Saturday

Paula liked the pumpkin pie. Gabe has not tried it yet. I had some and it's alright, but I have made better pies in the past. I think the pastry was too thick and I may have added too much brown sugar to it. It just wasn't flaky enough. Next time I will add less sugar and I will make sure I roll the pastry very thin before putting it on the dish.

Isabel is watching TV in the living room. Paula is reading in her bedroom. I am not feeling well. I have had a persistent headache since yesterday and my stomach is queasy. So I am taking it easy, reveling in the fact that for the next two weeks there are no deadlines or demands from the office.

Baking

I baked a pie last night. I was restless and sad, and I felt an urge to make something concrete with my hands, to show that I can create something that exists in the world outside the computer screen, beyond the spreadsheet.

I had a small pumpkin that I bought around Halloween. I cleaned it and cut it, then baked it. Once it was ready I scooped the flesh off the skin and pureed it in a glass bowl. In another bowl I mixed 1 cup of flour, 1 stick of butter, a pinch of salt and a little brown sugar, enough to give the pastry a sweet taste. After rolling the pastry dough and putting it into a pie dish, I combined two cups of the pumpkin puree with a can of condensed milk and two eggs, and poured the mix onto the dish. Into the oven it went. Once it was ready I let it cool down at room temperature and showed it to my oldest daughter before covering it and sticking in the refrigerator.

I would have eaten a slide of pie already, but I have not been feeling well today. All day I have been afflicted by a splitting headache, and that has made my stomach upset too. When Gabe and Paula come home I will serve them some and try a bite, although there are times when I don't want to try the final product of my cooking efforts for fear it will not taste as good as it tastes in my mind. Last week I made a cream of mushroom soup from scratch for the first time, with butter, onions, chicken broth, heavy whipping cream and wine. I was afraid it would be bad, but it turned out wonderfully. Hopefully the pie will also be a success.

You are a valued member...

This has been a week of disappointment. I feel used, invisible. A victim of politics. Tired. Naive and jaded at the same time. Is such a thing possible?

I will never be as important to anybody else as I am to my family. I should pay them back in kind, yet I am not the best person I can be with them. I am short on patience and long on snark. I am cranky, irascible. I let stress get the best of me when I am with them, or I am always too tired to give much of me. I am not a fun person around them. Yet they love me, while the big blue monster squeezes me dry without care or concern.

Chance of snow

The weather forecast for today says:

Winter Storm Warning in effect from 10 am this morning to 8 PM CST this evening...
Freeze warning in effect from noon today to 9 am CST Saturday...

A chance of snow early in the morning. Rain likely in the morning. Snow in the late morning and afternoon. Snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches. Colder. Highs 42 to 44 this morning with temperatures falling into the upper 30s by noon then steady or slowly falling in the afternoon. North winds 10 to 20 mph. Chance of precipitation 60 percent in the morning increasing to near 100 percent in the afternoon.

Yikes! SNOW, f-ing snow! Gabe and the girls are excited, I am dreading it.

Signs we live in a house full of nerds

Just now, Gabe said: "our new dishwasher sounds like the Tardis." Not only did Paula (my 11 year-old) and I know what he meant, we emphatically agreed with him.

Summer 2003

It was the last days of July 2003. My 5 year-old daughter was spending the summer in Puerto Rico with her father. I was out with the old man on a Friday night, sitting at the bar at PF Chang's, having a drink as we waited for our table.

Out of the blue, the old man laughed and said to me "you are going to leave me in the dust." Those words, uttered seemingly in jest, have stayed with me years after we parted ways, the only salient memory of an otherwise ordinary evening. At the time I thought it was absurd. I wanted him so much I would walk through fire for him. Turns out he was right. He saw our relationship for exactly what it was, a May/December summer fling.

Average Day

It's Tuesday. I am working from home. Next week we will get market share results and it is my job to ensure everybody across my region will have access to the data they need. It sounds easier than it actually is in practice.

The house is still relatively clean, but already there's dust/hair clumps in corners. It's a good thing the cleaning lady is coming tomorrow.

I have not made up my mind yet about whether to keep my blog public or switch it to private.

I try not to comment here about my in-laws and their financial/health/life woes. There are plenty. Unfortunately, they seem to be magnets for chaos, tough breaks, bad decisions and drama. Events in their life are starting to threaten life as we know it and the stability of my household. They may lose their house. They want to know if we can "merge households." I cringe at the thought, honestly. I am stressing out.

Clean house

Hopefully, a year from now I will look upon this week as the time when I reclaimed my house from the mess.

Gabriel had been on my case for months (months!) to hire a maid, someone to come once a week and clean the house for us. I resisted. My house was so incredibly cluttered and messy, and we did not have the time or the energy to tackle the whole thing and getting it fixed without help. Everywhere I looked there was a mess, and I had just given up. I felt like a failure and was ashamed to bring anybody here, and felt I had to clean the house a little before hiring a maid. Gabe thought that was ridiculous, and could not understand my guilt and anxiety over the whole thing. Things were tense.

I finally broke down out of desperation and hired someone recommended by a friend. Now I can't imagine why I did not do it sooner. She worked hard for three days and deep cleaned the whole house. She helped me tame the mountain of laundry, load after load after load. It is not perfect, as there are many things left to do (too many toys and stuff I need to get rid of), but I now have a house that I am not ashamed to let other people enter.

I confess that I am a little cautious about claiming victory. I am careful not to be overjoyed, not to celebrate too much this development. What if it all goes wrong? What if six months from now we are back to where we were last week? To avoid that, we plan on hiring the cleaning lady to come once a week, for as long as we can afford it. For our happiness and well being, I hope it's a long time.

If a tree falls in a forest...

Increasingly I have started questioning the wisdom of keeping this as a public blog. There are certain disclosures that I am no longer feeling so comfortable about sharing openly. It has been quite a long time since I have participated in any writing prompts or memes that require me to share links. I don't feel there's much incentive to keep it public.

Lately, when I have felt the need to get something off my chest, I have hesitated before blogging. The feelings/thoughts I want to unload are of a sort that could get me in trouble at work or invite trolls to heap abuse. The truth is, I no longer see my blog as my safe, quasi-anonymous, below the radar space. I even worry about perverts grabbing family pictures for seedy purposes. Perhaps I am being neurotic now. Perhaps I was way overconfident in the past about the lack of buzz keeping me relatively safe.

Despite my recent neglect, I have a lot of affection for this blog and what it represents. And I would benefit from a place where I can go back to speaking my mind freely when I need it, without worrying about the consequences. Thus, I am seriously considering making my blog private/by invitation only in the future. If you are one of my online or offline friends and you want to keep on reading, please leave a comment or send me a message and I will grant you access when I make the blog private.

RIP Mercedes Sosa

The amazing Mercedes Sosa passed away today at 74.