Bicycle Blues

I want a new bike. One that won't make me sick. One that won't make me talk too much, or make me feel three feet thick.

No, really, I want a new bike. Or just a bike, it doesn't really have to be new. Currently, if I want to go ride I must first get out the wrench and lower the seat on one of the boys' bikes, then beg them to let mom ride it, then promise them I'll put the seat back EXACTLY where it was, and to not let any of their friends see me riding their bike, and also plan to use it when they are not using it which means this summer - THE BIKES ARE NEVER AVAILABLE. They LIVE on their bikes all summer!

So, I throw this out to all of you - give me some ideas of the best light-weight bikes out there for casual biking around on gravel and asphalt trails in the area for a 44 yr old female with a big butt. (And don't say a Harley!)

Dutchman's Breeches and SNOW!?

It is April 28th, and on my walk today I was enjoying the new batch of forest wildflowers (Dutchman's Breeches, Rue-Anemone, Bloodroot, Wild Ginger, Snow Trillium, the starts of Showy Orchids), and walking through snow showers! This is a first in my life anyway. I was walking with my friend Nancy and as usual we ended up talking about food again! As soon as we ended the walk, I headed for the store for the goods needed for a batch of soup. Here is what I made up on the spot, ENJOY! I'll call it Shirley's Soup for Late April Snow!

Brown 1 whole chicken breat, 1/2 lb spicy Italian Sausage, and 4-5 links spicy chicken sausage. Set aside when browned.
In the same pan, saute 1 chopped onion, 4-5 chopped carrots, 4 stalks celery, and one clove garlic, minced. Cook until slightly tender.
Chop two zucchini and add to veggies. Then add 1 - 28 oz. can fire-roasted tomatoes and 2 bay leaves. Also add the chopped fresh basil. Then add 10-12 cups chicken stock.
Add the 1/2 box medium shell pasta or any other kind of pasta you like. Cook until pasta is cooked through, DO NOT OVER COOK! Add black pepper and 1 spoonful tomato paste.
Hope you like it! Below is the complete recipe.

Shirley's Soup for Late April Snow!

1 whole boneless chicken breast
½ lb spicy Italian sausage – rolled into small meatballs
1 package spicy chicken sausage links
1 onion - chopped
2 cloves garlic - minced
5 carrots - chopped
4 stalks celery - chopped
2 zucchini - chopped
1 – 28 oz. Fire roasted tomatoes – chopped
8 leaves fresh basil – chopped

Medium shell pasta – ½ box
Chicken broth – 10-12 cups
Black pepper to taste
2 Bay leaves
Large spoonful tomato paste

Brown the meats together. Set aside. Cook the onions until tender, then add the garlic and cook for one minute more. Add the carrots and celery. Cook 5 minutes. Put the meats back into the veggies and cook 5 minutes. Add 10-12 cups chicken broth. Add basil, zucchini, and chopped tomatoes. Cook until zucchini is cooked through and other veggies are slightly tender. Add pasta and cook until pasta is done. Serve with a hard crust bread.

April Showers Bring Crammed Family Schedules!

It's April. April showers bring May flowers and also a very hectic, crammed family schedule of soccer, baseball, track, folk & jazz dance practices, vocal concerts, band concerts, and orchestra concerts, yard work, and on and on and on. Sound familiar? Now, add to that about a gazillion cheesecake orders for weddings and graduations (a good thing though!)

Why am I not blogging?? Read the above again. In the meantime, here are a few teaser photos of the cheesecakes flying out of my house lately! As MG once stated, with his mouth full of a Double-Dipped in Chocolate Frozen Raspberry White Chocolate Cheesecake On-a-Stick, "these cheesecakes are sinfully tasty!!"

Until next time - GO RAIDERS!

It's a Soup-Making Kind of Day!

Today is filled with rain, wind, cold, more rain, a LOT MORE wind, and more cold, it has hovered around 35-38 all day here and has not stopped raining and spitting. That, to me, is soup-making weather! We needed something for dinner tonight that would warm us down to our toes. I'm trying a new soup today, Upstate Minestrone Soup! I had this at a local restaurant the other day and loved it, so I'm going to try it out on my family. The house smells great, hope the soup is as good! Here is the recipe as best I could duplicate it:

1 lb Italian SWEET sausage (I used Johnsonville brand, took the casing off and rolled it into little meatballs for the soup.)
1 T olive oil
1 c chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 c chopped carrots
1 tsp crumbled basil
2 small zucchini, cubed
1 lb or 1 can diced tomatoes (try to find Italian pear tomatoes in a can)
3 cups water with 3 tsp beef soup base (I use the organic Better Than Bouillon brand)
2 c green cabbage, shredded
1 tsp salt
1/4 t black pepper
1 can Great Northern beans with liquid
1/4 c parsley, chopped
(I might add just a pinch of sugar to the soup, to help tame the tomatoes a bit. It just seems like the right thing to do.)

With the sausage, create little meatballs about the diameter of a quarter by removing the casings and cutting them into small parts. Brown the meatballs in olive oil in a deep saucepan or Dutch oven. Add onion, garlic, carrots, and basil and cook for 5 minutes with the meat. Add zucchini, tomatoes with liquid, bouillon and water, cabbage, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for about one hour. Add beans with liquid, cook another 20 minutes. Garnish with fresh chopped parsley. Great served with a hearty multi-grain bread or a good hard-crusted sourdough!

p.s. just finished dinner . . . it was great soup (two of the kids did not like the tomatoes, but one loved them, go figure!) (It just needed more black pepper. Will be good warmed up this weekend, too!)

Hundreds of Excited 12 yr old Dancers!

Yes, we've earned another STAR IN OUR CROWN! We spent all afternoon Saturday at a "Just for Kix" competition with our daughter (and about 400 other 12-year-old girls decked out in their leotards, jazz pants, thousands of hairpins, and enough hairspray to shellac every mini van in the stadium parking lot!) The photo above shows just one section of dozens of sections during that day.

This was a completely new experience for my husband and I; we felt like fish out of water. We can handle soccer games, baseball games, art shows, band concerts, orchestra concerts, fishing, canoeing, kayaking, hiking, archery, watching movies . . even watching the corn grow! But, DANCE GROUP COMPETITION?! Yep, a new experience for us!

Imagine a very large arena, thousands of parents, grandparents, siblings, popcorn, nachos, sodas, water bottles, and hundreds and hundreds of very excited, very loud, very energized pre-teen girls. Some, very few, but some of the moms in attendance went overboard in enthusiasm for their little darlings. They had on the team shirts (color coordinated with their daughter's leotards), the same glitter mascara and eye shadow, hand-held cheer signs that they held up and waved when their group was performing, and lots of high-pitched screaming while their girls performed. It was embarrassing, thankfully they were NOT the norm. Most of the others in attendance probably felt the same way we did - "how did we end up here? I could be doing yard work. Changing the oil in the car. Brushing the dog's teeth. Anything but watch hours and hours of a dance competition!"

One group after another danced to one of six songs, each doing the same six routines to those songs, "Rock Your Body", "Work This", "Wild Child", "Twister", "My Sharona", and "Ultimate" to name a few. But after just a few routines, I soon found myself feeling differently about the whole thing, like the Grinch when he hears the Whos in Whoville singing, my own heart grew three sizes that day!

Our daughter and her team danced their hearts out and had a blast doing it. We learned a lot that day, most importantly that 12-year-old girls have a level of energy like nothing else; an energy that should be captured and used to solve our energy crisis! They were all so positive and happy and proud and having fun! Most of the girls on my daughter's dance team also play soccer, basketball, softball, and/or volleyball, HARD. They are smart, funny, and multi-talented. They are not yet at the age where they give in to society's pressures about how their bodies should look, they simply performed with all their might in all their awkward glory!

Hats off! - to the energy, enthusiasm, and hard work of pre-teen girls everywhere! They will soon rule the world!

The Jeannie Tate Show - Bill Hader

Enjoy!

The Jeannie Tate Show - Rashida Jones

I get a kick out of these, they are way too close to home!

Soccer "Team Parent' - shoot me now.

It is soccer season again in our area, and shoot me now, but I've once again agreed to be the 'team parent'. Doesn't that term just send chills down your spine and cause a headache right away? . . . 'team parent'. If you've ever been one, you know what I mean. If you have not been one, then you haven't taken your turn and you'd better sign up next year! Soccer season means that from now to the end of May, I will be driving one child to a game far away, and my spouse will be driving the other child to a game far away, each and every Saturday AND Sunday and very seldom are they in the same far away city. Yep, with gas prices up this year, carpooling is the way to go. That means how many more phone calls and schedules to make? AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!

Below is a letter I would love to send out to the other parents on the team this year -- of course I won't, but it felt good to write a fake one just to get it out of my system. If you are not or never have been a 'team parent' for one of your child's sports teams, then stop reading right now because I assure you; you will be offended and you will get your panties in a twist, and you will hate me. Please, I beg you, stop reading right now if you have never been a 'team parent'. You've been duly warned, if you continue to read this and then get offended, you brought it on yourself and I don't want to hear about it later!

So, this is the 'team parent' letter we WISH we could all send . . . . . .

Hello again U14 Boys Soccer Parents and Players!

First of all, the information I’m providing below has already been sent to all you slackers by the soccer association board, twice. But, because you never really get it the first couple of times and I knew that if I didn’t send out yet another letter, you’d all be bitching and complaining about my obvious lack of organizational skills as a team parent, so I wanted to touch base with all of you for a third time to shove it into your thick-headed skulls for a third time.

Be sure to check the soccer website at www.soccerteam.com. OFTEN!! DO NOT wait to hear from me if you have a question, feel free to check the website and don’t you dare call me if you haven’t check the website first!

March 31 - 1^st clothing order is due. Yes, this is really the date, you cannot call two days later and hope to get in on the first order you lazy sack of shit. Get your order in on time or wait until the second order. THIS IS THE ORDER DEADLINE. PERIOD.

PRACTICES:
Mondays and Thursdays from 6:30 – 7:30pm at the College fields. If your little Johnny or Suzie doesn’t show up for practice, then they won’t be playing soccer at games much either. If you can’t get them to practice, then you'd better shut up at the games about playing time being fair for all. All players must have shin guards, soccer cleats (optional but highly recommended), and a soccer ball. YOU SHOULD GO GET SHIN GUARDS, BALL, SOCCER CLEATS NOW, do not wait until the morning of their first game. DO NOT wait until the first day of practice. FIND THEM NOW! If your little one’s shin yards cover only half of their shin, THEY ARE TOO SMALL YOU IDIOT!

SNACK SCHEDULE:
There will be no snack schedule. WHEN DID YOU STOP BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR FEEDING YOUR OWN GOD DAMNED KIDS??????!!!! But hey, if any of you overly obsessive moms and dads want to organize one, go ahead, just leave my out of it!

PLAYER/PARENT INFORMATION:
Please check the attached roster. If your information is correct, great! If it is not, there is absolutely no excuse for you. You have had plenty of opportunity to correct it by now in many previous notices. If it is incorrect, that is because you did not fill in the registration form correctly you total moron.

QUESTIONS/CONCERNS:
If any of you has a concern with how I'm running things, CALL ME! DO NOT complain to all the other parents on the team behind my back first. CALL ME! If you have a better way of doing things, then YOU volunteer to be the team parent next time! If you don't want to volunteer or call me with your concerns BEFORE you complain to everyone else, then please keep your big mouth shut.

. . . . . . . . .

Okay, I feel much better now. Maybe they shouldn't let para-menopausal soccer moms be the 'team parent'. I'd better remember to take the Swiss Army knife off of my key chain.

P.S. In fairness to soccer parents, most of them are great people and fun to hang out with at the games! GO RAIDERS! (Raiders reference here from a great youtube video, "The Jeannie Tate Show!!", go watch it, too funny and hits way to close to home! Oh, here's another one . . . Jeannie Tate with Rob Riggle from the Daily Show, or Jeannie Tate with Rashida Jones from The Office)