Esprit de L'Escalier

My meatloaf

My friend Elaine came over tonight, and we had a really good, long visit. Luckily for her, she ate dinner before she arrived. For while I said I was making meatloaf for dinner, I had assumed it would be finished in a timely manner. Not so. I broke out my crockpot and tried my hand at making a meatloaf in it. Unfortunately for me, I did not read the directions to the chosen recipe very well. (This has been losing me points on math tests for ages.) While I read, "Cook 1 hour on high," I did not read, "and then cook for 6 hours on low." Blasted slow cookers. I adjusted things and watched it and cooked it reasonably enough. My ancient meat thermometer, which came from my Grandmother's kitchen and looks to be from the 1960s, said it reached the needed interior heat. Or as Natasha said, she didn't think we'd get worms. Oh well, I'm sure it will reheat nicely for dinner tomorrow. The meatloaf wasn't supreme, but my mashed potatoes were. Too bad they finished several hours apart.

Pictured to the left is me lifting said meatloaf out of my crockpot...

Musical chairs (literally)

Tonight I have finally put my living room back together again. Or rather re-invented it. Recently I've been taken to watching a lot of HGTV. This has lead to me have major nesting urges. As well as some redecoration urges, which meant, that it was time to get rid of some of our dorm-style furniture.

In our front room we had a futon (that's Natasha's) and a twin bed (mine), as well some trunks serving as coffee tables, the tv, etc. I was very reluctant to give up the bed. It's extremely comfortable and when we all moved in together, we didn't have anything else to use, so we used it as a day bed. Having the futon and twin bed has been great for all of our houseguests, but it was time for something to go. Since the futon was not mine to get rid of, and because the twin bed really made the room look like another bed room, the twin bed got the axe. But it went to a good home, my friend/co-worker Neva has taken it in exchange for a love seat, which is what brings me to the musical chairs portion of my evening.

On Sunday I almost bought this velvety sage green sofa. The stars were seeming to align. My friend Ryan was going to help me move it and the guy selling it was moving to my hometown! But something didn't feel right, so I decided to call it off. Sunday evening, Ryan called me with an offer of a velvety green couch that Al, Ryan's old roommate and Natasha's boyfriend, bought. It didn't fit in his new condo. So I got exactly the sort of couch I wanted at half the cost of the other one! And in exchange I told Al he could have the love seat Neva was giving me.

Tonight we did the dance of the furniture exchange. Neva and her fiancee dropped off the loveseat at Al's and then came by and picked up my bed. I was finally able to arrange the sofa in its new location and move somethings around. It's all looking much better. I've got to get a lamp for the sofa, but all in good time my pretties... Plus my camel pillows from Qatar look great with the new sofa!

Before:

Don't think less of me for that photo. When I'm bored and by myself I sometimes take pictures of myself and my apartment with the timer on my camera... I should have added that to Shakespeare's Sister's list of people's inner geek. Kind of embarassing, but hey, so's life.

After:

Both pictures show our drastic need for some sort of art on the wall... But that too was a compromise between roommates...

Cleaning...

I have a cast of thousands coming in this weekend, well, actually five, maybe six if Bird comes, and one of those people isn't sleeping in my apartment. Everyone else is, though. (On a related note, Bird, where are you? Please return my calls and let me know your plans!) There is the Chicago Marathon on Sunday, which some of these people are partaking in, and a wedding, and just a visit. It should be fun; I like to moan because I'm overly dramatic.

Tonight I spent the evening cleaning (real, honest to goodness cleaning, no half-assed stuff this time!) and talking to various people on the phone. I got a tall duster thingy to take care of the odd dust configurations that were growing on the walls of our kitchen. That's really the only way I can describe it. And I threw out a bunch of old magazines. Not as many as I need to get rid of, but I'm getting there. My largest accomplishment is organizing the various piles of papers I have strewn about the apartment. I actually put them into the file box I bought about 3 months ago. Organized into their own files! And there was vacuuming! Will wonders never cease! Apparently I'm in a cleaning mood.

Now I am ever so tired. I've got to get up very, very early to get to O'Hare by 8am with Libs to meet our friend Mary Margaret's plane. We are very good friends. Very good. Tomorrow night, since I am free of my cleaning duties, I plan on eating take out and drinking copious amounts of wine and cackling while catching up with my two old roommates. It will be worth the early L ride to O'Hare.

I also visited the new jumbo JoAnn Fabrics today... Wow. I could easily get lost for hours. So much yarn. I need to focus, though. Only buy yarn for specific projects. Two of my cousins are pregnant, so I've got those to work on. Plus a scarf for the brother. And for me to go with my new coat... Where will I find the time?

Cleaning bit by bit

It might be hard to tell from this photo, but this is my fridge in as clean of a state as it's been in a while. It looks a little empty, but it's empty in a *good* way. In a way where all of the half-empty salsa containers have been purged and the leftovers-cum-science experiments are gone. We've got our dairy covered. And the beer. Though, frankly, I didn't touch the crispers. They aren't my territory. I don't use them and they kind of scare me.

Death to soap scum and an old mix tape

Tonight I laid aside the never-ending mango shawl I am crocheting and picked up the mantle my mother had thrown (and an old toothbrush). It was time to tackle the mold that had steadily taken over my bathtub. I used another of my wise mother's tricks (a little tri-sodium phosphate mixed with bleach and applied to the tile and grout with an old toothbrush). The woman definitely knows how to get things clean. I also managed to unscrew my tub drain, heretofore a deed I thought impossible, and slew the slimy, hairy thing that grew beneath it. Yuck. Even over all the bleach fumes I've been inhaling, I think I can still smell that. Now my bathtub is gleaming white.

I decided I needed some tunes whilst I cleaned, so I dug out an old mix tape I made my senior year of high school. The one I chose is entitled, "The Boxing Nuns," I was always giving mixed tapes silly names. It says on the inside that I made this for my friend Sarah, who was my co-counsel for Mock Trial that year. Along side my note to her is a quote:

Music wipes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. (Unknown)

Aren't I sweet? Although I have no idea if a copy ever made it to her. And there is a sticker of a bug. All very me circa 1999.

I miss making mixed tapes. I used to obsess over them. I'd start off thinking about a couple of songs that I thought would sound good in a row. In whatever class I was in, I'd flip ahead a few pages and start scribbling ideas. Then I would scour the public library's music collection, and those of my friends, and begin compiling my sources. I took my mixes as seriously as I would a term paper. Don't forget to site your sources! The beauty was listening to the songs as they record and think about the array of songs you'd picked out and try and find the best one to follow. It was very organic and you had to spend hours doing it. I still get itches in the middle of something and start writing down a playlist, but iPods and mp3s have kind of killed the romance of the mix tape. Now it's all too easy. I rarely listen to a song all the way through while creating a play list. Now you can randomize things. There is no need for a structure.

Anyhow, this one is very heavily influenced by the Big Chill soundtrack and my Dad, and my friends Cristina and Becky (b/c of the Boss and the Band). Though each particular song makes me think of a specific person or time. I thought I'd share the playlist, because it seems a very blog-thing to do.

Side A:
Rosalita-- Bruce Springsteen
Muddy Water-- Keb' Mo'
Every Breath You Take-- The Police
Dreams-- Fleetwood Mac (god, I was so into FM when I was 17)
Feel a Whole Lot Better-- Tom Petty
Can't Cry Anymore-- Sheryl Crowe
Linger Awhile-- Sarah Vaughn
Running on Faith-- Eric Clapton
Midnight Train to Georgia-- Gladys Knight and the Pips (a family standard for car trips)
Reunion-- Indigo Girls
Talking 'Bout a Revolution-- Tracy Chapman

Side B:
Stay (Wasting Time)-- Dave Matthews Band (it felt obligatory at the time to put this on there, but it's a good song)
The Joker-- Steve Miller Band
Always on My Mind-- Willie Nelson*
Whiter Shade of Pale-- Procol Harum
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down-- The Band
Stand By Me-- Ben E. King
Bright Side of the Road-- Van Morrison
Sweetest Thing-- U2
Don't Get Around Much Anymore-- Etta James
Reason to Believe-- Rod Stewart*
Here Comes My Baby-- Cat Stevens
Ooh, La, La-- The Faces (probably bad mix tape feng shui to put two Rod Stewart songs so close together, but I don't think I knew at the time he was in the Faces)

*These two songs I put on expressly because of my mother. She always made us listen to a Willie Nelson tape and a Rod Stewart tape on car trips. We made fun of her at the time, though it's amazing how the music your parents listen to wriggle into your subconscious and take root.

My mother

My mother excels at many things. She can get strangers to tell her their life stories within the first ten minutes of meeting her (and their deepest secrets within the first half hour). She can cook a perfect turkey (and makes an excellent gravy to which I aspire). She can parallel park going thirty. She can tell you the capital of any country in the world (and usually a piece of history or export). But the her gift that helped me tonight was much more mundane. Tonight, I used her easy on the pipes method for clearing clogged drains, with baking soda and white vinegar (both of which she has taught me to keep in mass quantities for this purpose).

I almost ran and got my camera to take pictures of her method in action, but it probably wouldn't have made such an exciting photo. You can't see the bubbles form when I pour the vinegar down. Plus my tub is in poor shape and I am embarassed to show it in its current state to the wilds of the internet. But I was excited. I could tell that there was a big clog, because no matter how much vinegar I poured down the drain after that baking soda, it kept bubbling like the first splash. It's incredibly satisfying to clear a drain, especially when you don't have to use Drano. I hate that stuff. Once I figured I had poured enough vinegar down the drain, I poured a tea kettle of boiling water to clear it. Now everything is draining perfectly!

Thanks Mom!