Baking Bread

So a little over a year ago I was gifted a bread machine by friends who were combining households and didnt want it anymore.  It sat in it's box in my trunk for a really long time until the Alero died in January and it was brought home when I cleaned out said car before selling her for scrap. Then it proceeded to sit on the floor until a couple weeks ago when I decided to do a deep clean of the house.  The conversation with Walley then began about actually USING it. He had forgotten we had it as well. Walley loves bread and decided to start reading the manual and took it upon himself to get ingredients to make bread.  Today he decided he was going to attempt the Parmesan Pepper loaf recipe and set it on the timer to be done when he got home.  So while I puttered around the house recovering from a particularly wicked migraine he got it all set up. 

Walley adding yeast to the mix

What the whole mix looks like. Bread machines are picky about what exact order they are put in.

So the time was set so that it would start it's yummy magic at 7p I waited in anticipation and then suddenly it kicked on and started to sound like a Gatling gun...not good. I go to check on it and its having a seizure on the counter and as I look through the view window I can see that it's not mixing. So I called, facebooked and texted around and got the general consensus that I need to stop it and open the lid and try pushing the pan farther down. I did as I was bade and it locked in properly. I restarted the mixer to the blissful sound of normal kneading and texted Walley to let him know all that happened....now there are just 2 hours left to go. I will update with pictures soon!

Well I have switched to a new schedule this week at work. I will now have Friday and Saturdays off. YAY!! This means that I will be able to go do more things like visit family and friends and I will also be able to go to my beloved farmers' market which is on Saturday mornings. Things here are slowly shaping up. I putter around the house until about 7pm when it is cool enough for me to go out in the garden (sorry I am a wuss) and then pull grass and weeds until I can't see anymore. Roughly it's about 2 hours of work an evening. The grass is slowly being defeated. I did have to spray for squash bugs...they are attacking my zuchinni and the japanese beetles were destroying my pole and turtle beans I lost one of my zuchinni to squash bug larvae in the vines :(

I did get to do some harvesting today!! I got 1 medium and 1 large zuchinni, 1 massive head on the broccoli that will be enough for me and Bill to steam up for dinner some time and about 20 or so radishes. My bibb lettuce is going to seed and Im letting it. Then I will gather the seed and try again. I did manage somehow to save 2 of my heirloom tomatoes that we all thought were dead...well the rest are. The corn is still struggling despite the rains yesterday and the day before. The 2 cabbages seem to be going well as the late broccoli I planted. The roma and cherry tomatoes are small but I cleared the grass around them and some of the peppers and I hope they recover. Spaghetti squash, cantaloupe and yellow squash seem to be holding their own. Onions are still doing great and the carport of loofahs and birdhouse gourds is completely green. My herb patch was a total failure and the garlic is scrawny. It will be the next thing I hit tomorrow after I finish clearing the rest of the grass from the peppers.

Jodie has moved out for the most part, she has some stuff still here that she has to get but she's got the majority of it out. We are still looking for another roommate but have stopped short of placing an add in the paper. We've mainly searched through friends and family. Trying to find someone who isn't a nutcase AND has a stable income. We will be ok with just us but I would like to have more people in the house and every little bit helps.

It was bound to happen

So I finally snapped. I was doing ok plugging along and then Bill started talking about he was unpacking the boxes in 6 days and that we will just have to stay here another year and try again. (So then my wedding would be effectively off til then) The house is a mess, I was trying to cook dinner and do laundry and clean. Then I found that the cats had tipped over the cat box and I lost it. Threw the vacuum, screamed about the state of my world and how no one is doing their jobs in the house, how tired I was about cleaning all the time and no one helping and how much I hated living here now and threatened to get rid of my cats and dissolved into a puddle of tears in the bathroom. Bill and Teen have never seen me lose it and I don't think they knew what to do. Bill had to go in to work for overtime (he doesn't get many chances to) and he tried to put me right before he had to run. So I saw him off and grabbed a shower...allowed the Teen to do my hair and got out of the damn house. I went to the local cafe and chowed on Hummus Kalaya and Teen had a 4 cheese mini pizza. Went to say happy birthday to my friend Maja and then came home. I envision that Wed will be better as I have a plan to repot some of the seedlings and be outside as much as I can.

Monday to Tuesday

Monday we have the final walk through at 10am. Tuesday I close at 1:30pm.

I have 4 (72pellet) Jiffy greenhouses with seeds planted. Yeah might be overkill but Bill has taken over :) He insists that we are behind, I think he has become obsessed ;) I think I will have more plants than I will ever need for that matter. But it's all good. I have spent the last couple days working and trying to chill have become obsessed myself with seeds including the soon arriving set that Tammie has been gracious enough to send. To easy my anxiety of all this bruhahah I have been blasting Type O Negative and my 80s mixed cds...yes i know, its a little...different.

S cleaned out his closets, Bill and I cleaned out some of ours and we swapped...lol except for my clothes they are being donated to the womens shelter. Bill got some really sexy army cammo shirts and some steel toed boots....I miss having combat boots myself. Im going to read up on everyone then I'll come back later and blab more.

The housing crunch

So its been awhile. Bill has been working days on a safety comittee thing and so that kiboshes my late night blogs. I've been really stressed out lately. I completely attribute it to lack of blogging :) Bill has a temp of 100 and teen isnt feeling well either.

We have been looking at getting a place of our own. Where we live has been a pain in the butt for a while, when I first moved here (almost 3 years come Christmas Day) it was me, Bill, the teen, J&S, G, 3 cats and 1 dog in a 3(now made into 4) bedroom, 1 bathroom double wide trailer. It was cramped but somehow we made it work for the most part. Then this last May G graduated and he and the dog moved up by Chicago. S&J bought the trailer from him (or so I thought, more on that later). Since then things have pretty much sucked. I do most of the cleaning anymore (though we each have house chores we are suppose to take care of) because otherwise it doesnt get done.
Tonight I find out tonight that J called off their engagement. They are still together but I don't believe that'll last long. In fact me and Bill saw this coming. But I'll not get into details the point is is that tonight Bill found out that S owns the trailer. Which clears up some concerns and makes new ones. We have to find a place, even if its just renting again until we find something to buy when they do break up, which I do foresee. They have mentioned long before about the possibility of buying it from them when they graduated but I dont want this place. There are too many problems that they are either not taking care of or are doing half assed patch work on. We have been mulling over the whole prospect of our own place really since I got bitten by the "green" bug and gushing about what I'd really like to do.

So now we are really truly needing to look at places. We really had only looked at one place about 20 minutes from here but they want waaayy too much money for the condition that the place is in... I haven't even tried to get pre-approved for a loan. It would have to be in my name as Bill's 2nd ex (I'll explain our family later on sometime) completely trashed his credit. Anyhow, so the race I guess is on.