I am going to list post because, for whatever reason, I can’t seem to form a functional and coherent thought that will translate into an actual flowing monologue – so instead, you get this random soliloquy about my week.

I’m sorry in advance…

I woke up at 5 AM on a Saturday morning. What I really should be doing, instead of writing this blog, is pulling together a grocery list and going shopping before the hordes and hordes of people inundate my local grocery chain and make the experience one that sucks in monumental proportions.

Man it was hot here yesterday. I think people expect it to automatically start cooling down all across the country when September arrives, but it sure doesn’t here. The record high was 112 for yesterdays date – I just tried to see if we reached that yesterday, but I’ve given up. You’ll just have to understand that I’m still working on my first cup of coffee, so some things must be sacrificed.

So, how come every time I sit down to write up my meal plan or whatever, it seems like I just take the foods we normally eat and move them around to different parts of the week? How can I introduce new foods that are equally easy and good? It seems we’re stuck in a ‘go-to-food’ rut. I really *need* to go grocery shopping, but I also don’t want to buy the same things over and over again.

Is it just me or does it seem like the Blog Comment Spammers came out in full force on on Sept 1 and haven’t stopped yet? Of my several blogs (and the blogs I support) I’ve gotten 50-100 spam comment notification emails per day.

I need to go see if I can find some meal ideas so I can go to the store. Plus, I can’t seem to concentrate, so this post is really starting to suck.

I need to figure out what I’m going to do for the kitchen experiment too…arf

When I first saw this recipe at work, I knew I had to try it. Being from the south, Red Velvet Cake is a staple – it’s one of my all-time favorite cakes to eat and since most of the cakes I eat either come from a box or come from a bakery, I was anxious about making my very first homemade Red Velvet Cake.

I’ll admit, in advance, I’m no cake decorator. I’d love to be able to make beautiful cakes to share with my friends and family – but they’re just going to have to settle for ugly cakes that taste like heaven.

So, without further ado – Red Velvet Cake, from scratch:

Red Velvet Cake

Prep: 15 Minutes | Bake: 18 – 20 Minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of butter, softened
• 2 ½ cups of sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa
• ¼ tsp. baking soda
• 1 (8-oz.) container of sour cream
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 (1-oz.) bottles of red food coloring
• 1 ½ recipes 5-Cup Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe below)

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Beat butter, at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition.

2. Stir together flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Add to butter mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition. Stir in vanilla; stir in red food coloring. Spoon cake batter into 3 greased and floured 8-inch round pans.

3. Bake at 350° for 18 to 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes. Remove from pans to wire racks, and cool completely (about 1 hour)

4. Spread 5-Cup Cream Cheese Frosting between layers and on the top and sides of cake.

Note: Try as I might, I could NOT find an 8-in Round Cake Pan – so I ended up using three 9-inch pans. It seemed to work fine. This is a LOT of not-real-wet ingredients to mix together. It’d be great if you could get someone to help you pour them in as you use your hand mixer to slower mix it all together. It took closer to 28 minutes for my cakes to cook.

5-Cup Cream Cheese Fosting

Prep: 10 Minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 (8-oz) packages of cream cheese, softened
• ½ cup butter, softened
• 1 (32-0z) packaged of powdered sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat cream cheese and butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until fluffy. Stir in vanilla.

Note: Again, I suggest you get some help adding the sugar while you mix. It took a while – again, this is a lot of dry/not real moist ingredients to mix.

I’ve decided – I’m going to try to make a series of these kitchen experiments – I enjoy it. Also? Y should know – I started writing this post before I even tried the cake. I knew it was going to be good – I wasn’t sure how good though. I edited the title of this post to give you a better indication.

Final Thoughts: It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I’d love a stand mixer, I think that might make it easier. The cake? It’s divine. It’s a very ‘thick’ cake, almost like a pound cake, but it is amazing. The icing is, well, the icing. When you’re used to boxed cake and $1 icing from the baking aisle – it doesn’t take much to top it. I will definitely make it again.

I realize I just did this. I do love my custom, hand drawn masthead – but it’s time for change – and so here I am.

I want a new custom and original masthead that is sleek, chic, modern and fresh – one that uses new colors and will breathe new life into the blog.

I am not limited by size.

I don’t want something ‘childish’ or ‘country kitchen’.

So – if you’re an artist or you know an artist who is looking for some piece work, please use the contact form. Please include links to your current work

Need more info? Ask your questions in comments and I’ll answer here

As has become fairly common around these parts, I’m going to do a basic ‘catch all’ post to cover the things I’ve hinted to earlier in the week, with more depth.

First, I’m going to give an update on my step mom. Earlier this month, she had her left kidney removed because they’d discovered cancer and felt that was the best course of action, based on her medical history. During the surgery, the discovered ‘something concerning to send off to the lab’ and so she was waiting to hear back from that.

Well, she heard back on Friday and the surgeon basically said that there was more cancer than they’d originally thought and they were sending her back to the regular ole non-surgical oncologist.

Naturally, she’s freaked out and so are we. At this point, we’re not sure exactly what it all means, but it most certainly means more treatments. The Dr. made some cursory statements that have basically made us all freak out – but at this point, we’re going to wait until she’s had a chance to speak to her regular oncologist.

So, that’s what the Tweet and Facebook messages were about last week. I certainly appreciate all of the positive vibes/Karma/thoughts/prayers directed her way and I will, of course, update when I know more.

Secondly, you may remember a few weeks ago that I tweeted (at length) about our Chili’s experience. It was awful. I actually had to get on the phone and call the restaurant to request our drinks finally be delivered, this was after having placed our order for both drinks and food and had our food brought to us. It was a real stupid-fest.

At any rate, I sent @Chilis a tweet and told them how unhappy I was and I sent Corporate an email spelling it out in depth.

I never did get any kind of email from Chili’s, which I thought was sort of disappointing, since my contact had been made via email, But when I checked my snail mail yesterday, I discovered they’d sent me a letter and a $20 gift check, so we decided to give it a shot for lunch.

In the end, our service yesterday was much better than the service we’d experienced previously – and when we pulled out the gift checks to pay for our meal, the guy asked us if we’d had a bad experience and if it had been at their location. When I shared our experience with him, he looked at me us and said, “You know, we had retraining this morning and I wondered what had happened – it sounds like we really needed it, so thanks for writing in so we could make your experience better”

It was great that we actually went in on the day they’d done training – but even better was the response from their staff.

So, this is another one of those “bad experiences gone good” – I’m disappointed when I go some place and the service is crap – but I am always happy when I go some place where I’ve told them their service is crap and their service is crappy no more.

Sadly, that never happened with On The Border. Their loss.

In other news – I hinted in comments that someone at work had finally ‘delved deeper’ into the ‘my daughter doesn’t live with me’ statement I had made previously. Basically, she wanted to know who my daughter lived with, since she didn’t live with me. I shared that I had placed her for adoption and that she lived with her mother in the Chicago area and just kind of left it at that. She did ask if we knew each other – which isn’t an a-typical question from people inexperienced with adoption – and I shared a bit about our openness.

It was a great chat. She was super friendly and totally nonjudgmental about it – I didn’t have that ‘crushing guilt’ that usually accompanies these types of conversations. I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about there.

At any rate – I feel much better now – way less apprehensive and a whole ton less worried about how to deal with it going forward.

Finally, I am looking at options to help with productivity in my drive. I’ve got to find a good ear phone/mic option – the Apple Ear Buds don’t work for me – I’ve installed the Dragon Naturally Speaking App on my phone and I’m unsure of one of the Borg-Style Bluetooth Headsets will also work with Dragon. I haven’t been able to find anyone who knows that answer either (Anyone know? Can you use a Bluetooth headset to talk to your ‘voice control’ on an iPhone 4?)

Now, if I could just get my work email on my phone – I need to look into that.

Anyway – that’s pretty much all I have going on right at the moment. Ready to start my week with a bang.

Damnit, I forgot to get gas. Crap.

Sorry about the short post last night. It was sort of an afterthought. You guys have rocked this journey with me for so long, I’m sorry that I didn’t think about posting sooner.

So, a new job…pretty nifty, huh?

I should recap some:

• The pay isn’t exactly what I wanted, but it’s more than what I’m making now. I should add, however, salary was less of a factor than other issues when making my decision to move on.
• The commute is longer, but I don’t think it’s going to be a huge deal
• The benefits are interesting…the insurance is actually a bit more expensive (which I thought was a little odd) but there are other ‘perks’ that make up for it. They do a lot for employee morale, it seems.

Overall, I’ll be making a little more, but I will also get more in the way of benefits – like vacation, floating holidays, holiday time and other perks.

I’ve got some paperwork to sign this morning and get back to them, so I am going to do that then it’ll be all official-and-in-writing. I did put my notice in yesterday, so the ball is rolling now with my current employer. I’m still not sure what to expect on that end. I don’t know if they’ll want me to honor my 3 weeks notice (I gave 3 weeks, by the way) or if they’ll walk me out after they’ve had time to discuss matters.

Anyway, more about the job:

The position is with a large web company that focuses on women’s issues. I will be working in their “Parenting” department which focuses on all things parenting related. It’s less seriousness and emotion (like adoption) and more every day parenting type stuff.  It seems like a really fun and inviting place to work – I spent some time there last week (during their last interview) and it was refreshing to see them all kind of pull together on a small project and make it happen…less working against each other for personal gain and more working with each other for company gain…something I’m excited to be a part of again.

So, it seems like a really great step for us (the family), but I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t scared to death. When we made the decision to move to Arizona for my current job, I recall feeling much of the same. It was such a leap for us, but I knew it was good.

I know this is good – but I’m still scared.

As for the Dr. visit yesterday – that was fairly uneventful. Because stress can have such a huge impact on your health, he’s actually encouraged me to find a new job for some time, so he was pretty excited that I was reporting that I had done just that and would be starting my new job on the 16th of August.  We went over my numbers, which are still not where he wants them, but not as high as they were back at the beginning of the month. We talked about my meds (which he raised, again) and we talked about the plan for the next few months, since most everything will have to be put on hold until the insurance is all squared away and then we just BS’d, because he’s great like that. We talked about the iPhone4 (neither of us have it, but we both pre-ordered it and declined it upon delivery due to reported problems) and we talked about the iPad (he has one, I don’t) and then he told me to come back in October, once the insurance was all squared away.

That’s really it. I’m closing a chapter on the last 5 years and looking forward to what the future holds.