Daryl’s Brain

Ever wonder how to fold a napkin?

You know how sometimes you make dinner and your spouse isn’t home exactly when you think they are going to be so you keep the food in the pot to keep it warm?  Apparently, with broccoli you’re supposed to drain the pot first.  We had yummy broccoli ’soup’.

NO! Stela and I are NOT considering having kids yet.  However, for those of you who are, or those of you who have already, or even those of you who would like to care for other peoples kids, here’s a list of do’s and don’ts for childcare.

I’ve come to realize that laundry pretty much sucks up my entire day. While this is the one chore that has always been “mine” it is not a chore that I have ever -or will ever- become accustomed to. Perhaps it would be different if we had in-suite laundry, but it will probably be a while before I figure that one out.

So, why does it take a whole day? Well, let’s see. First, the process itself is an incredibly inconvenient 2 hours long. Why inconvenient? Because it’s not long enough to motivate me to start it right away and it’s too long to leave till the end of the day. So I spend about 2 hours motivating myself to do the laundry by doing trying to get my “relaxation time” out of the way first. So there’s 4 hours.

Now, it would be one thing if the laundry machines took cash, but they use this “convenient” card system where you put money on your card and then plug in your card to the machines to turn them on (while taking up the credit you’ve just put on the card, of course). In case you missed it, the quotes around the word “convenient” were supposed to indicate sarcasm. So why is it not convenient? Because the machine that you use to put money on the card will only take $5, $10, or $20 bills and I usually do not carry cash on me, nor do I put bills in my piggybank. So now you have to add on at least another hour for me to walk to the bank, get distracted, get the money, get distracted with the money, and walk home. That’s a total of 5 hours.

Once I’ve motivated myself to do the laundry, I have to prepare the laundry. The bin that the clothes etc. are in is not the bin I use to take the laundry over with. Now we’re at 5.5 hours.

(Good news: I’ve started using a timer so that there is no wasted time between when the loads are done and when I go to switch/take them.)

When the washers are done I don’t just transfer all the laundry over to the dryers, I have to read the labels to see if they can go in the dryer. While I have accounted for this in the initial 2 hours, there’s one other thing that I usually end up doing, waiting for the timer to beep before I realize that I’m out of time to hang up all the wet clothes which I need to do before going back to get the dry ones. That’s 6 hours.

Before I put the clothes away I need to let them sit while I unwind from the stress that is laundry. That bumps us up to 8 hours. Then, if I feel like it, I will put the clothes away. Otherwise, I will wait until tomorrow.

9 hours.

So I decided to make an Ahi Tuna recipe yesterday in honour of St. Herman. Well, actually it was simply because it was a Fish/Wine/Oil day, but when I realized it was in honour of St. Herman I really felt like celebrating and said special prayers and even went out for a coffee at a local coffee shop.

Anyway, this whole “reading the recipe” thing seems to have me a little baffled. I read the recipe, but I don’t seem to understand little nuances here and there. For instance, I made a sauce for the fish to marinade in for a few hours and when I went to cook it there seemed to be an awful lot of oil. Looking at the recipe again I saw that it was a recipe that served six, not two.

*sigh*

So I cooked the fish for the time it said to, but it said that the fish should be white all the way through (it’s not sushi quality fish) and when I went to eat it the center was raw. After re-cooking both fish steaks I read that the recipe was for steaks that were 3/4 inch think, not 1 1/2 inches like these were.

*argh*

To top it off, the marinade contained diced parsley that burned up when I cooked it for extra long making the fish seem burnt.

Double *sigh*

In the end, however, it seems that St Herman must have been watching over my cooking because the fish tasted amazing! Whether it was St Herman or not, I know it wasn’t me.

Ok, if I don’t detail out my new morning plan I will never stick to it. So here it is:

• Up at 6:30
• Drink coffee while reading blogs
• Morning prayers (after coffee kicks in)
• Post a blog (maybe)
• Read two articles from A List Apart
• Look for work
• Clean the kitchen while making brunch
• Read the to-do list Stella left me

From here on out it’s a little fuzzy because it will really vary depending on what the to-do list for the day is. However, I am wanting to get the following done in addition to the above:

• Go over one chapter in a book alternating between
  • Supporting Users and Troubleshooting Desktop Applications on Microsoft’s Windows XP
  • Developing Games in Java
  • Web Design on a $hoestring
• Clean a room or area
• Work for two or more hours on a pet project

I think that should about cover my day up until Stella gets home from work. That is, unless I have another “Vacuum” incident. Is there anyone who knows me who would be willing to keep me accountable to all this?

I do wish it was a Sunday, because I completely missed Church yesterday. Granted, Stella and I go to Liturgy every Wednesday, but there’s just something special about Sunday. That, and I didn’t get laundry done yesterday so I need to do it today. Funny thing about chores, if you don’t do them they don’t go away. It’s not like a job where you are there for 8 hours a day and if you don’t get around to something you will still only be there for 8 hours the next day. (Certain exceptions, I know.) With chores if you don’t get them done then you will have just that much more to do the following day.

*sigh*

I can’t help feel that something’s missing.

I now prepare all the meals. And I’ve started swearing. The two have a lot to do with each other.

Ok, I’m kidding. Well, mostly. However, today I had a frustrating experience trying to make one of the most simplest recipes ever handed down to us from on high, tuna casserole.

First of all, I checked the cooking time. 21 minutes. I also noted a 15 minute prep time. Thinking myself wise I skimmed the directions to make sure that I wouldn’t have any surprises. Sautee the onions, add mushroom soup and milk, cook for a bit while whisking, add next six ingredients, top with bread crumbs and cheese, cook in oven. What ever happened to “add tuna to mac and cheese, add bread crumbs and cheese, bake for a bit?” Oh well, this sounds pretty basic. It also sounds fairly quick. I can put it off for a while yet.

When I did get around to it I sautéed the onions, added the milk and light mushroom soup, stirred with a whisk I had just bought for this very purpose, turned off the element ready to add it to the next six ingredients, whatever they were.

First of the six was cooked egg noodles.

COOKED!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Argh!!! I forgot to check why in the world there was a 15 minute prep time. Now I knew.

*sigh*

Fine, so I washed the dishes while the egg noodles did their cooking. Now that the initial sauce I made is cold let’s see where we go from here.

THAWED frozen peas!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Argh!!! What is with this recipe?

*sigh*

Ok, I heated a plate and laid out the frozen peas on it to thaw quickly. In hindsight I am lucky I didn’t break the plate due to the temperature difference. Ok, now mix it all together, make it nice and flat within its dish, double check that I didn’t forget anything…

*sigh*

Add in the lemon juice, re-mix and re-flatten. Add on the bread crumbs and cheese. And cook.

I’ll know how it turned out once Stella gets home. I’m lucky she’s late.

This is a picture of a character from Veggie Tales sitting on my kitchen counter with a note on him.

The note consists of …

cooking instructions.

*gasp* from the audience.

…

He he he

I love my wife.

When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I realized that the food has no where to go once it is in the dishwasher and if you don’t rinse, it will just gum up otherwise clean dishes.