Beeping, Snoring, and Sleep Theft

After having a weird dream in which I was receiving emergency leg transplants that just happened to be identical to my 8 pound dog’s legs (that’s right, I was going to have tiny yorkie legs), I was woken up this morning to a soft, “beep, beep, beep.”  I sleepily opened my eyes, surveyed the room and immediately fell back asleep.  About 15 seconds later I heard another, “beep, beep, beep.”  I opened my eyes again, turned over and noticed it was 6:00 in the morning and fell back asleep.  Fifteen more seconds pass and three more beeps wake me.  This time I wake up to Porky standing on my head staring down at me.  I swear, she mouthed the words, “Make it stop!”  At this point, I am awake long enough to hear another beeping interlude coming from Blake’s side of the bed. Further investigation reveals that the beeping is a result of his blood sugar monitor, alerting him that he has ventured too far away from it during his sleep.  Blake, of course, king of sleeping and snoring, has not even remotely heard any of the beeping alarm situated one foot from his face.  I grab his arm, probably a little roughly, and say, “Blake, your blood sugar monitor is beeping at you.”  I lay in the dark, listening as Blake types a few commands into his monitor, and promptly falls back asleep, snoring loudly.

At this point, I am wide awake, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, as Blake slowly breathes in less and less air as his snoring becomes louder and louder, culminating in a long silence then gasp for air.  Sleep apnea at its finest.  I stare over at Porky, who is staring back at me and willing me to smother Blake with a pillow.  That little dog is murderous. Luckily for Blake, I do not share Porky’s murderous intentions, and I simply turn to face the clock and watch as it slowly counts down to 6:30 then 6:45, and finally 7:10, when my alarm goes off.

I let it loudly buzz until Blake stops snoring, and then satisfied that his sleep was interrupted, I snooze it and try vainly to sleep for an additional 10 minutes.  However, seeing as how I cannot fall asleep in the 2 second window between Blake’s silence and his snoring, the loud noises emanating from the lump next to me keep me from falling back asleep. 7:20 comes, and the alarm again wakes him up.  This time, I am furious!  Porky is also furious!  (Chopper, is in Blake’s camp, with the ability to sleep through pretty much everything on the planet except for maybe if you picked him up and threw him across the room.  That MIGHT wake him.) I throw the covers off of me and stomp to the bathroom, exclaiming, “Blake!  Your snoring and beeping robbed me of an extra 1.5 hours of sleep!  Next time I am going to send you to the couch!”

Blake looks up at me, all innocence and sleepiness, glances at the Chopper, blissfully sleeping next to him, closes his eyes again and within 3 seconds continues with his snoring.

Adventures in Coq Au Vin

I finished Julie and Julia around Christmas-time last year and was immediately jealous that I hadn’t first thought of the idea of cooking every recipe in Mastering The Art of French Cooking in one year.  That sort of challenge has “Kristi” written all over it.  But, unfortunately, around the time Julie Powell was cooking her way through that extensive cookbook, I was taking Algebra and worrying about which pair of pajama pants I was going to wear to school tomorrow (I have always been stylish).  However, after receiving the cookbook as a Christmas present, I came up with my own mini-Kristi and Julie and Julia project.  Instead of cooking all the recipes in one year, I would simply cook a meal from the book every Sunday.  That was four weeks ago.  It has happened exactly once.  Those recipes are HARD!  There are so many steps!!  SO MUCH BUTTER!  (yum)

For my first recipe, I went with coq au vin.  There was no reason for this, except for the fact that I love The Melting Pot and one of their cooking styles is coq au vin.  And I like it.

Now, the first challenge with using a cookbook from the 1950’s is deciphering the ingredients.  Luckily, my dad is old and therefore was able to tell me that a “frying chicken” is a real option from the butcher section of a good grocery store.  I was planning on buying a bunch of various chicken parts and hoping that would suffice.

So, I went to Central Market, and approximately one million dollars later came back with all necessary ingredients.  Including this!

Blake posed these. Obviously.

Chicken pieces artfully positioned on the cutting board, I began with the healthiest part of the recipe – cooking bacon in butter.  Being a Martha Stewart fan, while also finding myself diametrically opposed to her particular brand of perfection in just about any way possible, I followed her sage advice of setting out all my ingredients before I began and read through the recipe multiple times.  Here is my ingredient arrangement:

This is as neat as humanly possible (for me)

See how much I am concentrating!!

This recipe has a bunch of steps.  Many of which I forgot even though I read through the recipe like 10 times before I started.  Cooking mushrooms was one of these missed steps.  I also managed to do things like, add the bacon to the mushrooms only to find myself frantically scooping the bacon back out of the mushrooms one second later.  It was a very typical Kristi cooking experience, with messes everywhere, and ingredients forgotten or burned, or cooked in the wrong order – but this recipe was fail-proof!  It was amazing!

Approximately 4 hours later, Blake and I found ourselves inhaling about 1 cup of bacon fat, a full pound of butter, a bottle of cooked wine, and an entire chicken.  It was delicious!!

This tasted way more delicious than it looks!

I find pictures of food to look gross – but let’s just say that with all that bacon fat and butter, it would be pretty hard for it not to be completely delicious.  AND IT WAS!

I Love Cake

Due to the proximity of my soul-draining cubicle to all the manager’s offices, I am often privy to conversation carried out (loudly) on speaker phone all around me.  Being insanely nosy, I typically tune into a number of different phone calls throughout the day.  Most of the time they are boring and annoying, but sometimes!  I find out all sorts of good office gossip/private information.  I rationalize myself by figuring that if the conversations really WERE private, they would actually shut their office door (a feature not offered to us cubicle dwellers) and/or actually pick up their phone receiver.  A lot of the time, the phone conversations taking place around me are between my (all male) managers and their children (of various ages).  These are my favorites due to the hilarious nature of children, and remind me of the many phone calls I used to make to my dad back in the day.  Today, after listening to one of my managers argue with his seven-year-old son about the possible whereabouts of his mother (Dad – “Where is your mom?”  Son – “She’s not home.”  Dad – “Did you EVEN look for her!”  Son “…No…Oh, here she is!”), I was reminded of a specific conversation between my dad’s assistant (known as a secretary back then) and myself.

It was my mom’s birthday.  I guess I was about 6-8 years old.  Being the perfect daughter that I am (and was), I for some unknown reason thought to call my dad and tell him to bring a cake home for mom’s birthday (actually, the reason is known – I wanted cake.)  However, when I dialed my dad’s office number, his secretary informed me that he was busy in meetings.  Being oh-so-mature, I left a message for my dad to purchase a cake on his way home for work and hung up the phone.  I sat there for a second and began to worry about exactly what kind of cake my dad was going to bring home.  Those of you who know me, know that I take cake VERY seriously.  I once threw a mini-tantrum at work when someone chose CARROT CAKE for cake-day (RIP.  Thanks, Recession.  Thanks a lot.) instead of the Kristi Suggested (and way more delicious) strawberry cake.  What if my dad brought home carrot cake or some other below average cake flavor?  What if he brought home WHITE SHEET CAKE!?  That’s the WORST flavor of cake ever created!!

So, I planned what I believed was the fail-safe solution.  I picked up the phone and called my dad’s secretary back.  I let her know that I needed to add something to my dad’s message.  After waiting for her to get the sheet ready, I added, “Also, Mom told me that she really wants chocolate cake with chocolate icing and neopolitan ice cream.”  Unfortunately, the scheming of a 6-year old is never quite as sneaky as the kid thinks it is.  Shirley (dad’s secretary) immediately called me out on my plan, “Kristi,” she asked me (patronizingly, although I didn’t know that word at the time), “Does your mom want chocolate cake or do you?”  Immediately embarrassed, I responded with a quick, “Yes!  That’s her favorite!  She loves chocolate!”  and hung up the phone without one more word.  I spent all day worried that my selfishness would be revealed and my dad would bring home a disgusting cake flavor.  BUT!  He brought home chocolate cake!  He even brought home the most delicious ice cream flavor, neopolitan!  However….I was never able to look Shirley in the eyes again.

A small trade-off.

Hallelujah

Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah!”

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Monday, I found myself in a depressingly cliched situation.  After deciding to be anti-social and not join my work group at lunch, I went to Subway and got a sandwich.  I didn’t want to be TOTALLY sad and eat at my desk, so I found an empty table at a nearby Starbucks and got a small cinnamon dolce latte, took out my book, plugged in headphones and ate my lunch in solitude.  As I sat there, reading and eating and listening, Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah began playing.  Now listen.  I think we can all agree that song is the very definition of touching.  If you don’t know the song, go ahead… listen…I have posted a convenient little link for you.

Ok.  I assume everyone now agrees with me.  Well, I sat in my little corner of Starbucks, with my little sandwich, and my book – and I swear, I had a true moment.  Since then, I have forced Blake to play the song for me at least 20 times.  And now I am forcing everyone who reads this blog to listen to it as well.