Awkwardly Social

I almost forced you guys to behold a photo of the swelling of my feet and ankles after a 12 hour day of work where I wasn’t able to get out of the office to go for a walk at lunch like I normally do.  It was spectacularly ugly, so I didn’t take the picture.  Just know, that my hairy legs and swollen ankles are a thing now.  A real thing.

Stress itching! Check.  Heart burn! Check.  Weight gain in mostly my ass!  Check. Baby kicking like crazy and then one day stopping so completely that I was sure once again this pregnancy was doomed! CHECK. (I tried to take a video of him kicking today but he would not cooperate.  He does however seem to respond to Ashlee Simpson and ABBA.  So, there’s that embarrassing fact to mock him with later in life when he’s only listening to whatever version of angst rock there is in the 2020s and calls my love for cheesy pop music lame.)

I got something checked off my life list this weekend, but I’m struggling to find a way to actually care about that life list anymore, so I guess I’ll document it here - Life List #58 I took a cooking class (pasta making to be exact) and realized what I really need is a knife skills class and a new set of knives and to take down my life list and just work on doing things that make me happy.  This is a product of reading The Happiness Project right now.  Some of what she says is really resonating with me, I don’t think being beholden to a set of items on a list that sounded fun or interesting or, let’s be honest, smart, when I wrote them is making me happy.  What makes me happy is yet to be determined but the list feels like a weight around my (albeit very slight) spontaneous side, sort of like I’m required to do these things and if I don’t do them I’ll fail at life.  When in reality, I’ll only fail at life if I don’t be me.  And being me is hard enough without being hard on me for not being the me I think I should be. Does that make sense?

Anyway, the class was held in downtown LA at the LA Brewery artist lofts and it made me realize, this me, the me I’m stuck with, will never live in an artist loft in downtown LA, but that is ok. Because while I think lofts are awesome in theory, they are in downtown where you regularly find human feces right outside your doorstep, which coincidentally is #7 on my Don’t Do List (don’t live somewhere where you regularly find human feces outside your doorstep).

And with that!  Here is the bump. Voila!

I’ve been working so late I haven’t been watching many baseball games.  Last year at around this time I was getting home around 7, so I could turn on a West Coast game and let it calm my anxiety.   This year at around 7pm every night I’m struggling to get a cut finished so I can get out the door by 9.  New year, new show, new anxieties.

So on Friday, I looked at the schedule and realized the Yankees were in town, and since I love the Yankees, I made it my mission to get tickets for Saturday or Sunday.  Since Sabathia was pitching yesterday, that was the game I really wanted to see, and a few hours later, tickets were purchased and plans were made.  After I working on Saturday, we hit the road to Angels Stadium.

I am a firm believer that once you sit field level, you never really want to go back.

We got there early enough to see the Yankees in batting practice.

And to have a random celebrity sighting.  Why was Snoop there?  No clue but it makes me really love living in LA.  You just never know when a rapper will just show up on the field.

I liked the stadium, and the rally monkey is kind of hilarious if a little annoying.  I would definitely go back to another game.  The Yankees are back in September….

Disaster.

I was making this to take to Seth’s director friend’s house.  And I wanted it to be good, different and accessible.  It was a total flop.  We ended up bringing Veuve instead.  I have such a problem with desserts, and I think our oven isn’t calibrated correctly.

I would post the recipe, but I feel like there’s no reason, since it didn’t turn out.  I have to ask my mom what I did wrong.

I forget that my life is kind of crazy, sometimes.  Red eye flight to Delaware Friday night, shoot all night Saturday after briefly attending a fundraiser for a state representative I’d never heard of, shoot half day Sunday, take a $350 taxi ride back to Baltimore to catch a flight back to Los Angeles so I could get to work on Monday, where I spent all day shooting.

I didn’t have a lot of time to explore Delaware, but from what I saw, people are really into their booze there.  And they have no sales tax.

I have this feeling I’ll be spending more time there soon.  I hope my liver can handle it.

Astute readers will have noticed the “Life List” tab that I snuck into the tab bar above.  I didn’t write about writing it, because it’s still very much a work in progress.  Also, I feel slightly like I did in junior high when the cool girls in the grade above me started some lame trend, the details of which seemed so important at the time but are now completely escaping me, and me and my friends (I use that plural loosely, I think at the time my only friend was Callie) attempted to imitate said trend and we were publicly shamed in the cafeteria during lunch by the mean girls.  I was mortified at the time.  Now, I’m clearly emotionally scarred because I am embarrassed to make a “Life List” -  something that is not trademarked, but that some girls in the grade ahead of my in blogging life have kind of “branded” as their “thing.”  But whatever, I’ve been writing “Life Lists” since I was an awkward teenager in Camp Verde, Arizona trying to convince my parents to buy me a horse.  Which reminds me, I need to add “own a horse” to my list.Without further ado, at #31 on my Life List is to try 100 recipes I’ve never made.  This weekend I did two!  Both from the cookbook my mom put together for my sister and I.  Below is the recipe for the Peach Cobbler.  The other will follow later this week.

Peach Cobbler

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
•  4 cups sliced fresh peaches (this is about 3 large peaches, I think you should use 4 large peaches.)
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons shortening
• 1/2 cup milk

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Blend 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch in medium saucepan.  Stir in the peaches, cinnamon and lemon juice.  (Note:  when I did this I was totally nervous that there wouldn’t be enough liquid.  Somehow, there is.  It’s really amazing.  Fear not!) Cook, stirring constantly until mixture thickens and boils.  Boil and stir 1 minute.  Pour into ungreased 2 quart casserole.  Keep fruit mixture hot in oven while preparing biscuit topping.Biscuit toppingMeasure flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, baking powder and salt into bowl.  Add shortening and milk.  (I think I messed up my shortening measurements because something was off with the biscuits, they didn’t taste like my mom’s.)  Cut through shortening 6 times, mix until dough forms a ball. Drop dough by 6 spoonfuls onto hot fruit.  Bake 25-30 minutes or until biscuit topping is golden brown.  Serve warm, and if desired, with ice cream.  Six servings.

I think the next time I make this, I’ll use more peaches, my peach to biscuit ratio was off.  Also, I think I’ll leave it in the oven a little longer, it just tasted slightly different than my mom’s.  I know it wasn’t perfect because 3 days later, we still have leftovers.  Cobbler never lasted that long in my mom’s fridge.