Remember what I said about being country?  Yeah, well…this dish is proof positive.  Anyone who is health-conscious needs to go find something else to do.

This is the absolute easiest thing to make.  I’m not even sure there’s a recipe for it.  It’s my own version of scalloped potatoes.  All you do is:

* Slice up a bunch of potatoes.  I used Yukon Golds here.

* Lay a layer of potatoes in the bottom of a Pyrex dish.

* Season the layer with salt & pepper (or whatever you want.)

*  Place about four pats of butter over them, then lightly sprinkle with all-purpose flour.  You can put cheese on there too.

*  Top with another layer of potatoes.  Repeat process until dish is fairly full.  Pour regular milk or buttermilk over the whole thing…..don’t drown it.  Maybe fill the dish halfway. 

* Put it in a 400 degree oven and bake until potatoes are tender. 

It’s a fairly generic and versatile recipe.  Have at it!

Cali has this book, “The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum” by Kate Bernheimer & Nicoletta Ceccoli.  I’m totally in love with it.  I just sit and stare at the pictures.  They’re so…simply enchanting.  They make you want to climb inside the book and live in the castle for the rest of your life.  Okay, I’m a dreamer…but the book is breath-taking.  Every little girl..tomboy or not…should have this book. 

Simplicity: The state of being simple, uncomplicated, uncompounded.

Our economy.  Can you say, “IN THE TOILET”??!!  I truly never thought I’d see milk at almost $5 a gallon..not in my lifetime, anyway.  There are some economists predicting that gas could be at $7 a gallon by February 2009.  Senior Citizens are having to choose between meds and food.  I heard on the national news last night that back in 1999, Osama Bin Laden said his goal was to drive the price of oil to $144 a barrell…so that the “West would be punished.”  When the bell shut down Wall Street yesterday…a barrell of oil was selling for…..yep…$144.  And it’s expected to shoot up even further. 

I don’t think any of us can fully graspy the impact that all of this is going to have on this country.  I believe we’re just now seeing the tip of the iceberg.  Iowa lost the majority of their corn crop (which is mainly used for livestock feed)…which will now create a huge inflation in our meat and dairy…because the price to feed these animals will sky-rocket. 

The alleged reason for oil being at $144 is because Congress refuses to drill off-coast.  I can’t help but think…maybe all of this is a blessing in deep disguise.  This country is reknown for waiting until a catastrophe happens to do something.  Maybe this will force us into doing what we should have been responsibly doing all along.  Taking care of this earth.  Finding our own source of energy.  Building cars that down pollute the atmosphere and require huge amounts of gas.  Reducing our spending.  Recycling.  If every single person did their part…and by that, I mean being conscious of their own personal space…their yard, their trash, their vehicle….then we wouldn’t be at the place we’re at right now. 

I’m a firm believer in Karma.  Cause and Effect.  It infuriates me when I hear these people that say God is punishing us.  We’re punishing ourselves.  WE did this to ourselves.  This is a perfect example of Cause and Effect.  God put us here in a perfect state with a mind that had unlimited power.  It was MAN who screwed it up from there.  We are living with the consequences of our actions.  You can’t expect to abuse the world around you without an eventual break-down. 

My daughter will never know a world like I knew growing up.  Maybe that’s why Matt and I are so focused on giving her a “simple” life.  Not one that is graded by the neighborhood you live in…or the size of the house you live in.  Or the country clubs you attend, the clothing you wear, the social circles you swirl in.  All of that is so shallow it’s bone dry. 

We were all set to buy a brand new car.  Had the financing approved…all we had to do is paperwork and go pick it up.  But we decided not to.  Our car will be paid off in a month or so.  It’s not a gas-guzzler.  It’s in fairly good shape.  So we decided it’d be irresponsible of us to just go out and spend the money because we can…or because we want a flashy new car.  It’s not a necessity.  There’s nothing wrong with the car we drive.  Sure, I stick out like a sore thumb when I take my daughter to school and park in the middle of nothing but huge SUV’s and Suburbans.  But that’s not important to me anymore. 

In a month or so, our little garden will be busting with enough vegetables and fruit to get us through the winter.  We shut off lights when we’re not in the room.  We don’t touch the thermostat.  I go to expensive children boutiques, look at what’s “Hot” in children’s-wear..then go home and make it myself.  Usually out of table-cloths or sheets. 

In short…my family has adopted and adheres to a life of simplicity.  Sure…a little of it is out of necessity; but the majority of it is out of a desire.  A desire to be happy with what we have, to share what we’ve been blessed with..and to teach our daughter a few life lessons along the way. 

Simplicity:  Just watch…it’s gonna become trendy.  And when it does…I’m gonna make a shirt out of grass and old ziploc bags that says: “I was here first.”

“

Now that I have this newly found focus…I hope to finally complete one of my projects out of this book:

And this one:

I’ve been running amok the past few days, so last night I took a break.  Here’s what wound up in my sketch book:

This is what I looked like in my mid-20’s.  Ahhhhh, youth:

This is….I’m not sure.  A face?

Now, at the beginning of LAST year, I had said that I wanted to learn to draw hands.  It’s the one body part I have problems drawing.  If you look at all my stuff, the hands are either shoved into pockets, behind the back or missing altogether.  As you can see…..I’m still pretty bad.  So bad, in fact, that I drew those eyeballs up there lookin’ at them like, “Uh…..you need some more practice, gurl.”

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved comic books.  I’d literally get lost in them.  I harbored a pipe dream (one of many) of illustrating comics one day.  The most I’ve done is design a couple of tattoos and humor myself in my sketch book.  Maybe now I can work on that kids book I wanted to do for Cali.  Hmm..I may work on some of those characters tonight. 

Okay, I’m outta here.

So I was on the radio this morning.  Quite by accident, actually.  It started out innocently enough.  My fave radio station does this little bit called “Hole in the Headline” every morning.  They’ll quote an actual headline out of the national news…and you gotta call in and fill in the “hole”.  So….here was today’s:

“Man sets __________ on fire to show his anger at high gas prices.”

Okay, first..I had NO idea what the answer was.  Second….if you know me, you know that I have a “different” sense of humor.  Most people get it…but the dumber ones are always slightly confused.  At any rate…I called in.  Busy, Busy, Busy…..RING!  So he answered:

“Thanks for calling….what’s your answer?”

“Eww…that man did lit himself on the fire, hunny.”

*Crazy Laughter*  (A smart one). 

“Well, you’re wrong…but that’s going on the air.”

And five seconds later, it did. 

You want my autograph?

I also found THIS little gem of anger in prose.  This one is actually finished.  And angry.  I believe this was written about four years ago and directed towards the people that had followed me down the rabbit hole of Meth addiction.  It’s a little graphic…just letting you know. 

“I am unaware of the rot and corrosion within my brain, my mouth, my insides.  I smell chemical.  I smell dead.  I haven’t pissed in four days.  I seem to have acquired a nervous twitch.  My skin is falling off.  I hate this place.  I hate these people.  Their eyes are void and their souls are deceased. 

Perfume and make-up won’t help you. Go ahead.  Scrub yourself raw with lye soap.  You’re still dirty.  You’re still ugly.  Your house is still filthy and the trash hasn’t been taken out for days…maybe even weeks.  You might want to check on your kid.  I heard her crying in her room last night.  I haven’t seen her eat since last week.  They shut your phone off.  The lights don’t turn on anymore.  Something rotten is seeping out of the refrigerator.  Maybe that ground beef you bought two years ago.  Maggots have replaced the freezer burn.  You might want to check on that.

Don’t look now, but everyone is laughing at you.  You’re a joke.  A clown.  They avoid you.  Probably because you beg. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Use. Abuse. Demean. Demoralize. Neglect. Blight.  You’re a confused soul stuck in a defective body, trapped.  No way to get out.  Someone should put you out of your misery…which would put other people out of their misery.  You ARE stupid.  You ARE a whore.  Noone is fooled by you.  You’re last week’s conversation in a bathroom stall at some seedy, back alley bar. 

Go away.  I’m going to clean my brain.  Brush my teeth.  Take a shower.

I’ll step on your head as I walk out the door.”

Ooohhhhhh…..can you say ANGRY?  I probably felt much better after writing this.  Sorry if I’ve offended anyone with the graphic content….but Real is Real.  No use candy-coating it.

The amount of work I accomplished over the weekend was almost inhuman.  Apparently my ADD was a whole lot worse than I gave it credit for.  I told my husband that it felt like I had been gone for a long time and had just come home to a crazy, disorganized house.  So…in the past three days, I reversed all of the mayhem that I’d created. 

I’m infamous for starting to write stories and never finishing them.  I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid.  So in the course of my work over the weekend, I stumbled upon this half-written story.  I have NO clue when it was written.  Here it is…in all its one-paragraph glory:

“They didn’t even know.  Apparently hadn’t even noticed.  Dad was out of the house by 6am and didn’t make it back until after dark, if then.  Mom was lost in the fog of overly prescribed anti-depressants and spent most of her day crying into a tumbler full of Vodka and grapefruit juice.  Some days I’d come home and find her passed out on the sofa, still wearing her crown and sash from her pageant days…lipstick smeared.  Some days I’d help her to bed.  Most days I just left her there.

I was at my Aunt Shelia’s house when I found out.  We had all gone over to admire her new pool and deck.  The whole way home my parents argued about Aunt Sheila being irresponsible with her dead husband’s insurance money. 

“He hasn’t been in the ground 3 months and she’s already redecorated the house, got a boob job, put a pool in and did something to her nose.”

If my Dad died, Mom would probably spend all of his insurance money on gin, juice and smokes.  I sat in the backseat staring out the window…literally watching my life flash before me.  I felt completely numb and there was a dull ringing in my ears.  My face felt cold.  I was invisible.”

And there you have it.  I have NO clue where I was going with this…but I’ll file it away with the rest of my unfinished stuff and maybe one day splice them all together and send them off to a crackpot publisher.

I really don’t know how to explain what has happened to me over the course of this day.  For the first half of the day, I was hostile, combative, irritable….walking around in circles, flitting from one thing to the next, forgetting where I’d started and getting lost trying to get back.  I got in STAT to see my pdoc…God bless him.  No, seriously….God bless him.  He’s too cool.  At any rate….I have now added Adderall to the cuckoo cocktail.  10mg in the morning…10mg in the afternoon.  I took my first dose at approximately 6:30pm.  About an hour and a half after taking it……

Someone flipped a switch.  And all of a sudden….there was silence.  No static.  No tangled mess of thoughts, ideas, mindless wanderings…nothing.  Immediately I calmed down to a delicate sense of “normal”, the hostility vanished, the anger evaporated…and its place was a calm focus that I’ve never in my life felt or experienced.  I could almost hear my brain breathe an audible “Thank you”.  I wasn’t speeding around, talking a million miles an hour.  I simply went into my studio and began to work.  Cleaning it, that is.  After almost a year of it being it total chaos, I was able to clear it all out.  I calmly started one thing, finished it and moved on to the next task.  By this time tomorrow I’ll probably be able to actually pick up one of my many unfinished projects and get back to work.  How odd that just a simple tweak of medication can help so incredibly much. 

Cali will be stoked that tomorrow morning…I’ll be able to cook her breakfast without maybe wandering off to the….oh, I dunno….gas station? 

Finally.  I think we’re getting somewhere.

In 27 days, we will be here:

The Emerald Coast at Pinnacle Port.  We’re fortunate to have family that owns a condo smack on the beach.  Any closer and they’d be IN the ocean.  I cannot wait.  Here are some pics from last year:

Okay, I had to make an emergency appointment today to see my pdoc.  In the past week…specifically the past couple of days….my ADD has gone flat out of control.  I’ll be fixing lunch and stop smack in the middle of putting the peanut butter on the bread, go start a load of laundry, only forget to turn to it on because I got side tracked by the books I remember by my bed that needed taken back to the library, but on my way to do that, I noticed that Cali’s room smelled so I went to get some Glade but somehow wound up outside wondering why the pool looked deflated.  My Mom told me that when I was little, I’d be incapable of enjoying what I was currently doing because I was so preoccupied with what to do next.  When I told her about my ADD diagnosis, she replied, “Well, yeah!  And it took you THIS long to figure that out?”

Okay.  I cannot function like this.  About half-way thru typing this blog, I went into the bathroom to start cleaning out the shower but wound up filling up the sink for Cali to play bubbles in.  I finally made it back here in….letsee…..I think I still have some money left on my Outback Steakhouse card.

Stop laughing.