MFA Mama

the week from the hot place

Dear blog,

I'm sorry about the neglect. It's not you, it's me. Well okay, it's a sixty-hour workweek and the fact that here and there when I get home BEFORE I'm dead-tired I only have the time to EITHER blog or love on my husband (the children are generally already asleep). So...blame Hotter?

Sent from The Precious

eight of 'em

Figure One: Yeah, not so cute. Give 'em a couple of weeks.

magic eightball says: ask again later

   Lots of stuff has been going on that I can't tell y'all about QUITE YET, but one thing I CAN tell you is that Pfeffer is VERY PREGNANT. Like, as in my original research suggested that rabbits COULD kindle (what it's called when they give birth) any time between twenty-nine and thirty-one days' gestation. HOW EFFICIENT!

   Well, today is day thirty-one of Pfeffer's pregnancy and so far? No babies.

   She's DEFINITELY pregnant; you can feel the little buggers squirming around in her belly when you pick her up. In fact, they seem to go almost up to her armpits, so I'm thinking she might have A LOT OF BABIES in there. 

   So I asked Dr. Google, DVM about rabbit gestation length again, because we know what day Haas and Pfeffer got busy (yes, we spell his name with two As, because with one it looks like the past tense of the verb "to have" plus MAYBE HE IS NAMED AFTER OSTER HAAS, THE EASTER HARE, DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT? OR EVEN THE AVOCADO. Just because Pfeffer is Pfeffer and they're rabbits doesn't necessarily mean his name is Has. This just goes to show you what happens when you ASSume things, people). According to one source, thirty days. According to another, twenty-nine to thirty-one. A third states that first-time mother rabbits can go as long as thirty-FOUR days. 

   What. The. HELL?

   So basically nobody knows how long rabbits stay pregnant, poor Pfeffer just has to wait it out, and I'll keep y'all posted.

the one where I turn into no one from my family tree, apparently

   I was going to start this post out by saying that I've turned into my own grandfather, hobbling around nursing my bad back and carping at the kids that if I had a nickel for every time they opened the dadblamed door I could use that money to pay the power bill...except then I remembered that when my grandfather's back was acting up that was a euphemism for HEMMORHOIDS. I briefly considered who else in my family I might currently resemble...my father, for all that he has ninety-nine problems (of which a solid half-a-dozen involve bitches), never had a bad back. And while The Narcissist frequently SAID she had a bad back, that was usually a euphemism for GOT NEW TITS AGAIN and she never cared about the power bill anyway and I DON'T KNOW, OKAY, I AM LIMPING AROUND LIKE SOME WHOLLY NEW INDIVIDUAL RISEN FROM THE GODDAMN SEAFOAM, OR MAYBE AN AMALGAM MY BRAIN COBBLED TOGETHER FROM STOCK CHARACTERS ON NICK AT NITE.

   My back hurts and my kids will. not. stop. going. in. and. out. of. the. front. door. They even invite their FRIENDS to come over here and go in and out.

   But I actually came on here to tell y'all about a genius new time-saver I came up with for eating backyard salad.* All you need is failing vision, a devil-may-care attitude, and a peppermill. Ready? OF COURSE YOU ARE!

1. Go cut some salad.

2. Toss any obviously non-lettuce leaves, yellowed ones, and leaves with slugs attached into the compost heap. 

3. Rinse the salad.

4. Chop other things into the salad.

5. Make your dressing, and before you apply to your salad, coarse-grind some pepper in (rainbow peppercorns are the best for this).

6. If you see a speck in your salad? Just tell yourself it's pepper and keep eating.

   Trust me, y'all, this is MUCH faster than going through it a leaf at a time. 

   Now, what do I win?

 

*   Which, shockingly enough, IS NOT A EUPHEMISM FOR ANYTHING, GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER. Seriously, GAWD!

slump

   I have missed a LOT of work over this latest oral surgery drama of Hotter's. This whole "easily could have gone septic and died" thing hit me like a ton of bricks and I just want to make sure he's breathing, OKAY PEOPLE? Also I have some kind of lung lurgy and my entire back is seized up and OH MY GOD MONEY and...I dunno. I feel like I could sleep for a week. At least.

   How do YOU break out of a slump?

Surprise! Oral surgery!

I keep thinking I can silly my way out of this. Like SURPRISE! Oral surgery! *jazz hands*

No?

Meh. So now we know why Transplant gets yelly about premedicating with antibiotics before dental work.

Right. Fuuuuudge.*

* except I didn't say fudge

Sent from The Precious

I hate people, bunnies, rainbows, happiness...and anything I may have omitted from that list

   I finally dragged my arse back to work today, despite an aching back and still feeling like utter dookie from this bronchitis-y largynitis-y Cold of Filth (tm May)...but had to leave before lunch because I am cursed by life, as evidenced by a) Pfeffer the very-pregnant rabbit disappearing on Hotter and b) the HEALTH DEPARTMENT sending us a notice that they'd received a complaint about our not using a proper outdoor trash receptacle and threatening to charge us with a class III misdemeanor. SERIOUSLY, CRAZY TRASHCAN NEIGHBOR??? So I had to come home, assess the situation, bust up the floor of an old shed in order to reach and extract the (very angry, vicious, HOLY HAND-GRENADEWORTHY) rabbit hiding underneath, make a garbage run, and mow the lawn for good measure. And sometime in the course of all of that, a mosquito bit the HELL out of me. Remember how I said I'm allergic to mosquito bites and prefer beestings? This is why:

Figure One: Hand shown for scale. And yes, I just put my stretchmarks on the innernet. It's not so much that I have no shame (although I pretty much don't) as that I have a connective tissue disease, and therefore I have these from my neck to my ankles. So I'm kind of over them.

Figure Two: In this one you can see how it's starting to swell. 

   So yeah, I hate everygoddamnthing right now. But especially Crazy Trashcan Neighbor. I think next payday I WILL go and buy a trashcan JUST LIKE HERS, but I will have to mark it with spraypaint so that we can tell them apart.

   Mine will be the one that says "SCREW YOU" in foot-high neon letters.

140-calorie, wheat-free chocolate cupcakes

   So y'all know I'm on this LOSE ALL THE WEIGHT kick, right? It's less to do with vanity (Hotter is the only person who has to see me naked on the regular, and he actually PREFERS me zaftig, bless his poor blind little heart) and more to do with stuff like "not getting the Type Two Diabeetus" and "spare the joints!" My family tree is full of hideous, but largely preventable conditions either caused or exacerbated by being overweight, and I'm not getting any younger. It's hard. I'm not gonna lie. I fell wayyyy off the wagon over the holidays and gained back everything I'd lost in two months of hard work, partly due to an injury and partly due to lack of restraint. That sucked. But now I'm back at it, and I am sloooowly seeing results.

   All of that is to say that sometimes I would sell one of my children for some damn chocolate cake, but I've learned that I can't cheat on The Diet without going buck-ass wild and gaining ten pounds. Then I found this lady's blog, and thought "well hell, I could have some of THAT cake!" But I didn't have black beans, or liquid stevia, and I don't even want as much sugar as is in that much honey, and I have cholesterol issues, and I suck at following directions...anyway here is what I made, which isn't exactly her recipe, but is its kissing cousin:

MFA Mama's Poot-cakes

Trader Joe's Cannelini Beans - 1 can (420 calories)
Five egg whites -  80 calories (16 ea.)
Two egg yolks - 100 calories (50 ea.) 
Unsweetened cocoa powder - 6 tbsp (120 calories)
1/2 c. Horizon Whole Milk - (80 calories)
Coconut Oil - 7 tbsp (840 calories)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 c. Splenda

   Blenderize everything, ladle into a cupcake pan (WITH LINERS!), bake at 350 for about 20 minutes (until a butterknife comes out clean), and eat before going to bed facing AWAY from your spouse (HA!).

   They're really good, high in protein and fiber, and honestly you'd never guess about the beans if you just took a bite without knowing what they were. Next time I think I'll use actual black beans, I just didn't have any in the house, and maybe a teensy pinch of vanilla sugar sprinkled over the top of each one. These would probably be KILLER with peanut-butter on top, but obviously that would add a ton of calories (each of these has 136.666666667 total calories, which I rounded to 140 since there's no nutritional information on the ingredients without calories listed but they have to have a TINY amount, right?). 

 

All calorie counts courtesy of Myfitnesspal

MFA Mama: 0/MFA Honeybees: 3

   So I'm still home sick, although I think I'm on the mend (I can make a noise besides a whisper today, although I still sound like a pubescent goose). This gave me a chance to go and mess with the bees, though! When I picked them up the beekeeping instructor showed me where they'd built one of the frames out a bit too far. "You'll want to go in tomorrow and trim that back," he said nonchalantly. Okay! Right! 

   So this morning I set out to do just that, and about the best thing I can say about how it went is that I am DEFINITELY not allergic to beestings. Note to self: do NOT forget to rubberband your pants-legs next time! I got the comb trimmed, but made kind of a mess of it, and I'm sad that I ended up killing the three bees that crawled up my pants and stung me (plus however many I may have smooshed in manipulating the frames). I guess it's kind of a good thing I got that over with, though. The last time I was stung by a bee before today I was just a kid and I remember it as SEARING AGONY. The me of today found the stings to be less unpleasant than mosquito bites (I am VERY allergic to mosquitoes) and won't be scared to mess with the hive next time.

today was a lot like my ex-husband...

...in that all it did was kick my ass, spend my money, and waste my fucking time.

   *rimshot*

   Seriously though, the ER did a CT scan of Hotter's head and some bloodwork, said everything looked good and they had NO idea why he was so ill, and discharged him with instructions to follow up with...TRANSPLANT. So it's like a giant medical circlejerk with my husband in the middle (barfing, most likely), and this is why Hotter usually isn't allowed to go to the doctor without me. Because I probably would've cut Transplant off at the knees when they sent him to the goddamn ER, or at the very least put the kibosh on the ER being all "your brain and blood are normal so have fun throwing up and passing out at home, sucka!" Since he's been hypotensive for the past week I'm thinking SOMEbody probably needs to scale back one or more of his BP meds, which only Transplant can really do (they manage those, plus nobody else will alter a transplant patient's meds). Either that or Hotter just needs to sack up and quit being such a wussy about having a BP in the 90s over 60s, because I walk around like that every goddamn day and you don't see ME retiring to my fainting couch over it.

   The MFA Children and I were actually on our way to go and get our bees when Hotter called to say he'd been discharged. So everybody got to go along for the ride! I was kind of worried because I have the kind of veil that goes over a hat (that is the cheapest kind) and my feral children destroyed my straw gardening hat (which I'd been planning to use with the veil) doing some kind of Mexican hat dance on the thing, but then I realized that their plastic Bob the Builder hard hat would a) fit me and b) have enough of a brim all the way around it to hold the veil. So I swiped that to use (really, it's the least those rotten kids could do!), and my beekeeping instructor at least had the courtesy to go and laugh at me in private. And now we have bees!

    Man, I hope I'm well enough to go to work tomorrow.