Mukkefuck Cafe

waking up at the crack of Dawn

Originally posted November 15, 2005.

Well, well,well. Guess who gets to wear the dress today. It is I, denotsKO the wonder babe! I have been asked to post on Pockets of Resistance today so that I can offer to you a challenge. I have here 20 questions about justdawn, or as I like to call her, um....well...just Dawn. Where was I? What was my point? You, her humble readers of her rants and raves, get to attempt to answer as many of these questions with a true or false. The person who answers the most correctly wins a prize. What could I possibly have to offer as a reward for such an amazing feat? You get to be called a winner.

 

1) She was once known as 'spaghetti legs'

2) She was once threatened with arrest for offering to mail dog poo to a member of the Los Angeles Police Dept.

3) Friends were ordered to tell the story of her prom date's 'accident' to a judge under oath.

4) She eats three different kinds of fruit daily.

5) She once owned a car with the words PARTY TIME written on the side.

6) Her father has been known to enjoy the sight of small dogs humping people's heads.

7) She has five tattoos.

8) She can spit ping-pong balls over ten feet in the air and catch them in her mouth.

9) She likes to sing a song called 'Tits & Whiskey'.

10) Her left foot only has four toes.

11) She had to call her parents less than a week after her wedding to ask for bail money for her new husband.

12) A punkrock band named 'Suspicious Mole' wrote a song about seeing her beat up a gas station attendant with a squeegee.

13) She once tried to poison someone by soaking bread in bleach, and making them a sandwich with it. 14) Her highschool yearbook photo features her holding a stuffed unicorn and wearing leather pants. 15) She may have a warrant for her arrest in at least one state.

16) She was once a volunteer fire fighter.

17) Her nude image can be found on at least one internet site.

18) She was part a group of hooligans that destroyed an entire floor of a hotel in a drug crazed party-gone-riot.

19) She is ambidextrous.

20) She voted for Ross Perot.

 

"O Tiger-lily,"

    

said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind. "I wish you could talk!"

"We can talk," said the Tiger-lily: "when there's anybody worth talking to."  ~Lewis Carroll

Consider the lilies of the field...

All I can say is that everything we have gone through with TGIM's impending medical retirement and his new job has caused me to really grow in my faith. It would have been nice if things had moved along more smoothly...but if given the chance to go back and do it all over again, differently...I don't think I would.

since I am totally incapable of stringing together my thoughts in an intelligible manner...

* I wonder if learning defensive driving in the United States and practicing offensive driving in Germany gives me any sort of advantage?

* When my kids play the game "Red Light/Green Light", they use the German traffic light pattern. (Red Light/Yellow Light/Green Light/Yellow Light/Red Light) This makes me chuckle.

* I have spent the past eight years being an Army wife...and next Tuesday I am going to be the wife of a civilian.

* I am fully aware of just how blessed we are. That Guy I Married landed a SWEET job as a Civil Servant and we get to stay in Germany! (Seriously...there were a LOT of people who wanted this job. TGIM is kind of an asshole. We SoOoOoOo do not deserve this good fortune. But I am very grateful for it.)

* The Army is withholding our last paycheck. We got our last pay check in mid-June. We won't get our next pay check until the beginning of August. Can you say "screwed"???

* I know that it is mostly our fault that we are screwed. We failed to save money. It is just that simple.

* But this is the thing...when you live at or below the poverty level for your entire adult life and you get a little bonus (like an income tax return) and you can make the kinds of frivolous purchases that you ordinarily can not...you sometimes tend to do just that.

* Without thinking about the impact it will have on your life six months down the road.

* Even though I feel guilt, I still love my Nikon D40.

* Once things are settled and we are getting regular pay checks again, I am going to be diligent about saving money.

* I will not have any excuse not to. Our allowance for housing is going to double. We are SoOoOoOo moving into a bigger house.

* We will be getting  an almost $20K raise in our base pay.

* And we will still get the Cost Of Living Allowance that helps offset the crappy exchange rate.

* And as a medical retiree, That Guy I Married will be pulling in a monthly retirement check.

* I think we might actually be moving on up. Middle class, Baby!

* I think it's about, freaking time.

* Also...the pounds are still coming off.

* I can see a little bit of a difference. I only have one chin!

* Sadly, the only other area in which I am seeing immediate results is in my bosom.

* Note to self: must wear supportive bra. AT ALL TIMES.

* Another note to self: consider plastic surgery to put all of your bits back in their proper places once this whole thing is done.

summer vacation?

Well, last Thursday marked the end of the school year for My Minions. In September, I will put all four of my kids on the bus...and then my life will begin. I am not sure exactly how I feel about that.

Elijah has been my constant companion for the past five years. Of my four kiddos, he and I just "click". Maybe it is because he is the most like That Guy I Married. Or maybe it is simply because he is the most easy going and laid back kid I have ever given birth to. Who knows? But what I do know is that I am really going to miss him when he starts school.

I have spent the past twelve years staying at home and raising my kids. I have done some volunteer work during that time, but for the most part, I have been fully devoted to just caring for them. I haven't felt compelled to finish my college education or to go out and find a job. Now??? I am facing the prospect of being a stay at home mom with no kiddos at home.

I am sure that I will really like it, at first. The freedom to come and go as I please. To go to the gym or the pool or to buy groceries without little hands grabbing for the junk food that I am so staunchly trying to avoid...but I get bored really easily. I just hope that I can figure out what I want to do with myself before I find myself in a funk.

As a side note...LOOK, MA! NO HANDS!!! I have been off my happy pills for almost a month, now. Turns out that simply eating right and forcing myself out the door and to the track every day is all I needed to do in order to feel good. Who knew??? Also, I dropped 7 pounds in the past week, for a grand total of 18 pounds lost from my all time highest weight. I am not physically seeing a difference yet, but I am certainly feeling it. And this morning when I bent down to tie my shoes...I noticed that I could breathe! (my fellow fatties will totally get this...everyone else just takes breathing while bent over for granted)

hmmm...anything else? Not really. I actually feel like the Internet and I are growing apart. Like maybe I have spent too much time fostering my online relations and in turn have neglected the real life people who have always been here for me. I have very few friends in real life...so I have always cherished the friends I have made online. I guess that I am finally feeling like I need something more than some words typed on a screen with their virtual (((hugs))) and LOL's.

Wow...this post is all over the place. See, Internet??? I am bored with you.

happy horseshit

You know, then other night when I posted that shallow little meme, I think I failed to convey the gravity of my situation, just then.

My dog was gone. Gone! She is a pretty neurotic pup and every since the fireworks fiasco of New Year's Eve, she has been a little bit more sketchy than usual. Pretty much, any time she hears thunder, gun fire (from the military firing range), garbage trucks, motorcycles, airplanes (I can see the flightline at Ramstein Air Base from my bedroom window) and did I mention thunder??? She crashes through the gate we have at the bottom of our stairs and hides in the bathtub until all is right in her world, again.

Well, on Sunday evening we had a pretty intense storm roll through here. She was outside with That Guy I Married and the kids when the first rumblings of thunder...er...rumbled, and she just bolted. Everybody was pretty distraught so about an hour later, when the storm passed, we set out to find her. In the 2+ years we have had her, she has never taken off like that. Since we all had to be up early the next morning, we had to stop looking at around midnight and go to bed.

The next morning I called for her, and she didn't come. We were pretty worried by then and so we started making phone calls. She is microchipped so I called the stray facility on base, first. They didn't have her, but put an alert in their system. We checked with the local tierheim, the Polezei and the fire department. She was nowhere to be found. I had just finished submitting an ad to the Stars and Stripes reporting her missing when I heard a thud at the back door. She was home. She was tired, thirsty, hungry, had almost an entire thorn bush tangled in her hair and was covered in (what I can only imagine to be) horse poo...but she was home.

I will admit that I spend a lot of time bitching about my dog. She is hairy (and therefore sheds...a lot), she barks rather incessantly, she tries to herd us into corners and she is just generally a spaz...but what this whole experience has proven to me is that I really, really love my dog and I am so glad she found her way back home.

flickr meme

Just passing time in between frantically screaming out my back door for my dog to come home and wringing my hands with worry. She took off during a thunderstorm almost five hours ago. It is almost dark outside. She is a Giant Pansy. This is SO unlike her.

Anyway, I stole this meme from my Good Friend, Lisa's blog. Here's what you need to do, if'n you want to do this, too.

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into this Mosaic Maker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Dawn at Fishing Bridge, 2. Macaroni and Cheese, 3. Jade, 4. Greener Pastures, 5. Mike Ness of Social Distortion (NOT MINE), 6. coke.jpg, 7. Alaskan Cruise: Mt. Rainier over Seattle, 8. Brownies!, 9. Still2, 10. My family, 11. Complicated.....12. Not available

The Questions:

1. What is your first name? Dawn

2. What is your favorite food? Macaroni and Cheese

3. What high school did you go to? Woodbridge Senior high School

4. What is your favorite color? Green

5. Who is your celebrity crush? Mike Ness

6. Favorite drink? Coke

7. Dream Vacation? Alaskan Cruise

8. Favorite Dessert? Brownies

9. What do you want to be when you grow up? Certified Nurse Midwife

10. What do you love most in life? My Family

11. One word to describe you? Complicated

12. Your Flickr name? justdawn(673)

I'm a jerk

I really meant to post this last night, but That Guy I Married got off work late, I had a date to play Rock Band with my kids and then my Good Friend from Alaska phoned me...so it didn't get done.

Oh...and the dog ate my homework, too...heh.

So we finally got some news we can work with, yesterday. The job has officially been approved and funded. There is still a little bit of paperwork that has to go through before the job can actually be posted...but it should be posted sometime next week. At this point, we are looking at (maybe) a couple of weeks without a paycheck vs. a couple of months...and we can totally deal with that.

To say I am relieved would be a gross understatement...

Thanks for the comments, thoughts and prayers...and sorry for leaving you all hanging like that!

I will be posting a couple more recipes today. Project Healthy Living is off to a smashing start! I am already feeling better...so I know I am on the right track!

sitting in the waiting room

We were told that we should have some answers by the end of this week. It is almost the end of this week and we still don't have any answers.

I am completely freaking the fuck out, right now.

The bright side...that I went to one of the Kaiserslautern Military Community's semi-annual bazaars and sampled enough wine to leave feeling pleasantly buzzed.

balsamic chicken

Yesterday I went for my RMR (resting metabolic rate) testing and a nutrition class.

I won't get the results of my test until next Wednesday, but I was surprised that I actually walked away from the nutrition class with some new knowledge!

Anyway, I am feeling quite empowered right now and for the first time in my fat, adult life...I feel like I can actually DO this!

After I got back from the track, today (11 laps!!!) I sat down to make my menu and grocery list for the next five days. (I have really become accustomed to shopping like the Germans do...I make more frequent, smaller trips to the store; that way I have fresher ingredients!)

Here is the recipe for tonight's dinner. Almost everyone loved it!

Balsamic Chicken with Baby Spinach and Couscous

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 (8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, halved
8 ounces baby spinach
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup low-sodium canned chopped tomatoes with juice
2 cups whole wheat couscous, cooked

 

Heat a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and heat. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the chicken and cook about 4 minutes per side, or until cooked through and juices run clear. Remove the chicken and set aside. To the same pan, add the spinach and cook just until wilted, about 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside. Lower the heat to medium and add the balsamic vinegar and chicken broth to the pan and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan to remove any browned bits. Add the tomatoes, bring to a simmer and cook 3 to 5 minutes.

 

Place the couscous in a serving bowl. Top with the spinach, chicken and balsamic-tomato sauce.

This recipe actually only feeds four people, so I had to double it for my Little Tribe. Seriously...who knew that baby spinach could taste SOOO good???