Happy Black Friday!

It's still Thanksgiving here in the great northern wasteland, but for y'all it's Black Friday.

And Alaska is not a great northern wasteland. It's beautiful, but has more than it's fair share of crazies. Most of our politicians, for a start...

But this is not about that.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, whomever you are reading this, or maybe I am just shooting this out into space, hoping everyone had a wicked good Thursday. Some replacement karma for all those people whose driving makes me question their intelligence and brain capacities.

We had a quiet one. I got a 7.5 pound turkey breast. Mixed a couple of tablespoons of olive oil with dry mustard, fresh basil and green onion tops, salt, pepper, and THREE cloves of garlic (is clove the right word? It doesn't seem right, but it does. huh.) Added some chicken broth to the bottom of the pan. Which is an awesome rectangular roaster with a rack, nice and big, that I got for $10 at Fred Meyer's last year. Seemed like a good deal, and I really like the rack for roasting a turkey. Breast, at least. I think it would be great for a roast plus veggies too. I am going to have to remember that for when Mark gets home.

AND HE IS GOING TO BE BACK IN THE US VERY VERY SOON!!!!1!!!!!!!1!!!!

Sorry, just a tad excited about that bit.

Weird thing is, when I was carving the bird, the meat was so juicy I thought it was undercooked. No, silly. It's just when you roast the whole turkey, the breast meat gets a bit dried out.

It was garlicky and very good. We also had two kinds of stuffing -- one with herbed stuffing, sausage and corn, and one with herbed stuffing, sausage, apple, and apple cider.

The apply stuffing was a little too sweet, the ratio of cider to bread was off. But when mixed with the other stuffing, it was really good. Next time I wanna add some dried cranberry to the apple stuffing.

Cranberry Orange relish. Dump a bag of cranberries in a food processor or blender. Cut up an orange and drop that in there too, peel and all. Add 1 -2 cups of sugar to taste. Start skimpy with the sugar, it's better tart. I think I usually end up with somewhere north of a cup and a quarter, I think. Whirl it all together and that's it. It's better if it sits a while, it mellows a little. I generally don't get around to making it on Thanksgiving, in fact a few Thanksgivings ago Mark and I went to Fry's -- a fabulous grocery store in our Tucson neighborhood -- to buy a food processor, because I accidentally dumped a cup of orange juice into the guts of our blender and for some reason no one in my family was willing to plug it in and test it.

This cranberry is so much more fabulous than any cooked cranberry I have ever had. It's fresh and tart and delicious.

For dessert we had pumpkin pie. And a key lime pie from the grocer's freezer. Because I was just not in a pumpkin mood this year, and a light and fluffy pie instead of a heavy custard pie was a nice end to a big meal.

And then I talked on the phone for hours, since only a tiny fraction of my family is here.

Marilyn, my favorite sister, clued me into a really terrific Masterpiece Mysteries series. It's Sherlock Holmes, set in 21st century London. It's funny and entertaining and really terrific. Thor and Tess and I watched one of the three episodes on the internet...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/sherlock/series1.html

They are available until Dec 7.

It's available on DVD and I do believe that it will be on our Christmas list.

Oh, yeah. It snowed all day. We went from almost no snow, but plenty of ice, to four or five inches of snow. So tomorrow I can work off that turkey and stuffing by shoveling again. Yeah. Still not excited about the idea, but eh. Gotta be done.

I would post a picture here, of how lovely the neighborhood looks with a fresh layer of snow, but both the batteries in the camera are dead. oops.

Socks.

I don't know why, but I am wanting to buy socks lately. Big thick fuzzy socks, brightly colored anklets, kneehighs with stripes and polka dots. Fortunately Costco has had boring socks as of late, because when you buy socks there, it's by the dozen. Or more.

So I got some stripy socks and argyle socks and some socks with orange toes and heels and pink dots. I resisted the thick fleecy slipper socks at Costco this afternoon, even though they were brightly colored and warm and fuzzy and cute...

I have been tossing socks as well, because really. Socks get ucky. Especially when you have dogs, because dogs are messy and track dirt and shed hair and are generally vile and filthy creatures.

Maybe I have been so into socks lately because I am FREEZING. I think I must be having the opposite of hot flashes. I get so cold. Chills. It started in Arizona, so it's not related to living in Alaska. And I have told the doctor, and had tests for thyroid and all that...The Internet says that a small percentage of women have chills instead of hot flashes, and we all know the Internets is never wrong.

Also. And this may be related to Mark being gone again for so long, but I have been wearing socks that are the same, but not the same color. I have like 40 pair of socks, little footie socks, from Costco. Some are solid, some are striped, a few have polka dots, some have a contrasting band around the ankle. I figure if I have a lime green solid sock on the left foot and a lime green and pink striped sock on the right foot that is close enough. Or a pink sock and an orange sock.

The reason this has to do with Mark being gone is that we are complimentary. Which does not mean you will find us in hotel showers (get it? Like the little bottles of shampoo in hotels...) That's not the right spelling anyway, but it is the right spelling of the wrong word, so spellcheck is not helping.

(And why the hell does my spellcheck not recognize the word spellcheck? I guess they spell it with a dash, but still. If I were selling a product, I would want the product to recognize the name of the product...But I digress. Really, "But I Digress" should be the name of my blog.)

Back to complimentary. Mark is organized and logistical and all planny. I am chaos and disorganizational and fly-by-the-seat-of-one's-pantsy. The longer he is gone, the more chaotic and unplanned our lives become. Which leads to me losing socks all over the place -- they are those no-show anklets, so they are tiny and easy to overlook -- and managing to only wash one of each pair. Lucky, really, that I can still find socks that sorta coordinate.

So Mark brings order and plan and sense to our lives, and I bring spontaneity and really good cooking and a wicked sense of humor and the occasional bouts of chaos. It works for us. Really well.

Thing is...I was at a field trip thingy for Tess's class, and noticed that wearing different socks is a thing amongst some eighth grade girls. So I am either tragically hip, or pathetic and old and looking like I am dressing way way way too young.

I prefer the Tragically Hip, meself.

Woo to the ooot.

Life was complicated for the last eight months or however long it's been since I posted here. So stupid and annoying and complicated and scary and pissed-off-making that I really don't want to be able to go back and read how awful it was, because. Damn. I lived it once.

It's like high school. I would so not go back to high school, because high school was sucky.

It was also like high school because I was like "dude. Are you 13?" --

but only in my head, because to point out to people that they are acting like junior high is only to add to the drama --

to several people who love the drama. Who eat that shit up. (That is a disgusting metaphor and I am sorry I used it, but I am only backspacing to fix spelling and grammar and punct.u.a.tion. Other wise I won't manage to post anything. Plus this way you get the full on crazy that is me.)

So. Yeah. Every direction I turned. Drama. Draaaaammmmma. I hate other people's drama. I mean, my friends, my real friends, if they are having Things Happen. I am all about helping, listening, going to bad restaurants and eating food adults shouldn't eat with them, whatever they need.

But drama? Like she said this and I said that and she told this other person and oh my god shut the hell up. I don't care. You are supposed to be an adult, so f***ing act like an adult.

Oh yeah. I swear. More lately, because life is sucky. And more, apparently, when there are small children around me. Thor and Tess think so any way. One day I was shopping at the commissary. I wondered if we needed milk or eggs or iced tea or something, so I called Tess at home. Between the time I dialed the phone and Tess answered, I completely forgot what I was calling her about, so she says "hi, Majide*, 'sup?" (Go with me here. I will explain the Majide in a minute.)

I answered her, "shit. What was I calling you about?"

Tess: "Is there a small child around, Majide?"

Me: (defensively) "she's a newborn. She didn't understand what I said and she is probably too far away to hear me."

The baby was like three feet behind me. I had not said a word, swear or not, the entire time I was in the commissary. I think it is a plot to make me crazy. People with small children tag team following me. Why they would possibly want to do that is not important. Also, my family would all point out "short trip." (Driving me crazy. Short trip. I am most of the way there.)

*Majide. Remember there was a reality show about being on a Japanese game show? The name of the game show was Majide, which is Japanese slang for "Seriously?!". Somehow Tess decided that was a good name for me, so that is what she calls me. And, well, yeah. It totally fits.

So all the crap and trouble and angst and stuff and problems = gut problems for me. Stress + Crohn's = sucky.

So I backed off of stuff. I dropped a couple of volunteer things, because I don't want to end up in the hospital again. I am more careful about myself. I nap if I feel sleepy, because pushing and pushing and pushing just does not work for me. I am not that fond of hospitals that I want to push myself into one again.

Plus Mark will be home soon!!!! I don't know exactly when, because OPSEC requires that we not speak of anything important, like when he is flying out of a war or former war zone. So he will be home next month. Should be before Christmas Eve, fingers crossed.

I had nothing in mind when I started typing, obviously, and whatever was there is gone or vomited out onto this blog now, so I am outta here!

I am editing this to add that if you are reading this, you are probably NOT one of the drama queens I was referring to. Really.