ONE fun thing about your house blowing up....

You get to build a new one from scratch. Now, this cannot be an entirely different house, unless the foundation is toast and if it is, then all bets are off. We will not know this until they completely rip it down.

I have to admit I am looking forward to picking out things like cabinets, fixtures, wall colors, granite, bathroom tiles... all this kind of stuff. We are reusing SOME things but a lot of it got messed up. Some cabinets, for example, LOOK fine, but upon closer inspection have a sticky residue that will not come off. This is because the finish of the wood MELTED.

Until we get to the part where its time to pick stuff out, it really just bores the hell out of me. I am probably being stupid but I am just pretty much letting Bill think about crap like insulation, energy star water heaters, 90 percent efficiency furnaces and all of that other stupid crap. I am pretty much COMPLETELY burned out on just about ANYTHING having to do with the house. I do not even want to hear the word house. I can only spend about 8 minutes maximum a day talking about anything having to do with the house until my head starts feeling as if it will explode. I mean it literally makes my brain just HURT. SO I am letting Bill just worry about crap with the lawyers, WAMU crap, mediation crap I mean, I help, but I really do not want to hear much about anything until it is time to call Habib the Tile Guy so he can come over and revolutionize my bathroom.

Until that time, I would like to pretty much pretend I am at the movies. I am sitting there drinking my 56 oz $7.00 Diet Pepsi, and eating my box of DOTS or NECCO WAFERS(smuggled in from Walgreen's), and my GINORMOUS $8.00 TUB O POPCORN, that is bigger than my head. I am watching a really great and either extremely funny or extremely engrossing movie. No horror ( Freddy), no gross out stuff (Kingpin), no murder after murder(The Departed), no teenagers(American pie), no cartoons(SHREK), no "message" movies (The American President), where at the end you feel like they are saying, "Now, WHAT have we LEARNED?", no weird ones (Vanilla Sky) where at the end you are going WHAT THE HELL was THAT?",nothing about space or aliens(ALIEN), and NOTHING involving four hour epics about dwarfs, elves, or witch school (you know what they are).

Instead I am watching Tootsie, Rushmore, Out of Africa, Michael Clayton, The Firm, Who Killed the Electric Car?, Best in Show, Spinal Tap... something like this. I am at the movies and planning my new kitchen. I pretty much do not want to hear about anything else.


As Martha would say, "Denial. It's a Good Thing."

Yet Another milestone reached in my Hideous Experimental Cooking.

I am not quite sure what went wrong with this one... It was made in the crock pot, with chicken, sundried tomatoes and artichoke hearts. I guess the first clue might be that even though the recipe said to, chicken should probably not cook for eight hours. It turned out pretty revolting, but at least the dogs liked it. Then I also made this Paula Deen Corn Casserole, which was good but WAY too rich.

I have yet to find many good crock pot recipes. I need to find some, and I have rented out like EVERY SINGLE Crock Pot cookbook in the entire Clackamas County Library System. The other night I made some other weird thing that was like Crock Pot Greek Meatloaf... Its just not working out so well. Maybe I should get a new appliance to work with. Maybe a waffle iron, or a George Foreman Grill.

Well they are sort of starting to tear down the house I mean do prelim work to tear it down strip away some stuff to find the weak points or something like this. I really don't know what the hell they are doing actually. It should get underway soon.

Today I wrapped some presents, and cooked some stuff and went to the mailbox and the library. I wrote more X mas cards, and I have to go back to work in January and already the kid is driving me up the freaking wall. But I do love him.

Well I wish I could write more about my exciting life, but I have to read "Curious George Gets a Medal."