usually take this opportunity to look back on the year and remember all the fun and exciting things we did. It’s usually nice to force myself to remember all the things that happened throughout the year and relive the good memories. This year, however, has been one of the worst and most challenging years of my life. The thing that I am most grateful for at this point is the fact that the year is almost over. I look forward to a fresh start with an even numbered year.

It all started in January with the never-ending snow issues and the impossible task of just maintaining the house and property. During one of those crazy storms my Dad fell down on the ice and that pretty much changed the lives of everyone in our family. Nothing was the same after that and that fall marked a significant start of a downward trend.

My poor father struggled with his health all year and it was a sad, stressful ordeal. I threw myself into my exercise training program all Winter and managed to get into great shape for our bike trip to Utah in March. Unfortunately that peak of athletic performance was short-lived because I contracted Lyme Disease at the beginning of April. That turned into three of the most miserable weeks of my life and something that I hope to never experience again.

No sooner do my antibiotics kick in and make me start to feel human again, but Karlo does a number on his spine and spends 8 straight days flat on his back, completely immobile in severe amounts of pain. I quickly went from being the patient to being the nurse and I’m not sure which one was worse. Complete nightmare. Luckily emergency back surgery fixed Karlo up and he was back on his feet in no time.

By now June rolls around and we actually had a month of somewhat of a normal life. We were both healthy and Dad was living back at home and seemed happy. Things were looking up. But of course, that wouldn’t last long either.

I ended up with a terrible pinched nerve in my neck, which caused life changing constant pain for several months. There went the entire Summer (and Fall for that matter). I couldn’t ride a motorcycle or a bicycle, couldn’t do yoga, lift weights. I couldn’t even sit in a chair without pain and it really sucked big time. But wait, there’s more . . .

Dad ended up back in the hospital in July and it was pretty bad. His kidneys were failing and it really took a toll on his brain . .  . and my pinched nerve, along with the nerves of my brother and sister-in-law. This marked the beginning of Dad’s very challenging dialysis treatments, which were basically his life support.

Most of the Fall was a blur. I was on the road traveling more than I was home. In a month’s time Karlo and I only saw each other for 4 days, and those weren’t even consecutive days! I missed the most beautiful time to be in CT, but fortunately my neck pain seemed to be subsiding so that I was no longer in constant pain. Maybe the rest of the year would slip by without any more problems. Or not.

My father decided in mid October to stop his dialysis treatments. The following two weeks were more than I ever dreamed I could handle (emotionally). Let’s just say it was very very hard to watch my father deteriorate rapidly and then finally take his last breathe on Halloween night.

So November comes and I’m thinking it’s the final stretch to ending this terrible year. Maybe the time will just pass quickly and be uneventful. There were some minor negatives, but in comparison to what we’ve been through I’m not complaining. I’m just looking forward to spending quality time with my family on Christmas – not discussing the million details of my father’s property nor going over my never ending list of things to do. I just want to be together, be happy, and be relaxed, if only for one short day. Maybe it takes a bad year to reflect on what really matters and to finally realize that Christmas is not about the presents under the tree, but about the people sitting around the dinner table.

A sincere Merry Christmas to all my friends and family, with the warmest wishes for a New Year filled with good health and happiness. When it comes right down to it, that is all that really matters.

Dancing Stars

Who knew that somebody had a video recorder on Saturday night? It's not the best quality and you can barely see Karlo and I (we are in the back row on the right side of the floor), but it's still pretty neat that we have a memento from our big performance. Enjoy!

So Proud

I just realized that I never shared these drawings on my blog. Way back when I was in Seattle this past Summer I found myself in Best Buy with time to kill (which is never a good thing). My manager and I were trying to solve a work-related hardware issue and while he was at the Geek Squad desk I was aimlessly walking around the store, trying not to buy anything. I have to say, I did really good and only wasted $12 or so. I bought a silly little iPad stylus. I had no idea why I wanted it or what I would do with it, but I bought it anyway. Footnote: I'm pretty sure I lost it by now because I haven't seen it since.

After my big Best Buy purchase I decided that I now needed to buy a book to teach me how to draw cartoon animals. This was to be my big plan for the stylus. I was going to use it simply to draw on my iPad. At the very least it would serve as good entertainment in my lonely hotel room. And that it did.

I went back to my room and spent the next couple of hours doodling on the iPad. I completely forgot about these sketches until this weekend when I was tinkering with the pad. When I drew them I thought they were terrible, but now looking back at them I can't believe I drew them. I think they are grand! What do you think? Cute?

Week 49 in Photos

#338

While we were away in Florida all of these packages were piling up at home. The timing of our trip was terrible right after the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Poor Jill.

#339
It's positively sinful that this is my pathetic picture of the day rather than Lisa shopping or dining, but it will have to do. Here is the result of our evening of shopping.

#340
This is much more exciting than it looks. I have been waiting a long time to get a 'stand-up' desk at work. With the push of a button I can change the height of the desk so I can either sit at it, or more likely, stand at it. I'm hoping this relieves some of my shoulder and neck issues.

#341
Karlo came home from CA today and he brought me back an early Christmas present. The reason he bought it and gave it to me early is because we were performing in a dance show on Saturday and we needed to dress in black, white and red. This was the perfect compliment to my outfit. So sweet!

#342
We went to see this terrific play at UConn called "I'm Connecticut." It was a hilarious story about how boring CT is and we so enjoyed it.

#343
And here we are at the holiday ball. Unfortunately I don't have any photos or video of us dancing. Well, maybe that's a good thing ;-)

#344
This Christmas takes the record for the easiest and most stress-free shopping and wrapping routine of my life. Every family member gets one sack full of goodies. Wrapping done in under 10 minutes!

Show N Tell 2

 I love this picture of my young Dad. Wasn't he cute?

This was my father's business card when he was a builder down in Florida. Boy he sure did regret moving back up to CT.

My Big Night Out

And I don't have a single picture to show for it. I am still kicking myself for not taking a picture of Lisa in one of my new favorite stores at the Evergreen Walk. I'm not sure which store takes the title of my favorite. It's a close call between Charming Charlie and Soft Surroundings. I'm in love with both of them. So you'll just have to picture Lisa standing amidst a million adorable pieces of costume jewelry, handbags, scarfs, tops, shoes, etc. The entire store is arranged by color and it's simply amazing. So imagine that you needed to get some red accessories . . . you trot on over to the red section and see things like this:

I could have stayed there all night. What a ball. I just wish I knew this place existed when I needed to buy some red jewelry for an upcoming holiday ball.

Then you'll have to picture me trying on my favorite pieces of clothing at Soft Surroundings, which is positively a beautiful store. I've been studying all the clothes in the catalog on my coffee table for a month. I have every other page dog-eared and soon this puppy will be mine:

Next you'll have to picture Lisa sipping some crazy good looking fancy coffee with whip cream on top. It's times like those when I wished I drank that evil stuff. We had dinner at a new place that I didn't even know existed. Thanks to Groupons we found ourselves chowing down on gourmet pizzas. Yummmy!

Also thanks to Groupons, we also found ourselves in Old Navy. I had a $20 Groupon and walked around the store a dozen times only to pick up a high tech fleece (the last thing in the world that I need) and some Snoopy lounge pants (the second last thing in the world that I need). I just have a tough time finding things I like in Old Navy. Luckily I had some intervention and not only did Lisa talk me out of my poor clothing choices, but she helped me pick out a new outfit that I'm sporting today.