Posting a comment...

Hello All,


I really love recieving feedback and (until now) my comment section has not been working! But, now that it is working here's the step-by-step guide of how to do it (my parents are in Hawaii, what else do I have to do?):




1. Beneath the post there is a thing that says "0 comments" or "50 comments" or how ever many there are. . .



2. click on that....



3. It should come to a new page where you can post a comment.....



4. Voila! See, very easy....

P.S. My parents are sending pictures from Hawaii via email today or tomorrow...I am planning on doing a post about it so stay in touch!

My Dogs...

This is Kodiak. My first doggy and my 100 pound lap dog. He was my first investment and it took me a full six months (at least) to earn the $600 for him. It was hard but I think it made him much more valuable to me than if my parents would have paid for him. I recall my parents telling me that a puppy was like having a newborn baby. I chose not to listen to them until after I got him (conveniently at 1:00 in the morning when I was sitting next to his crate, tapping it whenever he cried). Hehe. He was a rascally puppy but has (thankfully) grown out of the stage and become a wonderfully spirited Bernese Mountain Dog. Its sinful how much I adore him.

This is Sasha. 8 months younger than Kodiak and a dream compared to his puppy hood. I think its because they wear each other out. Whatever it is she hasn't been nearly as hard as he was. I was very reluctant to get a winter puppy because of house training problem but thankfully her previous owners had been very good with it and it wasn't a very big issue. The only reason my dad ended up letting us get her was because Kody had been chewing on the side of the house from boredom. Chewed house, new puppy. Hmm...I guess the latter sounded better to him. Anyway, we absolutely love her and Kodiak and are enjoying them both soooo much.

More Pictures.....

Mid barking :)

Cooking and Me

When I was little, I was known to my family as a concoction maker – a person who compiled ridiculous ingredients (and to my mother’s horror, the most expensive) to create a mixture that may look, be, smell, taste, or appear as strange, gross, disgusting, repulsive, spicy, tangy, sweet, or (very rarely) delicious. These “recipes” often included two or more ingredients that would in culinary textbooks never go together. The concoctions varied but here are some that I remember.

Banana Pretzel Pie
1 Banana mashed
18 Pretzels, crunched,
Butter,
Combine butter and pretzels together and smash to the bottom of the pan. Put mashed banana on top for pie filling

Peanut Butter and Jelly Banana Sandwich
Peanut Butter
Strawberry Jelly
Bread
Bananas
Make the sandwich as if you were making a normal sandwich but cut the banana up and put on bread before other ingredients. Voila!

My closest brother was the taste tester for most the products (he did agree to do it -- I didn’t force him…) and most of the time liked it. I mean, really, who doesn't like tuna pie with chocolate frosting? But, as I grew out of the concoction stage, my ability to cook disappeared with it. I managed to scrape by and still make good food up to about last month (did you know it takes three days to make croissants?) when all of the sudden I forgot what to do. Now, I’m not talking frying eggs or making cakes from the mix (I still could do that decently) but it was the stuff that included more than 2 ingredients like bread made in the bread machine and black bean soup. I’ll start with the soup disaster. IT (meaning the recipe) called for one and a half quarts of water. IT didn’t clarify how many cups that was exactly. Thinking one quart was about four cups of water; I did what IT said and put in six cups of water and waited. Mom came home and told me it was too watery. Did IT get yelled at? Noooooo…. I got yelled at and fined $20 for ingredients. I was sure a worse mistake couldn't happen. It was ITS fault—not mine. The next week we had dinner guests who specially ordered my famous potato bread. Oh yeah. I might have not been able to make anything else, but no one in my family could make bread like I could (this is what I was thinking at the time. What’s that bible verse about humility again?). Daydreaming about the many compliments I would receive, I poured in the ingredients carefully and precisely and started it in the oven. 45 minutes later I checked it and it quite hadn’t risen enough. So instead of waiting more, I put it in the clay pot and waited for it to rise the second time. I checked my email, made my bed, did normal everyday stuff and then went down to check it again. Mom had put it in the oven and realizing my part was done, I checked my email again. After a while I went downstairs, expecting nothing really.

Mom was pulling out the bread from the oven when I got to the kitchen and we both stood over the clay pot inhaling slowly. Expecting nothing less than a loaf of spectacular bread, Mom pulled off the lid. It was a fatal mistake. I cringed, Mom gaped, and we both sat in silence. "What in heavens name did you do?" she sputtered finally. I didn't know what to say. Before me was something that resembled a flat, starch white, doughy, repulsive pancake and frankly, something that didn't resemble bread at all. And I was the one responsible for it. What would you tell her? I opened my mouth and moved my lips but words were not being formed. So Mom went down the list. "Okay, so, you put in the flour," I nodded. "Sugar?" Yup. "Salt?" Yes. "Yeast." Of course. I was staring at the way my Moms fist was banging down on the palm of her hand as she spoke. "Butter?" I paused. Did she say yeast? "The yeast!" I cried. "I forgot to put in yeast!" Mom shook her head. "Good luck telling this to your Dad." She clucked. I gulped. We all knew it. Dad was insane for bread. He was the carbohydrate king. We also knew something else.

I was going to die.

The kids hid behind the couches and Mom ran back up the stairs as Dad walked in and sniffed the air. "Wheres the bread" he asked. "Well . . ." I said nervously, "It turned out kind of . . . . Its more like ah, um, . . . it resembles a . . . W. . . E . . . l . . .l" Oh poop. I grabbed the bread and held it up. "What in Gods name happened to my bread?????" he yelled. "She forgot the yeast!" Mom piped in from the hall. I grinned sheepishly as he began a cross examination that would crumble most witnesses. How could I forget the yeast? Why did it have to happen today? What was I going to tell the guests? I reminded him that Jews ate it every year for the Passover. He said we weren't Jewish. I said it didn't matter, we could still choke it down. He said the only person going to choke it down would be me. No matter what I said, nothing would console him. After a painful trip to Safeway, he still wouldn't let it go. I'd let down our guests, my siblings, my mom, and most importantly, him.

I mean, the world might as well just end, right?

Cooking and I, we’ve gone through some difficult times. It’s usually the simple stuff I think I know by heart that turns out horrid. But, thankfully, I'm getting back on track. Mom made me make a loaf of bread the other day and it turned out exactly as it should've. Maybe I was going to fast and I needed to slow down - I'll never know. Lately I've heard that some things just have to get worse before they can get better. I think that explains whats been going on between cooking and me.

One (Chaotic)(Fun)(Busy)(Exciting) Day

Being in a large family means that my day usually isn't based on what I want to do, but rather on what must be done. Cleaning up a mess here, making lunch there, finishing up schoolwork, or whatever happens to be more important than playing at the moment. Yet, somehow, squeezed in between the slim cracks of time during the day, I manage to find time to do some of the things I love most. Even though sporadic changes are common in my schedule, here's the basic blueprint of my day.





7:30: About this time, Mom yells up the stairs for her "lazybones" to get out of bed and eat
breakfast.


8:00: Finds me tearing the covers off my little sister, mostly because I'm wondering where my clothes are (she loathes messy rooms and hides my clothes if I leave them out. Grrr!).


8:30: Having finished breakfast and doing my hair, this is the time slot allotted for piano practice. Beating on the piano usually upsets the other piano players, since it means they'll
have to practice at lunch break (a cause for grief, I assure you).


9:00: History! An hour on the couch listening to Mom read is great but also a hazardous
endeavor since it means that all the kids will be wiggly by the time its finished.


10:00 - 12:00: Errand time, catching up on homework time, and cleaning time. Mom has a
system where everyone has an assigned part of the house to clean called the "hotspot."
When the house gets messy mom just calls for everyone to do their hotspot and the
house is magically cleaned in less than 15 minutes!



12:00: Lunch. My sister and I do dishes and then we are free for the rest of the afternoon.



1:00: Writing time. Anything that comes to mind is rapidly produced on a word document or a piece of loose leaf paper. I journal, write a poem that relates to my feelings at the moment, and brainstorm ideas that could potentially fill a novel. Instead of working on wordiness during this time (unless I am actually writing a story) I try to just focus on getting the idea on paper, the scenery at the moment, the feelings in the scene (IE, tension, excitement, an elusive feel etc.), whats racing through the characters mind, and other important things like that. Some days I'll have a character that needs to come to life (a lot of the times, the characters are based on someone I met) and I'll spend my time fleshing out the characters personality. Whatever it is, its always fun to spend time doing one of my favorite things.



2:30ish: When I've finished writing, if I've completed a poem I'll take it to the piano and see if it'll make good music lyrics. Sometimes they work, but most of the time I have to edit a lot before it makes any sense. The thing about poems is that their real wordy so they sound weird when put to music. Lyrics are a lot simpler and say what needs to be said in a lot fewer words. If I haven't I'll just play around, write a few funky lyrics and make a funny beat and sing to it. Just recently my Dad bought the software to record music and so I can put tracks down and layer them which is lots of fun.



3:30: If my youngest brothers awake from his crucial nap, I'll go to the basement and sing on my karaoke machine. Unlike some, this one has big speakers therefore making it loud (especially when you add the acoustic basement). Which is great if your preforming and stuff but not so much when you need to be quiet (or, in my case, when you're trying to get out of doing the dishes).



4:00ish: Mom and I start preparing dinner and the kids do their hotspots (again). Mom purposely made mine one of the easiest so it takes me only a few minutes to clean it, thus (to my horror) making it possible for me to help her cook. (I'll talk about this in a later post. Gulp.)



5:00: Eat dinner and discuss the day. My parents are into the "family dinners" and usually don't let us leave the table until they are done eating. Did I mention they're the slowest eaters I know?



6:00: Finds the family in the living room, either reading or watching movies. Our family favorite? Episodes of "I Love Lucy" on DVD. We've watched it so much, we can officially find a quote to relate to every subject known to man. And Mom thought it wasn't good for the art of The Great Conversation*.



9:00: We are supposed to be in bed by this time but really, there's too many good books in the closet to go to bed before 10. Right?!?!?

Glitches in our day are common occurrences. Perhaps Momma needed some time in bed this morning to recover from a sore throat or a snowy day calls for reading by the fireplace. The "schedule" hardly ever gets followed completely but whatever we may be doing, every day still just as chaotic and fun as every other day.

* The Great Conversation, as my mom calls it, is knowing important things that are conversation starters, or things that may help in a conversation. So, perhaps two people at a table have read the same book and they talk about a certain circumstance the characters are in. The people by them may have not read the book but they may know a quote or phrase that will add to either side of the conversation. These people have been part of the great conversation.