She’s all grown up

July 31, 2008 at 6:11 pm (Life, Money)

There comes a time in a girl’s life when she has to make decisions. Big decisions. When she realizes that she can no longer live as a college kid and that -though it scares her- she needs to make certain commitments.  Commitments that she always wanted to make, but was too afraid to do so; commitments that will involve tightening her belt, but that ultimately will give her some sort of freedom. Commitments that ultimately can make her very happy.

That time was today for me. It took some talking, many long-distance phone calls, lots and lots of research and a couple of cry-fests, but today, on the last day that it could happen, I bought a car.  Not a fancy car, not a super luxurious one, but a good, reliable car, made by the people who made the car I first learned to drive in.

So, without much further adeu, let me introduce to you the NSLW mobile:

OK, so this isn’t MY car, but it’s one that looks like mine.

I could’ve gone with a used luxury model, or even a 2008 one. But I decided against it. Somehow it made more sense to just buy a regular one (S class). Yes, it’s not as fancy looking as the SE luxury one, but I couldn’t afford it, and the used one… Well.. Call me silly, but I’d rather buy a new not so luxurious one for a low APR that I can afford and has 4 years warranty, than a used one that only has 2 yrs. warranty and isn’t even sold at a VW Certified dealership.

The only drawback is that the seats are cloth (I wanted leatherette, but it only comes in the SE model). Cloth seats are very likely to pick up all of Basil’s hair and white hair on black cloth looks icky. So… I’ll have to get covers, get a huge roller for every time the pooch rides in the car or… (my  least favorite option) have him ride in a carrier with no option to move around the car like he likes to.

My hands were shaking when I walked out of the dealership. Of course the first thing I proceeded to do after I left the dealership was get lost, so I drove around for twice as long and fretted that I was adding too many miles to the car… But whatever… I GOT A CAR!!!

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Identity revealed

July 31, 2008 at 5:34 pm (Books, Food)

Years ago, when I started blogging, I was a fan of a very interesting blog: Waiterrant. Then, one day, I stopped reading. Just lost interest. I think it was when “Waiter” quit waiting tables (at least at the “Bistro”). I knew he had been given a book deal, but I forgot about it. Until today, when while watching the Today Show, they talked about the book coming out. Hehe. I don’t know if I’ll buy the book, but I am content in knowing that -for the first time in my life- a person looks exactly how I imagined they would.

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Food for my heart

July 27, 2008 at 11:52 am (Books, Cooking, Food, The Engineer)

Today is a very special day for the BF and I. 27 is “our” day. To celebrate it, I got a surprise from him:

YUM! He got me the 2007 one last year for my birthday and saw how much I loved it, so knew this was a home-run.

First item on the list: Chipotle Chilaquiles and a Fresh Shrimp and Avocado salad. Since the pie post was so successful, I might start getting a recipe up here weekly. Not in any order (no “Wednesday is recipe day”), just whenever I feel like it. How does that sound?

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Sugar and spice and everything nice

July 24, 2008 at 12:06 pm (Cooking, Food)

Some people shop for clothes and shoes when they are sad. Some people eat insane amounts of chocolate, candy or whatever soothes their soul.

Me? I also go shopping and soothe my heart with food. But instead of shopping for clothes and eating pastry, I buy food and cook and bake for others.

Since I’ve been feeling blue (and so has the BF, see the previous post’s section about his finances), I went into a cooking extravaganza yesterday.

First, I made a Poached Fish with Papaya and Mango Sauce. Only instead of the Red Snapper that the recipe calls for, I used Tilapia. Not only because it’s my favorite fish to cook with, but because I wasn’t going to shell out the $19.99 a pound for the Red Snapper. It worked out really well, I must say. I accompanied it with boiled red potatoes and a simple green salad with crumbled queso fresco, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and EVOO (as Rachel Ray would say). Sorry I didn’t take any progress pictures. I was shifting between doing that and the dessert, and it didn’t occur to me to do the pictures until the very end.

So, for the dessert: I fell for Cooking Light’s marketing, and cooked the tempting Cherry Pie they featured in their July cover.

This is the filling right after I put it into the dough:

And after I covered it and brushed it with the egg yolk and sugar crumbles:

And when it came out of the oven:

It came out really good, but my only advice is to use a cherry pitter, because it took me thirty minutes to do it old-school. Also, make sure you put a sheet of aluminum paper under the baking pan (as in on the floor of the oven, directly under the pan) so when the filling leaks, you can remove the burned filling and it doesn’t stick to the oven floor. (The foil you see there was my attempt to stop it from leaking onto the counter and the hot-plate holder).

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Breathless

July 24, 2008 at 11:33 am (Life, Love, Money)

The BF and I have been thinking about buying a new-for-us, used car, because we don’t like our automatic. Born and raised overseas. We love manual gears and German engineering. However, he’s discovered that a vendor started charging one of his credit cards, which he believed to have a zero balance. Since he didn’t know about the charges, he didn’t pay them. Now his credit has gone significantly down and he’s fighting with the vendors (he had withdrawn from the programs that charged him). The end result is that I might be the one applying for the loan and the car would be in my name. It’s some money to put down, but I like the idea of owning a car (finally!).

Now, the thing is that the money stuff doesn’t stop there. He also wants to buy a house, because we could afford to salvage someone’s foreclosure. The problem is that because of his work, he will probably have to go to another city in a year. In the early talks, he says we should go ahead and buy the house and I can either live in it while he lives away during the week. He’d come back on the weekends and I wouldn’t have to move. To me that’s stupid. Didn’t we just move here to be together? The other option he suggests is to just move to the city where he’ll be. The problem it’s that said city is a bit of a hell-hole where there’s nothing much for him, other than the project. For me, there wouldn’t be much of anything either. There are no major universities, so forget his getting his MBA and forget my enrolling in a PhD if I decide to do that. Plus, I don’t want to quit yet another teaching job after a year.

Mostly, though, I’ve discovered that this whole “let’s buy a house” situation has me in a fit of anxiety that makes me lose my breath. After thinking and thinking about it, I realized that I’m not sure I want to buy a house with him. Not yet. Much as it hurts me to admit it, there are moments when I still have doubts about us. I’m here because I love him, because I want to five us the opportunity we missed a year ago, but I’m not sure if it’s going to stick. Part of why I feel this way has to do with the depression I’ve been going through, a depression that we don’t know if it has to do with the birth control I’m taking or of the Fibro. Part is because there are days -when we fight- that I think about this relationship twice and thrice. Yet I’m very aware that I won’t be leaving at the first sign of trouble, like I did before. It’s hard for me to talk about this here, or with anyone, in general, because I feel people are going to start with the whole “we told you so”, “we were afraid you would feel this way”.

I don’t know. The worst part is I don’t know how to tell him. I was honest about how this was our time to try, but I know he will be disappointed if I don’t want to buy the house. What I am sure of, is that I am not moving to dead-beat city and I am not starting long-distance again. It may involve us moving back to NY in order to stay together, but we will have to talk it out.

Sigh. So many big decisions so soon, which I wasn’t prepared for.

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Stumped

July 24, 2008 at 8:31 am (Basil, Dogs)

This was my morning. Somebody please explain to me why the end events happened.

6am: Everybody is up, Basil and BF eating breakfast.

6:15am: Basil and I go for a walk. Return at 6:35am

6:45-7:15: I do yoga while Basil runs around me with a ball

7:20: I hit the shower, Basil snoozes in the walk-in closet

8am: I eat breakfast, while watching the news on TV. Basil fluctuates between chilling next to me on the sofa and playing with a toy

8:15: Basil goes under the dining room table, 2 feet from where I’m sitting and proceeds to pee on the carpet, defiantly looking at me, not stopping until I drag him out from under there.

8:20: We come back from going out where he barely pees. I send him to time-out in the bathroom, but when he runs into the walk-in closet I pick him up. He pees all over me, the carpet and probably my shoes and bags.

WTF??? Did the aliens change dogs on me? Is he pissed (literally, apparently) because I didn’t play with him? He clearly was scared (I was super angry) when he peed on me, but he never pees when I’m home, or he hides it. This was blatant defiance. In his last vet check-up he was declared healthy, so I don’t think he’s got a UTI. What is going on?

Oh, and I’m out of Nature’s Miracle, and Petsmart doesn’t open for another 1/2 hour. Yay! Pee smell on the carpet!

I don’t trust him home alone today, but I think an outing (to Petsmart for the NM or the dog park so he can get tired) are “rewards” he doesn’t get to have today. Crap.

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If only I could be there with you

July 22, 2008 at 12:28 pm (Friends)

On Sunday night my mom called me.

“So I’m calling to give you some sad news about your friend The Siren”

She didn’t need to say more. That could only mean that the Siren -whose nickname comes from being tall and pretty and delicate- had lost her dad, after a long battle with cancer.

Mom said that she heard it as a gossip during lunch and she called my uncle, who lives in the city where the Siren and her family are, to ask him to confirm. It was true.

It broke my heart. My poor Siren, one of my best friends, 6 months pregnant, is now without her daddy. Moments like these are when I wish I could be in HCA. I know there’s nothing to be done, but I could at least sit and be sad with her.

The Siren and I go back almost to the womb, as our moms were best friends through all 14 years of school. Yet I can’t remember how when it was that we became such close friends. We met when we were 10 and I enrolled in school after moving to HCA with mom. We share the same name, and I remember roll call that first day. The teacher wanted to calls us by our other names (my first, her second) to differentiate us. We both refused.

Over time we just became close. It never was one of the friendships like I have with the Knitter or Claude, in which we spent all weekends together or sat on the steps during recess. No. We were not like that. We had the occasional sleepover, and I inherited her clothes (something mom hated: “You have your own!”), until she got tall and her hips widened and her jeans became too big and long for me. She lived with both parents and three siblings in a super fancy house in a closed compound. I lived with my divorced mom in an apartment. Our lives were different. Yet we always could talk, and she opened up to me in ways she didn’t to others. It was me whom she told why she dumped the guy everyone wanted her to marry. It was me she told when she lost her virginity. It was me who nursed her after a drunken night (and who took the fall for her when the next day her room smelled like a bar. With her good-girl fame at home, the maid and everyone at home stared me down assuming I was the drunk). It was on my shoulder that she cried when her family tried to break her up from her now husband, whom they thought was “not good enough for her”. And it was she who took one look at the BF and said to me: “This is the man you will marry. I know it in my heart.”

Last night, after my aunt got back from the wake and called me with the Siren’s cell number (it had changed and I didn’t have it) I called her. As soon as I said her name, she let out a deep sigh and said mine (wich are, as you know, the same). I couldn’t help but think that maybe that is one of the things that has made us so close. In a way, sharing a name has made us be a mirror where the other can see herself truthfully.

I asked how she was, to which she replied “Better now. Calmer”. Then I told her how sorry I was, and how I shared in her pain. I told her how much I wanted to be there with her, even if it was just to be sad together. Her voice broke when she replied: “I know, my friend, I know. I knew you would call. And I knew that of all the people who have been calling and saying they are sorry and they share in my pain, you are one of the very few who truly mean it. Who truly is sad with me and shares my pain”. She was right.

And that’s what I love the most about our friendship. We know each other so well, and we love each other so much, that no matter how far away we are, no matter what happens, it’s like no time passes between us and we are as close as always. Even when all I can do is be sad with her from far, far away.

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Protected: Guessing game

July 22, 2008 at 8:17 am (Basil, Dogs)

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Spoiled for choice

July 18, 2008 at 8:39 am (Basil, Dogs)

Let me gush for a while -again- about my dog:

As I’m sitting here eating breakfast, Basil is in the middle of an early morning energy craze. I only got 4 hours of sleep (yay! insomnia! &/&%%&ª!!!!) so I’m not sharing the energy. However, it’s very enjoyable and endearing to watch him play with two toys at the same time:

“Yay! Let’s throw the duck in the air!” “Now let’s squeak the ball!!”

If I had the energy, I bet you I could get him to also include the pig. Heh.

I’m a nerd. That dog is the joy of my life (of which I have none, no? since I just talk about him. Hehehe)

UPDATE: Five minutes after I posted this, Basil went and got the pig himself. Too much, just too much!!

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Why you should not betray a woman

July 17, 2008 at 11:15 am (Random)

Fabulous writes today about a man’s mistakes being publicly displayed in East Boston. Wonderful. She is right in quoting Shakespeare: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

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