I thought I'd go ahead and post my job history here. Why? Because I'm bored, lol. It's as good a reason as any.
Catherine Sherman, July 1998
prep work for catering dinner for performing artists at Bliss Fest
Cross Village General Store, summer of 1999
deli help, ice cream, sorting returnables, end of night clean-up
Crow's Nest, summer of 1999
babysitting for owners
Petoskey News-Review, summer of 2000
stuffing ad fliers into the newspapers
Kelley Landscaping, one day, summer of 2000
planting trees
Dam Site Inn, Aprils through Octobers, 2000-2005
line cook, ended up working every position available
JC Penney's, winter 2000-2001
sales associate
Concord Academy Petoskey, September 2001-June 2002
paraprofessional, classrooms for grades 1, 2, 3, 4, and special-ed
City Park Grill, March 2006-August 2009
line cook, prep cook, dishwasher
Ill-Lusions, March 2009-now
sales queen
No, I didn't mess up on any dates, there were in fact a few times where I worked a full time job and a part time job, and a few times where I worked two full time jobs.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
My Little Family
So there's family, there's family, and then there's family. A little clarification of that seemingly repetitive sentence is necessary, I suppose. I think that there are multiple definitions of the word family. There's the family under your roof, the family you're born into, and the family you help create - your friends that are closer than friends, your in-laws (or pseudo-in-laws, as I refer to Jeremy's family), etc.
For example, the family that I was born into includes my mom and dad, my two birth siblings, my aunt and uncle, my three deceased grandparents and my grandpa, my cousins, etc. The family I helped create includes my two "adopted" brothers, my close friends, including Aimee, Bill, Betina and Mat, Jamie-girl, and her two kids, Lola and Devon. Then, there's the family under my roof - Jeremy, me, and our two boys, which is what I'm writing about tonight.
As I mentioned before, Jeremy and I met at City Park Grill, when I hired in there. I can even tell you the exact date I was introduced to him, which was also my first day of work there: March 3, 2006. He saw me before we met, when I showed up for my second interview (I had to interview once with the then-sous chef, Brian, and had a second interview with the executive chef, Chef John Norman, the following day.), all dressed up in a pink and black plaid kilt, hose and heels, and a black satin button-down short-sleeved shirt, with my hair in an updo. I was hired that day and started work the next.
I remember when Jeremy came up to introduce himself, I was wearing an oversized loaner-coat from the office, and cleaning the fat off a corned beef brisket, preparatory to slicing it. He had on the standard black uniform, a red bandanna instead of the baseball caps everyone else was wearing, black combat boots, and two large hoop earrings. He looked like a pirate. I thought he was pretty cute. He introduced himself to me as "Jeremy, but everyone calls me Captain." I introduced myself, and at that moment, Chef walked by and said, "Captain, behave yourself."
We ended up getting to be pretty good friends over the next few months. We'd text or talk on MSN or over the phone, and we hung out outside of work a few times. I figured out finally that I was in love with him on May 21, 2006. We'd gone to see Kittie play at Streeters, down in Traverse City - the deal was that if I drove and paid for gas, he'd pay for my ticket. We went down, had dinner at McDonald's, saw the show (Know Lyfe and the Autumn Offering were the opening acts), and made it back to Petoskey for last call at Papa Lou's. Our sous chef was there, drunk and making a total ass of himself. We ended up driving him home, then went back to Jeremy's and sat outside on my car talking for a couple hours, before I left and went home.
I moved into Petoskey at the beginning of June, and got an apartment directly under his. We hung out constantly, along with his friends - my new friends - from the house behind our building, Lopp, Corey, Mat, and Lopp's friend Betina. (Mat and Betina later became a couple.)
Jeremy and I ended up becoming a couple on my 24'th birthday, June 11, 2006. (That's a story worthy of its own entry.) He moved in with me a few weeks later. We've been together ever since. That summer was quite literally one of the best of my life. I was making good money, I was in love, I was tan and thin and felt pretty for the first time ever, and most importantly, I was happy. Even though we worked opposite shifts, we still spent a lot of time together.
The day after Jeremy's 34'th birthday, I took a test and found out I was pregnant. The date was September 5'th. I was stunned. I'd had at least one miscarriage before, according to my doctor, and I honestly thought I was never going to have kids. I took seven more tests, just to make sure.
The pregnancy seemed to take forever. I read way too much about pregnancy and all the things that could possibly go wrong online. I went to the ER once, mistaking implantation cramps for the beginnings of a miscarriage. I went in a second time at 30 weeks, mistaking Braxton-Hicks contractions for the real thing.
When Matthew came, he took his sweet time in arriving - 22 hours of labor. But finally, he came, and I felt my world shift when Jeremy placed him in my arms for the first time. Nothing would ever be the same again.
I was an absolute wreck of a new mother. I had panic dreams - a bee flew in the window and stung Matthew's fontanel and pierced his brain and killed him, DHS showed up and confiscated him because I forgot to take the trash to the curb, he somehow had worms under his skin and the pediatrician told me it was because I was a bad mother, he headbutted me on the nose and killed me and Jeremy came home to find Dead Megan and Matthew on my lap covered in my blood. Dreams that seem absolutely ridiculous now, but woke me up in tears.
When I read that SIDS was more common in males than in females, that the prime age was 3-6 months old, and that it usually struck around 5:00 am, I began waking up at 3:59 am and staying awake till 6:59 am, watching him breathe. I would place two fingers on his belly every night while I waited to fall asleep, so I could monitor his breathing. I took him to the ER for mild constipation. Once, he sat up in his car seat and bumped his head on the handle - not enough to even make him cry. I wouldn't let him take a nap the rest of the day and felt his forehead (looking for a lump) so often that I literally gave him a lump.
Despite my paranoia and obsessive over-ministrations, he started growing up, and did so rapidly and healthily.
We moved from my apartment to a house a few blocks away shortly after Thanksgiving, 2006. Christmas was rapidly approaching, and I wanted to host my family's Christmas dinner at our new house, kind of a gift to my mom so that she wouldn't have to cook that year. I made up a menu, started buying things in advance, trying to keep from worrying that my period was late.
It hit 10 days late, and I finally panicked and decided to buy a test. I thought maybe it would be a funny gift for Jeremy - "Merry Christmas, honey, here's a negative pregnancy test." I couldn't be pregnant again. Matthew was only 8 months old, I was still breastfeeding, and besides, we'd used birth control.
I drove all over Petoskey, looking for a place that would still be open at 2:00 am on Christmas morning. WalMart and Glen's were closed. But Walgreen's was open. I bought one of the expensive, ClearBlue Digital tests, went home, and took it. I made Jeremy go in and read it once the timer went off. He was the one that told me I was pregnant. I was in shock.
The second pregnancy went by much faster than did the first one. I was working full time and had a toddler. I had to do physical therapy for three months - between a couple of jobs I'd had involving repeated heavy lifting, and the two pregnancies within three years, I'd developed a bulging disc in my lower back. They were able to correct it with the PT, thankfully, but I remained on Tylenol 3 for the duration of the pregnancy.
Jonah was born at 8 pm on August 22, 2008 (his labor story will be posted on his birthday). We were allowed to leave the hospital earlier than is standard for C-section patients, and we brought him home to our little house.
And here we still are. Matthew is newly 3 years old, and Jonah is 2 years and 8 months. The boys are similar in looks, but vastly different in personality. Matthew is very independent and a bit of a loner. He plays well with his brother when he feels like it, but he prefers to be left alone to do his own thing, similar to his dad as a child. Jonah is a cuddler and a people-pleaser, very outgoing. When I first saw the movie "Up," and Dug the dog said his famous line, "I have just met you and I love you," I immediately thought of Jonah. He will reach out his arms to perfect strangers, and nothing makes him happier than when we are at a family get-together and he's being handed from aunt to uncle to cousin to grandparent. He has smiles and hugs for everyone. Matthew, in the same situation, will be running around at full speed, investigating, exploring, maybe seeking out one or two people, and leading them around, naming off all the things he's found that he has words for. He enjoys showing off, as does Jonah. Both the boys are extremely stubborn - a gift from both their father and from me - but Matthew is quicker to cede his position. Jonah's a bit of a bulldozer. At one point, I didn't want Jonah climbing up on the couch unless he was seated in someone's lap, to prevent falls. Baby brother Diddy sat there, repeatedly rebuffing Jonah's attempts to climb onto the couch, and counted 46 attempts before Jonah gave up.
The boys both look far more like their father than like me, but I can see bits of myself in both of them. Matthew has reddish brown hair like I do, my hazel eyes, and the shape of our smiles are identical. Jonah has absurdly chubby cheeks that beg to be kissed, which he gets from my family, and his ears are shaped like mine as well. Matthew has the Gatica nose and Gatica feet - large, square, with very short toes. Jonah's feet are chubby, with proportionate toes like mine. Both boys have small, tan "angel-kiss" birthmarks. Matthew's is on the top of his head, and Jonah's is on his calf, in the same location as Jeremy's. Jonah also seems to have Irish eyebrows, which definitely came from my family.
Everyone agrees that Jonah looks like Jeremy. He has dark brown, nearly black hair (although it throws off red gleams in the sunlight), dark almond shaped eyes, and a complexion somewhere between mine and Jeremy's in color. (Matthew does too. Both the boys go back and forth between whose skin is darker, almost as though they're taking turns.)
Matthew, well, it's funny. When he was born, you could lay pictures of him next to pictures of Jeremy as an infant and not be able to tell a difference between the two. His face has changed drastically since he was born, and now, he looks like a blend of the two of us, although Jeremy's family all swears that he's a mini-Jeremy, and my family swears he's identical to me at that age.
Either way, everyone agrees we have beautiful children. Not to sound prejudiced (lol), but I agree. When I was pregnant with the boys, I tried to picture what they would look like when they were born. With Matthew, the best I could come up with was a mental image of myself as a baby, but with dark eyes and hair. With Jonah, I expected a duplicate of Matthew, more or less. I was surprised both times.
As for Jeremy and I, we will be celebrating our fourth anniversary as a couple in about six weeks. And no, we are not married. No, we will not be getting married. No, we have no plans of ever getting married. Let me explain.
First off, I have nothing against the concept of marriage in general. If you want to get married, fine, go for it. I am a strong supporter of legalizing gay marriage, too. I believe if you want to get married, you should be able to, male to male, male to female, female to female, hell, marry an inanimate object if you like. I don't think that gay marriage is a threat to "family" at all - who the hell says a family needs to have two different-gendered parents? I don't believe that your external plumbing affects your ability to parent. Anyway...
Jeremy and I, personally, don't believe that marriage is a necessity. First off, he comes from a broken home. My parents were separated for a year. We've both witnessed the failure of several marriages. And, this is not the 19'th century or even the beginning of the 20'th. The stigma attached to out-of-wedlock children and unwed mothers has more or less faded. Even if it hadn't, I am a strong enough person to not let it bother me if someone thinks I'm a whore for not marrying Jeremy. Why should I let someone's prejudice affect my self-worth?
Also, it's not like it's necessary to keep us together. We're going to be together for as long as we're together, regardless of what a piece of paper says. The legal status of our relationship has no bearing whatsoever on its day-to-day functionality. We work well together, just the way things stand now. Why go and change anything?
For example, the family that I was born into includes my mom and dad, my two birth siblings, my aunt and uncle, my three deceased grandparents and my grandpa, my cousins, etc. The family I helped create includes my two "adopted" brothers, my close friends, including Aimee, Bill, Betina and Mat, Jamie-girl, and her two kids, Lola and Devon. Then, there's the family under my roof - Jeremy, me, and our two boys, which is what I'm writing about tonight.
As I mentioned before, Jeremy and I met at City Park Grill, when I hired in there. I can even tell you the exact date I was introduced to him, which was also my first day of work there: March 3, 2006. He saw me before we met, when I showed up for my second interview (I had to interview once with the then-sous chef, Brian, and had a second interview with the executive chef, Chef John Norman, the following day.), all dressed up in a pink and black plaid kilt, hose and heels, and a black satin button-down short-sleeved shirt, with my hair in an updo. I was hired that day and started work the next.
I remember when Jeremy came up to introduce himself, I was wearing an oversized loaner-coat from the office, and cleaning the fat off a corned beef brisket, preparatory to slicing it. He had on the standard black uniform, a red bandanna instead of the baseball caps everyone else was wearing, black combat boots, and two large hoop earrings. He looked like a pirate. I thought he was pretty cute. He introduced himself to me as "Jeremy, but everyone calls me Captain." I introduced myself, and at that moment, Chef walked by and said, "Captain, behave yourself."
We ended up getting to be pretty good friends over the next few months. We'd text or talk on MSN or over the phone, and we hung out outside of work a few times. I figured out finally that I was in love with him on May 21, 2006. We'd gone to see Kittie play at Streeters, down in Traverse City - the deal was that if I drove and paid for gas, he'd pay for my ticket. We went down, had dinner at McDonald's, saw the show (Know Lyfe and the Autumn Offering were the opening acts), and made it back to Petoskey for last call at Papa Lou's. Our sous chef was there, drunk and making a total ass of himself. We ended up driving him home, then went back to Jeremy's and sat outside on my car talking for a couple hours, before I left and went home.
I moved into Petoskey at the beginning of June, and got an apartment directly under his. We hung out constantly, along with his friends - my new friends - from the house behind our building, Lopp, Corey, Mat, and Lopp's friend Betina. (Mat and Betina later became a couple.)
Jeremy and I ended up becoming a couple on my 24'th birthday, June 11, 2006. (That's a story worthy of its own entry.) He moved in with me a few weeks later. We've been together ever since. That summer was quite literally one of the best of my life. I was making good money, I was in love, I was tan and thin and felt pretty for the first time ever, and most importantly, I was happy. Even though we worked opposite shifts, we still spent a lot of time together.
The day after Jeremy's 34'th birthday, I took a test and found out I was pregnant. The date was September 5'th. I was stunned. I'd had at least one miscarriage before, according to my doctor, and I honestly thought I was never going to have kids. I took seven more tests, just to make sure.
The pregnancy seemed to take forever. I read way too much about pregnancy and all the things that could possibly go wrong online. I went to the ER once, mistaking implantation cramps for the beginnings of a miscarriage. I went in a second time at 30 weeks, mistaking Braxton-Hicks contractions for the real thing.
When Matthew came, he took his sweet time in arriving - 22 hours of labor. But finally, he came, and I felt my world shift when Jeremy placed him in my arms for the first time. Nothing would ever be the same again.
I was an absolute wreck of a new mother. I had panic dreams - a bee flew in the window and stung Matthew's fontanel and pierced his brain and killed him, DHS showed up and confiscated him because I forgot to take the trash to the curb, he somehow had worms under his skin and the pediatrician told me it was because I was a bad mother, he headbutted me on the nose and killed me and Jeremy came home to find Dead Megan and Matthew on my lap covered in my blood. Dreams that seem absolutely ridiculous now, but woke me up in tears.
When I read that SIDS was more common in males than in females, that the prime age was 3-6 months old, and that it usually struck around 5:00 am, I began waking up at 3:59 am and staying awake till 6:59 am, watching him breathe. I would place two fingers on his belly every night while I waited to fall asleep, so I could monitor his breathing. I took him to the ER for mild constipation. Once, he sat up in his car seat and bumped his head on the handle - not enough to even make him cry. I wouldn't let him take a nap the rest of the day and felt his forehead (looking for a lump) so often that I literally gave him a lump.
Despite my paranoia and obsessive over-ministrations, he started growing up, and did so rapidly and healthily.
We moved from my apartment to a house a few blocks away shortly after Thanksgiving, 2006. Christmas was rapidly approaching, and I wanted to host my family's Christmas dinner at our new house, kind of a gift to my mom so that she wouldn't have to cook that year. I made up a menu, started buying things in advance, trying to keep from worrying that my period was late.
It hit 10 days late, and I finally panicked and decided to buy a test. I thought maybe it would be a funny gift for Jeremy - "Merry Christmas, honey, here's a negative pregnancy test." I couldn't be pregnant again. Matthew was only 8 months old, I was still breastfeeding, and besides, we'd used birth control.
I drove all over Petoskey, looking for a place that would still be open at 2:00 am on Christmas morning. WalMart and Glen's were closed. But Walgreen's was open. I bought one of the expensive, ClearBlue Digital tests, went home, and took it. I made Jeremy go in and read it once the timer went off. He was the one that told me I was pregnant. I was in shock.
The second pregnancy went by much faster than did the first one. I was working full time and had a toddler. I had to do physical therapy for three months - between a couple of jobs I'd had involving repeated heavy lifting, and the two pregnancies within three years, I'd developed a bulging disc in my lower back. They were able to correct it with the PT, thankfully, but I remained on Tylenol 3 for the duration of the pregnancy.
Jonah was born at 8 pm on August 22, 2008 (his labor story will be posted on his birthday). We were allowed to leave the hospital earlier than is standard for C-section patients, and we brought him home to our little house.
And here we still are. Matthew is newly 3 years old, and Jonah is 2 years and 8 months. The boys are similar in looks, but vastly different in personality. Matthew is very independent and a bit of a loner. He plays well with his brother when he feels like it, but he prefers to be left alone to do his own thing, similar to his dad as a child. Jonah is a cuddler and a people-pleaser, very outgoing. When I first saw the movie "Up," and Dug the dog said his famous line, "I have just met you and I love you," I immediately thought of Jonah. He will reach out his arms to perfect strangers, and nothing makes him happier than when we are at a family get-together and he's being handed from aunt to uncle to cousin to grandparent. He has smiles and hugs for everyone. Matthew, in the same situation, will be running around at full speed, investigating, exploring, maybe seeking out one or two people, and leading them around, naming off all the things he's found that he has words for. He enjoys showing off, as does Jonah. Both the boys are extremely stubborn - a gift from both their father and from me - but Matthew is quicker to cede his position. Jonah's a bit of a bulldozer. At one point, I didn't want Jonah climbing up on the couch unless he was seated in someone's lap, to prevent falls. Baby brother Diddy sat there, repeatedly rebuffing Jonah's attempts to climb onto the couch, and counted 46 attempts before Jonah gave up.
The boys both look far more like their father than like me, but I can see bits of myself in both of them. Matthew has reddish brown hair like I do, my hazel eyes, and the shape of our smiles are identical. Jonah has absurdly chubby cheeks that beg to be kissed, which he gets from my family, and his ears are shaped like mine as well. Matthew has the Gatica nose and Gatica feet - large, square, with very short toes. Jonah's feet are chubby, with proportionate toes like mine. Both boys have small, tan "angel-kiss" birthmarks. Matthew's is on the top of his head, and Jonah's is on his calf, in the same location as Jeremy's. Jonah also seems to have Irish eyebrows, which definitely came from my family.
Everyone agrees that Jonah looks like Jeremy. He has dark brown, nearly black hair (although it throws off red gleams in the sunlight), dark almond shaped eyes, and a complexion somewhere between mine and Jeremy's in color. (Matthew does too. Both the boys go back and forth between whose skin is darker, almost as though they're taking turns.)
Matthew, well, it's funny. When he was born, you could lay pictures of him next to pictures of Jeremy as an infant and not be able to tell a difference between the two. His face has changed drastically since he was born, and now, he looks like a blend of the two of us, although Jeremy's family all swears that he's a mini-Jeremy, and my family swears he's identical to me at that age.
Either way, everyone agrees we have beautiful children. Not to sound prejudiced (lol), but I agree. When I was pregnant with the boys, I tried to picture what they would look like when they were born. With Matthew, the best I could come up with was a mental image of myself as a baby, but with dark eyes and hair. With Jonah, I expected a duplicate of Matthew, more or less. I was surprised both times.
As for Jeremy and I, we will be celebrating our fourth anniversary as a couple in about six weeks. And no, we are not married. No, we will not be getting married. No, we have no plans of ever getting married. Let me explain.
First off, I have nothing against the concept of marriage in general. If you want to get married, fine, go for it. I am a strong supporter of legalizing gay marriage, too. I believe if you want to get married, you should be able to, male to male, male to female, female to female, hell, marry an inanimate object if you like. I don't think that gay marriage is a threat to "family" at all - who the hell says a family needs to have two different-gendered parents? I don't believe that your external plumbing affects your ability to parent. Anyway...
Jeremy and I, personally, don't believe that marriage is a necessity. First off, he comes from a broken home. My parents were separated for a year. We've both witnessed the failure of several marriages. And, this is not the 19'th century or even the beginning of the 20'th. The stigma attached to out-of-wedlock children and unwed mothers has more or less faded. Even if it hadn't, I am a strong enough person to not let it bother me if someone thinks I'm a whore for not marrying Jeremy. Why should I let someone's prejudice affect my self-worth?
Also, it's not like it's necessary to keep us together. We're going to be together for as long as we're together, regardless of what a piece of paper says. The legal status of our relationship has no bearing whatsoever on its day-to-day functionality. We work well together, just the way things stand now. Why go and change anything?
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Introduction, Part 2
***Okay, so I'm really not that good at writing introduction-type entries, so bear with me if this is stilted and wanders. Thanks.***
Hi, I'm Megan. I'm assuming you've gathered that much, at least, from the blog title and from some of my prior entries.
Let's start with the physical stuff and get that out of the way. I'm 5'0", with a thick frame, and I weigh between 125-130 lbs, depending on the time of day and whose scales I'm using. I have hazel eyes that tend toward honey-brown most days, a crooked nose, and pale skin that tans up dark and easily in the summer, with a few dark-brown freckles scattered across my arms, shoulders, and cheekbones. I have high cheekbones, tiny ears, short thick fingers, legs, and toes, and I wear a size 5 1/2 shoe. My hair is naturally dark brown with a lot of red in it, but the actual color varies frequently. At the moment, it's buzzed off to 3/4" long and dyed black-blue. I have thick Irish eyebrows that I keep thinned out as much as possible, dimples by my mouth, one on my chin, and one oddball one on my right cheekbone, just under my eye. My feet are flat, and my toenails are usually painted some shade of purple. I have broad shoulders and what my boyfriend Jeremy describes as an angular face. There's a dark purple scar next to my left tearduct, another one going across the bridge of my nose, one under my lower lip, and a razor-thin one that runs through my right eyebrow, only visible in the way that it affects the shape of said eyebrow. I have three tattoos, all on my back, seven piercings in each ear, one in my navel, and one in my right nostril.
More facts: I'm twenty-seven years old, twenty-eight on June 11. I'm a Gemini. I was born by c-section at 10:58 pm, in 1982. My boyfriend and I will have been together for four years on my birthday. We have two young sons, Matthew Elliott, who just turned three on Monday, and Jonah Lee, who will be two in August.
I'm blunt and brutally honest a lot of the time, but I can be tactful when the situation warrants.
I'm the oldest of three birth siblings and two "adopted" siblings. Jeni is the my only sister. Travis is my birth brother. Scotty and Andrew are my two "adopted" brothers. My parents will be celebrating their 31'st anniversary in June. My mom is the special education teacher at Concord Academy in Petoskey, and my dad is an artist.
I've worked several different jobs, but spent the majority of my working life in kitchens. At the moment though, I work part-time at Ill-Lusions in Petoskey. It's a little hole-in-the-wall shop that sells trick card decks, novelties, magic tricks and supplies, Lucky 13 tees and shoes, Halloween costumes, bachelorette party supplies, adult greeting cards, King Kerosin and Busted Knuckle tees, Rockett tees, and band tees. The owner is one of my good friends, and working for him has been one of the best jobs of my life.
Before Ill-Lusions, I worked at City Park Grill for three and a half years, which is where I met Jeremy. It was educational working there - I got to work under a real chef, John Norman, and I learned how to keep my temper in check from working with a certain d-bag who shall remain nameless here. However, if you've worked at City Park within the past seven or eight years, you know who I'm talking about. He works nights, always has to be right, and is extremely condescending. It's so good not to have to work with him anymore. *insert sigh of relief here
What else? I hate math and love reading. I'll read just about anything. My favorite authors include Dorothy Parker, John Steinbeck, JD Salinger, John Irving, Anthony Bourdain, Ann Rule, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, and J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm an extremely fast reader. I'm also a bit of a spelling and grammar freak. Jeremy will have me proofread sales letters for him and ask me to "PLEASE don't point out what's spelled wrong and where the missing commas are, just tell me if you like the content."
I dropped out of high school two weeks into my junior year. When I was twenty, I found out that the Michigan Works learning lab did high school completion courses instead of just offering classes to get a GED. So, I went back to school. That year was a busy one for me. I was working full time at the Dam Site Inn from April-October, working at Concord Academy as a paraprofessional (read: classroom aide) from September-June, and going to school at the learning lab. It paid off though. I graduated high school two weeks after my 21'st birthday.
I've been arrested twice, although neither charge will show up on my record. One was a misdemeanor, and the other was a traffic charge, for violating my learner's permit. I've never been to jail, though.
What I call my "day-to-day" friends, meaning the ones who are involved in my life on a more or less day-to-day basis, are for the most part older than I am (my friend Melissa VanNorman and her husband Travis are the exception. I'm not counting my sister's fiance in this - he's younger than me, but he's already family, and will be legally so in a few weeks). For some reason, I've always preferred to hang out with people older than me, and since I've met most of my friends through Jeremy, they tend to be closer in age to him.
I've also preferred to date older guys. Jeremy is no exception - he's ten years older than me. And here is where I take a break from talking about me to tell you about him.
Like I said, he's ten years older than me. He is the love of my life and father of my children. If you were to crack open my chest and look at my heart, you'd find his image engraved over a large portion of it. We've been together nearly four years, like I said before, which is the longest I've ever been in a relationship. He's 5'7", a little on the chubby side (which I love), heavily tattooed, and both intelligent and stubborn, enough so to keep me from getting bored. Almost all my prior relationships were casualties of boredom. He has a day job as the lunch cook at City Park Grill, but what he does, where his heart lies career-wise, is graphic web design. He's working like crazy to get that business off the ground, so he can retire from cooking and be a work-from-home dad. I fully support this. In order to avoid making myself sound angelic about my support, I do hereby admit to being jealous of his computer at times, and being frustrated about the amount of time he spends on it, on occasion, but underneath the jealousy lies my certainty that the business will take off, he will get to be a stay-home dad and full time graphic web designer, and that he'll get to retire from cooking and make enough money that we don't have to juggle bills anymore.
Yes, we do have to juggle bills in the winter. Petoskey is a tourist town for the most part, and food service is dependent upon customers, so right when bills for heat and electricity spike, business at the local restaurants falls off and hours get cut. However, we always get by, maybe ordering groceries from the Angel Food Network on occasion, and maybe making partial pays from time to time, but, we get through. We're both survivors.
Jeremy balances me out. My mom says that he keeps me grounded, which is true. I'm a worrier by nature, and I'm fairly high strung. Jeremy is laid back, very rarely worries, and gets me to be spontaneous on occasion, which is good for me, I suppose.
His hair is black, and he has dark brown eyes. He's half Mexican, on his dad's side, and is originally from Flint, but moved up here to Petoskey in 2001. On Devil's Night, to be precise. Both his ears are pierced, and he recently cut his hair for the first time since Matthew was born. He speaks in a very soft voice, and has a broad sense of humor like I do. He's been cooking for over 20 years, but has also worked numerous other jobs, including one in a bucket factory, one going cross-country with his grandpa selling stuff that his grandpa had made (Grandpa Dallas is a carpenter), and one working at the Capitol Theater in Flint, doing music promotions. Go ahead and think of a band that came out in the 1990's and was anywhere from semi-famous to very famous, and the odds are extremely high that Jeremy worked with them. That includes Pantera, Rage Against the Machine, Downset, and the Rugby Mothers, along with a bunch more I can't remember. So there's another mark in Jeremy's favor, he never runs out of stories to tell me, lol.
Back to me. What else?
I'm fascinated with Michigan lighthouses and ghost towns. I like doing stamped cross stitch but lack the patience for counted cross stitch. I like loom-knitting, but again, lack the patience for needle-knitting and crocheting. I love to cook and bake. I like doing punch needle embroidery too. I tried taking up crazy quilting at one point, but lost interest in it due to not having a sewing machine. I write poetry and short stories when inspiration hits. I'd rather text than talk on the phone. In fact, I have a bit of a phone phobia. I'm all right calling up my parents and Bill, but anyone else, even Jeremy, and my palms get sweaty and my heart starts racing. Same thing when anyone else calls me. I'm all right after a couple seconds, and can carry on a conversation quite well, but that first minute is very close to a mild panic attack for some reason.
I don't do drugs, and I only get drunk two or three times a year. I'm not a big fan of wine, unless it's sweet (I love sangria, especially my tropical variety, which I will post the recipe for at some point), and I can't stand beer. I also don't do well on clear liquor for some reason, so I almost always drink either Captain and Coke or shots of straight Captain with a chaser of some sort. My friend Joe introduced me to Jager shakers a couple months ago, and while I enjoyed the flavor, I did not enjoy the way I still tasted Jagermeister 24 hours later, so those will most likely be avoided.
My ethnic heritage is Irish, English, Scottish, and Cherokee. My favorite foods are cheese ravioli, cheese tortellini, loaded baked potato soup, bacon, french fries, fresh broccoli with Italian dressing, and sausage gravy and biscuits. Shellfish and fish give me hives. I like bacon and pineapple on my pizza, or if it's a specialty pizza, I love a good chicken alfredo pizza.
And, that's about all I can think of to tell you about me.
Hi, I'm Megan. I'm assuming you've gathered that much, at least, from the blog title and from some of my prior entries.
Let's start with the physical stuff and get that out of the way. I'm 5'0", with a thick frame, and I weigh between 125-130 lbs, depending on the time of day and whose scales I'm using. I have hazel eyes that tend toward honey-brown most days, a crooked nose, and pale skin that tans up dark and easily in the summer, with a few dark-brown freckles scattered across my arms, shoulders, and cheekbones. I have high cheekbones, tiny ears, short thick fingers, legs, and toes, and I wear a size 5 1/2 shoe. My hair is naturally dark brown with a lot of red in it, but the actual color varies frequently. At the moment, it's buzzed off to 3/4" long and dyed black-blue. I have thick Irish eyebrows that I keep thinned out as much as possible, dimples by my mouth, one on my chin, and one oddball one on my right cheekbone, just under my eye. My feet are flat, and my toenails are usually painted some shade of purple. I have broad shoulders and what my boyfriend Jeremy describes as an angular face. There's a dark purple scar next to my left tearduct, another one going across the bridge of my nose, one under my lower lip, and a razor-thin one that runs through my right eyebrow, only visible in the way that it affects the shape of said eyebrow. I have three tattoos, all on my back, seven piercings in each ear, one in my navel, and one in my right nostril.
More facts: I'm twenty-seven years old, twenty-eight on June 11. I'm a Gemini. I was born by c-section at 10:58 pm, in 1982. My boyfriend and I will have been together for four years on my birthday. We have two young sons, Matthew Elliott, who just turned three on Monday, and Jonah Lee, who will be two in August.
I'm blunt and brutally honest a lot of the time, but I can be tactful when the situation warrants.
I'm the oldest of three birth siblings and two "adopted" siblings. Jeni is the my only sister. Travis is my birth brother. Scotty and Andrew are my two "adopted" brothers. My parents will be celebrating their 31'st anniversary in June. My mom is the special education teacher at Concord Academy in Petoskey, and my dad is an artist.
I've worked several different jobs, but spent the majority of my working life in kitchens. At the moment though, I work part-time at Ill-Lusions in Petoskey. It's a little hole-in-the-wall shop that sells trick card decks, novelties, magic tricks and supplies, Lucky 13 tees and shoes, Halloween costumes, bachelorette party supplies, adult greeting cards, King Kerosin and Busted Knuckle tees, Rockett tees, and band tees. The owner is one of my good friends, and working for him has been one of the best jobs of my life.
Before Ill-Lusions, I worked at City Park Grill for three and a half years, which is where I met Jeremy. It was educational working there - I got to work under a real chef, John Norman, and I learned how to keep my temper in check from working with a certain d-bag who shall remain nameless here. However, if you've worked at City Park within the past seven or eight years, you know who I'm talking about. He works nights, always has to be right, and is extremely condescending. It's so good not to have to work with him anymore. *insert sigh of relief here
What else? I hate math and love reading. I'll read just about anything. My favorite authors include Dorothy Parker, John Steinbeck, JD Salinger, John Irving, Anthony Bourdain, Ann Rule, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, and J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm an extremely fast reader. I'm also a bit of a spelling and grammar freak. Jeremy will have me proofread sales letters for him and ask me to "PLEASE don't point out what's spelled wrong and where the missing commas are, just tell me if you like the content."
I dropped out of high school two weeks into my junior year. When I was twenty, I found out that the Michigan Works learning lab did high school completion courses instead of just offering classes to get a GED. So, I went back to school. That year was a busy one for me. I was working full time at the Dam Site Inn from April-October, working at Concord Academy as a paraprofessional (read: classroom aide) from September-June, and going to school at the learning lab. It paid off though. I graduated high school two weeks after my 21'st birthday.
I've been arrested twice, although neither charge will show up on my record. One was a misdemeanor, and the other was a traffic charge, for violating my learner's permit. I've never been to jail, though.
What I call my "day-to-day" friends, meaning the ones who are involved in my life on a more or less day-to-day basis, are for the most part older than I am (my friend Melissa VanNorman and her husband Travis are the exception. I'm not counting my sister's fiance in this - he's younger than me, but he's already family, and will be legally so in a few weeks). For some reason, I've always preferred to hang out with people older than me, and since I've met most of my friends through Jeremy, they tend to be closer in age to him.
I've also preferred to date older guys. Jeremy is no exception - he's ten years older than me. And here is where I take a break from talking about me to tell you about him.
Like I said, he's ten years older than me. He is the love of my life and father of my children. If you were to crack open my chest and look at my heart, you'd find his image engraved over a large portion of it. We've been together nearly four years, like I said before, which is the longest I've ever been in a relationship. He's 5'7", a little on the chubby side (which I love), heavily tattooed, and both intelligent and stubborn, enough so to keep me from getting bored. Almost all my prior relationships were casualties of boredom. He has a day job as the lunch cook at City Park Grill, but what he does, where his heart lies career-wise, is graphic web design. He's working like crazy to get that business off the ground, so he can retire from cooking and be a work-from-home dad. I fully support this. In order to avoid making myself sound angelic about my support, I do hereby admit to being jealous of his computer at times, and being frustrated about the amount of time he spends on it, on occasion, but underneath the jealousy lies my certainty that the business will take off, he will get to be a stay-home dad and full time graphic web designer, and that he'll get to retire from cooking and make enough money that we don't have to juggle bills anymore.
Yes, we do have to juggle bills in the winter. Petoskey is a tourist town for the most part, and food service is dependent upon customers, so right when bills for heat and electricity spike, business at the local restaurants falls off and hours get cut. However, we always get by, maybe ordering groceries from the Angel Food Network on occasion, and maybe making partial pays from time to time, but, we get through. We're both survivors.
Jeremy balances me out. My mom says that he keeps me grounded, which is true. I'm a worrier by nature, and I'm fairly high strung. Jeremy is laid back, very rarely worries, and gets me to be spontaneous on occasion, which is good for me, I suppose.
His hair is black, and he has dark brown eyes. He's half Mexican, on his dad's side, and is originally from Flint, but moved up here to Petoskey in 2001. On Devil's Night, to be precise. Both his ears are pierced, and he recently cut his hair for the first time since Matthew was born. He speaks in a very soft voice, and has a broad sense of humor like I do. He's been cooking for over 20 years, but has also worked numerous other jobs, including one in a bucket factory, one going cross-country with his grandpa selling stuff that his grandpa had made (Grandpa Dallas is a carpenter), and one working at the Capitol Theater in Flint, doing music promotions. Go ahead and think of a band that came out in the 1990's and was anywhere from semi-famous to very famous, and the odds are extremely high that Jeremy worked with them. That includes Pantera, Rage Against the Machine, Downset, and the Rugby Mothers, along with a bunch more I can't remember. So there's another mark in Jeremy's favor, he never runs out of stories to tell me, lol.
Back to me. What else?
I'm fascinated with Michigan lighthouses and ghost towns. I like doing stamped cross stitch but lack the patience for counted cross stitch. I like loom-knitting, but again, lack the patience for needle-knitting and crocheting. I love to cook and bake. I like doing punch needle embroidery too. I tried taking up crazy quilting at one point, but lost interest in it due to not having a sewing machine. I write poetry and short stories when inspiration hits. I'd rather text than talk on the phone. In fact, I have a bit of a phone phobia. I'm all right calling up my parents and Bill, but anyone else, even Jeremy, and my palms get sweaty and my heart starts racing. Same thing when anyone else calls me. I'm all right after a couple seconds, and can carry on a conversation quite well, but that first minute is very close to a mild panic attack for some reason.
I don't do drugs, and I only get drunk two or three times a year. I'm not a big fan of wine, unless it's sweet (I love sangria, especially my tropical variety, which I will post the recipe for at some point), and I can't stand beer. I also don't do well on clear liquor for some reason, so I almost always drink either Captain and Coke or shots of straight Captain with a chaser of some sort. My friend Joe introduced me to Jager shakers a couple months ago, and while I enjoyed the flavor, I did not enjoy the way I still tasted Jagermeister 24 hours later, so those will most likely be avoided.
My ethnic heritage is Irish, English, Scottish, and Cherokee. My favorite foods are cheese ravioli, cheese tortellini, loaded baked potato soup, bacon, french fries, fresh broccoli with Italian dressing, and sausage gravy and biscuits. Shellfish and fish give me hives. I like bacon and pineapple on my pizza, or if it's a specialty pizza, I love a good chicken alfredo pizza.
And, that's about all I can think of to tell you about me.
A Few Recipes
As promised before, here are the three recipes.
Wild Mushroom Soup:
(adapted from Mushroom Soup recipe, Les Halles Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain)
8 tbsp butter, divided
3 shallots, thinly sliced
12 oz wild mushrooms, cleaned of any dirt, plus a few nice ones for garnish
4 cups chicken stock (do not use bouillon cubes for this. Too salty. If you don't have the means to use homemade stock, use the boxed Tetra-Pak kind, not the canned kind)
1 sprig fresh parsley
2 oz (one shot) good Sherry (not the cooking Sherry - again, too salty. Will ruin your soup)
salt and pepper
In medium saucepan, melt 2 tbsp butter over medium heat. Add shallots and cook, stirring often, till soft and translucent.
Add 12 oz mushrooms and remaining butter. Let cook for 8 minutes, stirring, making sure onion DOES NOT brown. Stir in chicken stock and parsley and bring to a boil. Immediately reduce heat to low and simmer for one hour.
After an hour, remove parsley and discard. Remove soup from heat and let cool 10 minutes. Transfer to blender and blend at high speed till smooth. Do this in batches, and hold lid down on blender with all your weight, so that the pressure of the steam won't blow the lid off the blender and cause you to get a faceful of blazing hot mushroom goo. Once each batch is done, transfer it back to the pot.
Once all the soup has been blended and returned to the pot, season to taste with salt and pepper, place back on the stove, and bring back to a simmer. Add sherry, mix well, and serve. Add a few whole or sliced fresh mushrooms on top for garnish if desired.
This recipe works well with morels, oyster mushrooms, chanterelles, shiitakes, and even button mushrooms.
Easy Fudgy Brownies
1/3 cup real butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp vanilla
5 heaping teaspoons cocoa
Melt butter, add sugar, then egg. Add dry ingredients. Mix ingredients well together by hand. Some lumps are allowable - you don't want to overmix your brownies, as they'll become tough. Put in greased 9" round pan. Bake in 375°F oven for 20 minutes, or until done. Ice while still warm. Keep covered. This particular brownie recipe gets stale very fast.
Buttercream Frosting
2 sticks butter (real butter, not margarine, and not shortening)
3/4 box Domino's confectioner's sugar (the 16-oz box)
4 tbsp heavy cream to start (I buy a half-pint of cream to work with)
Cream together butter and sugar using the paddle attachment on my KitchenAid mixer. Add 4 tbsp of cream and mix until thoroughly combined. Switch to wire whisk and beat for five minutes to aerate frosting. Check consistency and add more cream if necessary, working with one tbsp at a time.
Wild Mushroom Soup:
(adapted from Mushroom Soup recipe, Les Halles Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain)
8 tbsp butter, divided
3 shallots, thinly sliced
12 oz wild mushrooms, cleaned of any dirt, plus a few nice ones for garnish
4 cups chicken stock (do not use bouillon cubes for this. Too salty. If you don't have the means to use homemade stock, use the boxed Tetra-Pak kind, not the canned kind)
1 sprig fresh parsley
2 oz (one shot) good Sherry (not the cooking Sherry - again, too salty. Will ruin your soup)
salt and pepper
In medium saucepan, melt 2 tbsp butter over medium heat. Add shallots and cook, stirring often, till soft and translucent.
Add 12 oz mushrooms and remaining butter. Let cook for 8 minutes, stirring, making sure onion DOES NOT brown. Stir in chicken stock and parsley and bring to a boil. Immediately reduce heat to low and simmer for one hour.
After an hour, remove parsley and discard. Remove soup from heat and let cool 10 minutes. Transfer to blender and blend at high speed till smooth. Do this in batches, and hold lid down on blender with all your weight, so that the pressure of the steam won't blow the lid off the blender and cause you to get a faceful of blazing hot mushroom goo. Once each batch is done, transfer it back to the pot.
Once all the soup has been blended and returned to the pot, season to taste with salt and pepper, place back on the stove, and bring back to a simmer. Add sherry, mix well, and serve. Add a few whole or sliced fresh mushrooms on top for garnish if desired.
This recipe works well with morels, oyster mushrooms, chanterelles, shiitakes, and even button mushrooms.
Easy Fudgy Brownies
1/3 cup real butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp vanilla
5 heaping teaspoons cocoa
Melt butter, add sugar, then egg. Add dry ingredients. Mix ingredients well together by hand. Some lumps are allowable - you don't want to overmix your brownies, as they'll become tough. Put in greased 9" round pan. Bake in 375°F oven for 20 minutes, or until done. Ice while still warm. Keep covered. This particular brownie recipe gets stale very fast.
Buttercream Frosting
2 sticks butter (real butter, not margarine, and not shortening)
3/4 box Domino's confectioner's sugar (the 16-oz box)
4 tbsp heavy cream to start (I buy a half-pint of cream to work with)
Cream together butter and sugar using the paddle attachment on my KitchenAid mixer. Add 4 tbsp of cream and mix until thoroughly combined. Switch to wire whisk and beat for five minutes to aerate frosting. Check consistency and add more cream if necessary, working with one tbsp at a time.
Another Day
So today will be a day of multiple posts. One regular, one recipe, and one of the ones I hand-wrote while our internet was shut off. Here's the first.
If you've never heard of TWLOHA before, I recommend checking it out. The acronym stands for "To Write Love On Her Arms." Today is TWLOHA Day. Before I go any farther, I have to say that this is not officially recognized by the TWLOHA organization. Someone on Facebook organized it to raise awareness, and it went viral. Official or not, I'm participating, just as I did in the last one. All you have to do to participate is write the word "love" on one of your arms, take a picture, make it your user pic on Facebook, and be ready to explain about the organization. Here's my arm today:
And here's my arm from last time:
I could explain what it's all about, but I wouldn't do nearly as good a job as the people who started the movement, so here's the link to it. Suffice to say that I, along with way too many of my friends, have had our own bouts with depression, addiction, and self-injury. This is a cause that I wholeheartedly support, and if you haven't clicked the link and read the text yet, please, do so. It could be your daughter, son, niece, nephew, or friend. Depression is becoming more and more common among young people, and despite the advances that have been made over the past few decades, it's still highly stigmatized.
/end PSA here.
Anyway, things have been more or less the same as usual around here. We celebrated Matthew's third birthday on Saturday with a small family get-together. The weather was nasty, of course - the only one of Matthew's days that have had nice weather was the day he was born (as far as I know - it looked nice outside). Ever since, it's either rained or snowed or both. Regardless, he still had a good day. Unfortunately, Jeremy's parents (known to my boys as Shamma, Pops, and Grandma Dee) weren't able to make it up, and neither was Little Al or Lisa. Shamma sent her gift for Matthew north with us after our Easter visit, though, and Pops and Dee will be coming up later and we'll re-celebrate then.
Thankfully, my mom and dad (aka Pawpaw and Meemaw), my sister Jeni, her fiance Andrew (Aunt Denny and Unca Cocoa) and my niece Jessica (Dessie), my brother Travis (Unca Hockey) and my brother Andrew (Unca Diddy) were all able to come. We kept it very low-key, just hung out, watched the kids play, talked with each other, had grilled hot dogs and my mom's potato salad for dinner, and did cake and presents immediately after.
A note about the cake. I had originally wanted to do a double layered chocolate cake with a picture of Donald Duck (one of Matthew's favorites, referred to as "Dah-Duck") on top. To this end, I modified my buttercream frosting recipe to make it easier to pipe, and Andrew's mom Mary was totally kick-ass and generously loaned me her unopened cake decorating kit and box of frosting tints. Things didn't quite work out though.
For starters, my cake layers were 9" rounds. I wouldn't have had much room to write "Happy Birthday Matthew" on there once I got Donald's head on. Then, Matthew was watching me mix the cakes. At his request, they were going to be chocowate. As he watched me measure out cocoa, he started demanding "Mo chocowate?" I added a little more. "Mo chocowate?" Okay, a little bit more. This kept up until finally, I looked at him and said, "Would you just like Mama to make you a big brownie for a cake?" His eyes lit up, and he said "Pwease? Chocowate? Mmm. I sick." (Which he was, he had a chest cold.) How could I resist? I scratched the recipe I was using and made two large 9" round brownies.
Now, my brownies are thick, fudgy, and super heavy. Buttercream is fluffy and slippery, due to the, you know, butter. This is where I decided to frost them separately and write happy birthday on one and do Donald on the other. This would also come in handy in case anyone had to leave before cake and present time - I could give them a piece to take with, while still leaving Donald intact for Matthew. (Good thinking on my part, as Trav had to leave before Matthew opened his gifts.)
The day of the party arrived. My brownies were cooled and I was ready to frost. I also woke up with a killer migraine left over from the day before and the back of my throat was scratchy (precursor to the bug I have now). Oh well. I'm a mom. Time to suck it up, fake like I'm feeling peachy, and decorate my boy's cake. Not gonna let the fact that I feel like crap spoil Matthew's big day.
Let it be said here that I am NOT an artist, with drawing, painting, etc. I can paint a picture with words, no problem. But when it comes to trying to recreate a picture on paper, canvas, whatever, I suck. Seriously. I can't draw a straight line with a ruler. Let it also be said that migraines tend to make my hands very unsteady.
Knowing my lack of drawing abilities, I'd asked Jeremy to print a few pictures of Donald for me. One was to be used for reference, and the other would be cut into pieces for use as tracing stencils. I think I could have pulled it off if my hands hadn't been so shaky. But on Saturday, it just wasn't happening. So, no Donald cake for Matthew. They both got covered with white buttercream, and I tinted some frosting to a very pretty blue shade and piped "Happy Birthday Matthew" onto one of them. He didn't seem to mind at all.
He got spoiled rotten with presents, too. Jeni, Jessie, and Andrew got him a giant package of Mega-Bloks, aka Duplo blocks, or whatever you want to call the oversized Legos. He loves them. Mom and Dad got him another package of Mega-Bloks and a really cook book of five different puzzles from the Pixar movie "Cars," which is one of his favorites. Matthew had asked "Unca Hockey" to give him "chocowate" for his birthday, and so Travis showed up with a 44-oz bag of plain M&M's. If you haven't seen a 44-oz package of M&M's before, it's freaking huge. Matthew's eyes lit up! Shamma got him this kick-ass Big Wheel tricycle. It's the Go, Diego, Go! themed one, with all sorts of noisemaking gadgets on the handlebars, a seat that adjusts to three different positions (so that it'll grow with him), and operational turn signals. We got him a toy bowling set (he'd played with a stuffed one at Pops and Dee's house and loved it, and he loves playing the bowling app on Jeremy's iPhone) and a Lightning McQueen Hot Wheels car. He's been playing with all his gifts more or less non-stop since Saturday evening. It was a good day.
His actual birthday was on Monday - he turned three at exactly 4:59 pm. His godmother, Jamie-girl, sent his gifts from her over that day. We didn't do anything real special - I let him run around naked all day, since that seems to be his favorite thing to do now, we let him pick out his own dinner (turkey and cheddar Lunchable, with plenty of M&M's for dessert), and he didn't get scolded. I let him play in the kitchen a little bit too, with plenty of supervision, of course. Jeremy had to work, and I went and babysat Lola and Devon so that Jamie-girl could go to her college course, like I do every Monday.
Jamie-girl got him some pretty cool stuff too - a couple outfits, some aerosol Mr. Bubble bathtub foam for drawing, a giant pad of paper and washable triangular-shaped crayons, a bottle of Mr. Bubble bath solution, a package of big boy undies (with the characters from "Cars" on them), a bath scrubbie, and two large bags of Corn Puffs (his favorite snack - they're these, well, corn puffs, flavored like buttered popcorn, but without hulls. Lisa buys them for her son Preston, and Matthew got hooked on them during one of our trips down. They're basically like the puffy Cheetos, minus the cheese).
Other than Saturday and Monday, it's been a low-key week. I'm finally starting to get over this bug - I've got a bit of my voice back, and I can actually breathe through one side of my nose, which is a vast improvement. I've still got a nasty cough and sore throat, and I pulled a muscle in my side coughing, but it could be worse. I'm hoping I feel a lot better tomorrow - the living room's covered in toys and I need to do laundry, but I haven't had the energy to do anything while I've been sick.
Jeremy's making me homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner tonight - mmm. It's definitely soup weather right now - little chilly out today.
I think Jonah's starting to come down with the bug too - he's been whinier than usual today, and he's slept a lot. Then again, he woke up at 2:30 am last night and wouldn't go back to sleep till 6:30 am - which meant I was up till 6:30 am, although thankfully Jeremy let me sleep till 3 pm to make up for it - so he could just be tired, too. We'll see over the next couple days, I guess.
I've been talking to Betina a lot over Facebook chat lately, which is awesome. I've missed her, and now that she's sober, engaged, and a mama-to-be, it makes me feel even closer to her than I did before she checked into rehab. I am so proud of that girl, and I am proud to call her my friend. Betina, if you're reading this, way to go, mama. I can't wait to see you, and I love you, girl. Anyway, we just got the invitation to her and Mat's wedding in the mail today, so I need to fill out that RSVP form and drop it in the mail, even though I've already verbally replied to it.
Something funny there - June 26'th must be THE day to get married. That's the date of Betina and Mat's wedding, the date of my sister and Andrew's wedding, and I just found out the other day that Jeremy's aunt Ellen is also getting married that day. Wow.
I want to say Happy Third Anniversary to Phil and Polly Morris, up in Canada. Congratulations, you two. I love seeing all the lovey-dovey back and forth between you both on Facebook. It really makes me happy to see two adults that much in love, and that open about expressing it.
I think that's all I've got for now. The next entry is going to be three recipes - a mushroom soup recipe I promised to Jen Hutchinson a while back, my brownie recipe, and the buttercream modification I used for Matthew's birthday.
Much love to you all,
Megan
If you've never heard of TWLOHA before, I recommend checking it out. The acronym stands for "To Write Love On Her Arms." Today is TWLOHA Day. Before I go any farther, I have to say that this is not officially recognized by the TWLOHA organization. Someone on Facebook organized it to raise awareness, and it went viral. Official or not, I'm participating, just as I did in the last one. All you have to do to participate is write the word "love" on one of your arms, take a picture, make it your user pic on Facebook, and be ready to explain about the organization. Here's my arm today:
And here's my arm from last time:
/end PSA here.
Anyway, things have been more or less the same as usual around here. We celebrated Matthew's third birthday on Saturday with a small family get-together. The weather was nasty, of course - the only one of Matthew's days that have had nice weather was the day he was born (as far as I know - it looked nice outside). Ever since, it's either rained or snowed or both. Regardless, he still had a good day. Unfortunately, Jeremy's parents (known to my boys as Shamma, Pops, and Grandma Dee) weren't able to make it up, and neither was Little Al or Lisa. Shamma sent her gift for Matthew north with us after our Easter visit, though, and Pops and Dee will be coming up later and we'll re-celebrate then.
Thankfully, my mom and dad (aka Pawpaw and Meemaw), my sister Jeni, her fiance Andrew (Aunt Denny and Unca Cocoa) and my niece Jessica (Dessie), my brother Travis (Unca Hockey) and my brother Andrew (Unca Diddy) were all able to come. We kept it very low-key, just hung out, watched the kids play, talked with each other, had grilled hot dogs and my mom's potato salad for dinner, and did cake and presents immediately after.
A note about the cake. I had originally wanted to do a double layered chocolate cake with a picture of Donald Duck (one of Matthew's favorites, referred to as "Dah-Duck") on top. To this end, I modified my buttercream frosting recipe to make it easier to pipe, and Andrew's mom Mary was totally kick-ass and generously loaned me her unopened cake decorating kit and box of frosting tints. Things didn't quite work out though.
For starters, my cake layers were 9" rounds. I wouldn't have had much room to write "Happy Birthday Matthew" on there once I got Donald's head on. Then, Matthew was watching me mix the cakes. At his request, they were going to be chocowate. As he watched me measure out cocoa, he started demanding "Mo chocowate?" I added a little more. "Mo chocowate?" Okay, a little bit more. This kept up until finally, I looked at him and said, "Would you just like Mama to make you a big brownie for a cake?" His eyes lit up, and he said "Pwease? Chocowate? Mmm. I sick." (Which he was, he had a chest cold.) How could I resist? I scratched the recipe I was using and made two large 9" round brownies.
Now, my brownies are thick, fudgy, and super heavy. Buttercream is fluffy and slippery, due to the, you know, butter. This is where I decided to frost them separately and write happy birthday on one and do Donald on the other. This would also come in handy in case anyone had to leave before cake and present time - I could give them a piece to take with, while still leaving Donald intact for Matthew. (Good thinking on my part, as Trav had to leave before Matthew opened his gifts.)
The day of the party arrived. My brownies were cooled and I was ready to frost. I also woke up with a killer migraine left over from the day before and the back of my throat was scratchy (precursor to the bug I have now). Oh well. I'm a mom. Time to suck it up, fake like I'm feeling peachy, and decorate my boy's cake. Not gonna let the fact that I feel like crap spoil Matthew's big day.
Let it be said here that I am NOT an artist, with drawing, painting, etc. I can paint a picture with words, no problem. But when it comes to trying to recreate a picture on paper, canvas, whatever, I suck. Seriously. I can't draw a straight line with a ruler. Let it also be said that migraines tend to make my hands very unsteady.
Knowing my lack of drawing abilities, I'd asked Jeremy to print a few pictures of Donald for me. One was to be used for reference, and the other would be cut into pieces for use as tracing stencils. I think I could have pulled it off if my hands hadn't been so shaky. But on Saturday, it just wasn't happening. So, no Donald cake for Matthew. They both got covered with white buttercream, and I tinted some frosting to a very pretty blue shade and piped "Happy Birthday Matthew" onto one of them. He didn't seem to mind at all.
He got spoiled rotten with presents, too. Jeni, Jessie, and Andrew got him a giant package of Mega-Bloks, aka Duplo blocks, or whatever you want to call the oversized Legos. He loves them. Mom and Dad got him another package of Mega-Bloks and a really cook book of five different puzzles from the Pixar movie "Cars," which is one of his favorites. Matthew had asked "Unca Hockey" to give him "chocowate" for his birthday, and so Travis showed up with a 44-oz bag of plain M&M's. If you haven't seen a 44-oz package of M&M's before, it's freaking huge. Matthew's eyes lit up! Shamma got him this kick-ass Big Wheel tricycle. It's the Go, Diego, Go! themed one, with all sorts of noisemaking gadgets on the handlebars, a seat that adjusts to three different positions (so that it'll grow with him), and operational turn signals. We got him a toy bowling set (he'd played with a stuffed one at Pops and Dee's house and loved it, and he loves playing the bowling app on Jeremy's iPhone) and a Lightning McQueen Hot Wheels car. He's been playing with all his gifts more or less non-stop since Saturday evening. It was a good day.
His actual birthday was on Monday - he turned three at exactly 4:59 pm. His godmother, Jamie-girl, sent his gifts from her over that day. We didn't do anything real special - I let him run around naked all day, since that seems to be his favorite thing to do now, we let him pick out his own dinner (turkey and cheddar Lunchable, with plenty of M&M's for dessert), and he didn't get scolded. I let him play in the kitchen a little bit too, with plenty of supervision, of course. Jeremy had to work, and I went and babysat Lola and Devon so that Jamie-girl could go to her college course, like I do every Monday.
Jamie-girl got him some pretty cool stuff too - a couple outfits, some aerosol Mr. Bubble bathtub foam for drawing, a giant pad of paper and washable triangular-shaped crayons, a bottle of Mr. Bubble bath solution, a package of big boy undies (with the characters from "Cars" on them), a bath scrubbie, and two large bags of Corn Puffs (his favorite snack - they're these, well, corn puffs, flavored like buttered popcorn, but without hulls. Lisa buys them for her son Preston, and Matthew got hooked on them during one of our trips down. They're basically like the puffy Cheetos, minus the cheese).
Other than Saturday and Monday, it's been a low-key week. I'm finally starting to get over this bug - I've got a bit of my voice back, and I can actually breathe through one side of my nose, which is a vast improvement. I've still got a nasty cough and sore throat, and I pulled a muscle in my side coughing, but it could be worse. I'm hoping I feel a lot better tomorrow - the living room's covered in toys and I need to do laundry, but I haven't had the energy to do anything while I've been sick.
Jeremy's making me homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner tonight - mmm. It's definitely soup weather right now - little chilly out today.
I think Jonah's starting to come down with the bug too - he's been whinier than usual today, and he's slept a lot. Then again, he woke up at 2:30 am last night and wouldn't go back to sleep till 6:30 am - which meant I was up till 6:30 am, although thankfully Jeremy let me sleep till 3 pm to make up for it - so he could just be tired, too. We'll see over the next couple days, I guess.
I've been talking to Betina a lot over Facebook chat lately, which is awesome. I've missed her, and now that she's sober, engaged, and a mama-to-be, it makes me feel even closer to her than I did before she checked into rehab. I am so proud of that girl, and I am proud to call her my friend. Betina, if you're reading this, way to go, mama. I can't wait to see you, and I love you, girl. Anyway, we just got the invitation to her and Mat's wedding in the mail today, so I need to fill out that RSVP form and drop it in the mail, even though I've already verbally replied to it.
Something funny there - June 26'th must be THE day to get married. That's the date of Betina and Mat's wedding, the date of my sister and Andrew's wedding, and I just found out the other day that Jeremy's aunt Ellen is also getting married that day. Wow.
I want to say Happy Third Anniversary to Phil and Polly Morris, up in Canada. Congratulations, you two. I love seeing all the lovey-dovey back and forth between you both on Facebook. It really makes me happy to see two adults that much in love, and that open about expressing it.
I think that's all I've got for now. The next entry is going to be three recipes - a mushroom soup recipe I promised to Jen Hutchinson a while back, my brownie recipe, and the buttercream modification I used for Matthew's birthday.
Much love to you all,
Megan
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Megan and Poetry
I've been writing for as long as I can remember. My dad actually saved one of the first poems I ever composed, not too long after I learned how to read (which was freakishly early, lol - he started teaching me how when I was two. I could read at a college level by kindergarten. No kidding. I leaned over and read the teacher's worksheet manual to her, because I'd been looking at it over her shoulder and was irritated that she wasn't reading the instructions verbatim. Yeah, I was a bossy little kid like that.). It went: "I like the wind./It is pretty./It sings songs that only I can hear."
My writing hit its productivity peak between the ages of 14-23. I have a leather-covered notebook, that was given to me as a graduation/birthday gift from my boss at a restaurant I worked at way back when, that's full. I also have numerous other notebooks with poems, fragments of poems, and rewrites of older poems scattered throughout the boxes in my basement. I've struggled with clinical depression for a long time, and there is a direct connection between my depression and my writing - my output grows with my sadness, and declines with happiness. Thus, I haven't really written a lot since Matthew was born, other than letters to him and blogs on my old Myspace journal, which I've more or less abandoned.
Two of my favorite forms were unstructured blank verse and sonnets. Go figure. Two polar opposites. If that isn't a Gemini thing I'm not sure what would be, heh. At one point, I sought to impose a little more structure on my deliberately unstructured blank verse and started writing small self-descriptive verses I called "shorties." Between the age of 22 and 23, I wrote several of them.
The poems I'm posting here tonight are a few of my older ones from that time period, both short and long. There are three in total. I thought they were incredible at the time. The space and maturity of five years has lessened their glow somewhat, but there's still something in them that I approve of, hence their appearance here. Enjoy.
these poems are all my original work and have been copyrighted to me.
Me
written April 2004
Clear this smoke from my eyes
and let me see myself
in a cracked and forlorn mirror
wander through this deserted carnival
lost in my life
in the possibilities spread out before me
knock over two bottles and win, win, win a new soul
a new spirit
when all I want is another chance.
Decisions
written August 29, 2004
Maybe when this fog retreats I'll view myself
and realize that I'm not so bad
maybe my vision will crystallize
and I'll discover just where I'm headed
but these crossroads are confusing
and my precious seconds tick away
as my broken windshield wipers
slap in futility at the misty fingers clutching for my car
I watch my headlights knifing through
the dank and clammy blackness of confusion ever shrouding
this night, this road, my life
too many turns, it's never-ending
and I've never felt this disconnected
never felt so out-of-place
I wonder where I'll be in fifty years
wonder if I'll make it home
and will I remember each hard-fought lesson that I've learned?
through all these years of struggle
will everyone forget me?
am I doomed to be remembered solely for my actions?
or will there be one soul who pauses for a moment
and takes the time to look back fondly
and think kindly of this crooked smile?
On Relationships
written May 26, 2004 (following being dumped)
How do we move so quickly
from obsession to cold shoulders?
Your notes still haunt me
whispering their bitter lies from the depths of your disinterest
and the tears still cause the ink to run
across the callous page.
My writing hit its productivity peak between the ages of 14-23. I have a leather-covered notebook, that was given to me as a graduation/birthday gift from my boss at a restaurant I worked at way back when, that's full. I also have numerous other notebooks with poems, fragments of poems, and rewrites of older poems scattered throughout the boxes in my basement. I've struggled with clinical depression for a long time, and there is a direct connection between my depression and my writing - my output grows with my sadness, and declines with happiness. Thus, I haven't really written a lot since Matthew was born, other than letters to him and blogs on my old Myspace journal, which I've more or less abandoned.
Two of my favorite forms were unstructured blank verse and sonnets. Go figure. Two polar opposites. If that isn't a Gemini thing I'm not sure what would be, heh. At one point, I sought to impose a little more structure on my deliberately unstructured blank verse and started writing small self-descriptive verses I called "shorties." Between the age of 22 and 23, I wrote several of them.
The poems I'm posting here tonight are a few of my older ones from that time period, both short and long. There are three in total. I thought they were incredible at the time. The space and maturity of five years has lessened their glow somewhat, but there's still something in them that I approve of, hence their appearance here. Enjoy.
these poems are all my original work and have been copyrighted to me.
Me
written April 2004
Clear this smoke from my eyes
and let me see myself
in a cracked and forlorn mirror
wander through this deserted carnival
lost in my life
in the possibilities spread out before me
knock over two bottles and win, win, win a new soul
a new spirit
when all I want is another chance.
Decisions
written August 29, 2004
Maybe when this fog retreats I'll view myself
and realize that I'm not so bad
maybe my vision will crystallize
and I'll discover just where I'm headed
but these crossroads are confusing
and my precious seconds tick away
as my broken windshield wipers
slap in futility at the misty fingers clutching for my car
I watch my headlights knifing through
the dank and clammy blackness of confusion ever shrouding
this night, this road, my life
too many turns, it's never-ending
and I've never felt this disconnected
never felt so out-of-place
I wonder where I'll be in fifty years
wonder if I'll make it home
and will I remember each hard-fought lesson that I've learned?
through all these years of struggle
will everyone forget me?
am I doomed to be remembered solely for my actions?
or will there be one soul who pauses for a moment
and takes the time to look back fondly
and think kindly of this crooked smile?
On Relationships
written May 26, 2004 (following being dumped)
How do we move so quickly
from obsession to cold shoulders?
Your notes still haunt me
whispering their bitter lies from the depths of your disinterest
and the tears still cause the ink to run
across the callous page.
Monday, April 19, 2010
One More Matthew-Birthday Entry
I'd thought about doing a slideshow with these four pictures, but then I remembered: I'm not a fan of slideshows. I don't want to set a limit on the time each person views each picture. So I'm just posting these four. You can look at them as long as you want, or skip this entry entirely, it's your call.
Anyway, these four pictures are a year-by-year of my three year old WeeMan, Matthew Elliott. It amazes me how much his face has changed since he was born. See, I have more or less the same face as I was born with - it's a little more defined, and my nose is much more crooked due to repeated breaks, but all in all, it's easy to look at one of my baby pictures and know that it's mine. I'll post a couple of those around my birthday, just so you can see.
Well...without further yapping from me, here's the Matthew pictures.
Matthew, the newborn:
Matthew at one year old:
Matthew at two years old:
Matthew at three years old:
Anyway, these four pictures are a year-by-year of my three year old WeeMan, Matthew Elliott. It amazes me how much his face has changed since he was born. See, I have more or less the same face as I was born with - it's a little more defined, and my nose is much more crooked due to repeated breaks, but all in all, it's easy to look at one of my baby pictures and know that it's mine. I'll post a couple of those around my birthday, just so you can see.
Well...without further yapping from me, here's the Matthew pictures.
Matthew, the newborn:
Matthew at one year old:
Matthew at two years old:
Matthew at three years old:
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