I Blame The Internet

This week I set a new personal record for the BEST dinners I ever cooked... and the WORST. To accomplish my goal of having dinner on the table every night, I planned out a dinner menu and a shopping list through pay day. To make my life a little easier, I decided to use my crock pot for most of the meals. I made an AWESOME taco soup fashioned after Katie's recipe and DELICIOUS pork chile verde like my mom makes. Art has been taking his dinners to work and all of his co-workers have been envious of his meals. Well, most of the meals...

I also threw in a couple recipes I found on the Internet that had good reviews and made them exactly as directed, and they were both undesirable to some degree. I made a recipe for crock pot pork chops and they came out a really strange, stringy, tough texture. The taste was good, but the texture was so uninviting I couldn't eat them. But then, night before last, I endured the most horrendous cooking failure of my entire life... and I blame the Internet. That's where I got the recipe, so I'm not going down for this one! I attempted to make teriyaki chicken in the crock pot so I came home for lunch and followed the recipe exactly- which was one can of crushed pineapple, one cup of teriyaki marinade, and chicken. I thought the concoction sounded a little strange, but put my trust in the Internet and proceeded anyway. I set it to low and went back to work.

When I got home from picking up the baby from my mom's house, my house smelled like weirded out brownies. That's not a good sign. I thought maybe the food itself would smell better than the house so I went and lifted the lid and took a whiff and I swear I almost puked. It was the most foul stench I had ever encountered and I was immediately ill. Then I thought, maybe if I hold a piece of chicken away from the pot it will smell better. No such luck. You couldn't pay me to taste it. Never have I cooked anything in my entire life that got transferred to the garbage can so quickly. I took the garbage out to the dumpster straight away, came back in, took the crock pot itself OUTSIDE, opened up all the windows and doors, turned on all the fans, unleashed at least half a bottle of Febreeze, and it STILL smelled awful. My house had been marinating in that odor for hours! To make things worse, it was the last day I had planned on my menu so I had nothing else to make. I waved my white flag and went to Taco Bell though I was still so nauseous when I got back, I could hardly eat.

I guess there are a few morals to this story: stick with the tried and true recipes; if a recipe sounds like it won't come out good, it probably won't; and last but not least, the Internet can't be trusted.

The Unknown

As y'all know, I am in desperate need of a bigger place to live. I would just up and move, BUT there are a lot of factors to consider. My office is moving to First and Alluvial in April and right now it only takes me 5 minutes to get to work, but when they move it will take me closer to 20 minutes. This makes me think that I should move closer to my new office, somewhere in the middle between there and the WinCo where Art works. BUT Art is applying for PIC and might get transferred to the new Kings Canyon store or even the Fresno Store. THEN there is the factor that I am going to be attempting to switch to part-time at my office and I am not sure if they will go for that or if I will be looking for a new job entirely. Also, one of my bosses is just beginning a rather big project that will last about a month or so and if I even suggest going part-time in the midst of this project (and in the midst of the office moving) the answer will surely be NO. But even if I wait to bring it up, there is still a chance they will say no. So then I wouldn't know WHERE I was going to be working, and it wouldn't benefit me at all to have moved closer to First and Alluvial unless by some off chance, I ended up getting another job in that area. Additionally, there was also the idea that we might be able to buy a house which opens a whole other can of unknowns including waiting on Art's W-2 to find out if we are even going to have any tax money to utilize. I'm starting to think I don't even want to go that route because I don't think I could handle that kind of decision right now.

I feel like I am stuck in a big, fat, limbo- wherein I must tread very carefully and wait for things to play out one way or another- waiting for answers to reveal themselves so I can MOVE, and work PART-TIME, and live happily ever after. It is frustrating to be powerless and I really don't want to keep working full-time through April, although it seems it might turn out that way.

For some reason, my mom and I have this random special ability to know certain things before they happen. I'm not sure that I would go so far as to use the word "psychic" but we have had several instances in our lives where we knew precisely what was going to happen, and then it did- even with no reason to suspect that course of action. My mom receives this knowledge of things to come in dreams and I receive knowledge during the day. In my mom's case, when she was pregnant with each of us, she had a dream where she gave birth and saw whether it was a boy or a girl and she was right in every instance. More recently, in October 2005, Art and I took a trip to Six Flags with my brother Kyle and step-brother Caed in our 30 day old 2006 Hyundai Tiburon GT. The night before we left my mom had a dream that we got in a terrible car accident and died. She awoke immediately and prayed for our safety and though she didn't tell us about her dream, she told us to be especially careful. The next night on our drive home, Art was driving and we were all asleep in the car. He also fell asleep and veered into another car. We hit the car once, then spun around and smacked into them again, ending up on opposite sides of the road in entirely smashed cars. After I got everyone out of the car, the first thing I said is to find me my phone because I need to call my mom. When my brother handed me my phone, it was already ringing. My mom was calling because she had sat straight up out of a deep sleep and knew something was wrong. Thankfully there were not worse injuries than bruising, as the emergency crew said by the looks of the cars they thought for sure there would have been deaths.

In my case, the knowledge that has come to me has been much less critical or life altering. The knowledge comes to me at random while I am awake, usually very shortly before the event occurs. The first time I remember it happening was when I was in 6th grade or so. My mom never picked us up from school- we always took the bus, but one day I knew she would be there to pick us up, and that she was going to take us to her friend Cyndi's house. I had no reason so suspect this, but that is exactly what happened. It was the day my dad beat up my mom and she moved us out that day to Cyndi's house. When I was 15, I was casually dating a member from Oakhurst. To avoid accruing long distance phone bills, we often chatted online. One day, I signed on and saw he was online and I instantly knew that he was going to tell me that he kissed another girl and wanted to be with her. Just as I knew, that is exactly what he typed. I was shocked! A couple years later, I was at home cleaning when all of the sudden I knew that my mom was going to come home, crying, and tell me that she and her boyfriend of several years had broken up. Sure enough, a couple hours later it happened exactly as I knew it would. About a year ago, I was getting ready for work one morning and knew that the paralegal at work was going to tell us she got engaged. Sure enough! Most recently, my dad's mom was dying of ovarian cancer in February 2008 and my family went to the hospital to be with her when we found out she wouldn't make it through the night. We stayed until after 10 pm and later that night, I knew that she was going to pass away at midnight. I received a phone call from my dad at 12:15 telling me she had died 15 minutes ago.

Not to be ungrateful for these experiences, but what doesn't make sense to me is why God allows me to know these things before they happen when a) it really doesn't do me any good to know them because of the short notice, and b) I can't do anything about it anyway. My mom thinks maybe God is preparing me to pay attention to this knowledge so that when He does have something important for me, I will know. Sometimes I wish I could conjure up my "powers" and take a look into my future so that I can find the answers I'm looking for, but I guess the point of life is to work through the unknown to prove ourselves and knowing every little thing would just be cheating. :)

Oh, by the way, I took Kari and Kathy's advice to plan out meals until each pay day and so far I have been LOVING it. It has eliminated "the unknown" that used to be involved in my dinners every day. It is so much less stressful knowing what I'm having every day and not having to wonder whether or not I have ingredients for it. No more multiple trips to the grocery store! No more fast food and frozen lasagna! lol

On another note, my life is a constant testimony to the power of prayer. Before I went back to work, I prayed and prayed that Keira would start going to bed earlier instead of keeping me up 'til the wee hours of the morning. Sure enough, the day I started back to work, she was out by 11:30, the next day, 11:00, the next day 10:30, the next day 10:00, and now she is down by a quarter to 10:00 every night and doesn't wake up until it's time. I am SO thankful that God loves me and cares about even the little things in my life. Keira had been sleeping in her bassinet by my bed, but she got too big for it so I decided to give her crib a try. I like to keep her in arm's reach because she will wake up every time her binky falls out of her mouth and it is easier to reach over and pop it back in rather than walking across the room to do it. I was kind of nervous about how many times I would be getting up to tend to her pacifier, but she went to sleep without it and only woke up once looking for it. I was so proud of her sleeping in her crib like a "big girl", I just had to take pictures of her in the morning. She is SO CUTE in the morning. She always wakes up happy and smiling (I wish I was like that!), but this time she had new surroundings to investigate. She LOVED looking at the ladybug pattern on the bumper and playing with the mobile. I better be careful that she doesn't think the crib equals play time.

Grocery Grumbles

Being that Art works at a grocery store, you would think our house would be well stocked with groceries at all times. On the contrary, we find our shelves bare and our refrigerator empty with a few undesireable exceptions. Art often comes home in the morning with a couple bags of groceries in an attempt to be helpful, but my contentment is often shattered when I see the contents of the bags consist of several boxes of Rice-a-Roni and nothing to go with it. I'm not sure where he got the idea that Rice-a-Roni is a meal-in-a-box, but I don't share this opinion. His faith in Rice-a-Roni is so firm, in fact, that he thinks it can be a side dish for anything like spaghetti. To Art, "eating is a waste of time" and he spends little time fretting about food combinations and will eat anything put in front of him with impressive speed. I, on the other hand, will break something the next time he comes home with frozen lasangna and NO VEGETABLES and NO FRENCH BREAD.

I derive very little pleasure from cooking, and I despise grocery shopping. This combination has led to a very nutritionaly empty and repititous menu at my house. I'm not a bad cook by any means, but normally the closest I get to "home made" is if I had to put it in the oven or warm it up on the stove. It is really quite pathetic and has gotten worse since I had the baby. Since Art doesn't care what I put on the table, I am a very picky eater, and neither of us have to watch what we eat, I really don't have much incentive to put significant effort into my cooking and we end up eating the same 5 things over and over. I just can't figure out how all you moms out there find the motivation, time, and energy to cook every day and have more than just Rice-a-Roni on the plate. Thus, I am asking you to tell me your secrets! How do you discipline yourself to grocery shop? Do you pick one day a week that you go? How do you find time to get meals on the table? Do you have any easy crock pot recipies- make ahead meals? Do you know of any good and simple crock pot recipe books or other recipe books? How do you work fruits and vegetables into your meals? Do you plan meals for the week or decide day by day? PLEASE- whatever advice, tips, and recipies you can offer would be absolutely appreciated. It's time to eliminate the grocery grumbles in my house!

E-mail me by clicking my handy link to the right, or leave me a comment below.

Oh, and KATIE- if you ever get on here and read my blog... send me that recipe for that awesome Mexican soup/chili crock pot thing you made. It was SO GOOD! I aspire to cook like you.

New Do

Oh, what a week! I survived my first week back to work... barely. I am not one of those people who were designed to operate on less than 8 hours of sleep, but I was forced to. Thankfully, the day I went back to work Keira started going to sleep between 11:00 and 11:30 which is a huge improvement upon her norm of staying up until 2:00 AM. God heard my prayers and helped me out with her bedtime, but she decided to wake up at 5:00 AM for some reason beyond my comprehension. It is hard to keep her asleep because she is very pacifier-dependent but can't keep it in her mouth very well. So my nights are spent periodically popping the pacifier back in her mouth because she needs to suck on something all night and isn't quite skilled enough to effectively make use of her thumb yet. I am trying to remember how lucky I am that I have a baby who has slept through the night (or early morning) since about 8 weeks old. Last night she was asleep by 10:00 so I was very happy. Art and I learned that the trick to getting her to go to sleep faster and earlier is to cover her face. Art had started doing it and I yelled at him for trying to suffocate her, then I realized that she likes having her face buried in something so she can sleep. If you cover at least half of her face with a blanket, she goes out like a light. It makes a lot of sense now that when I went to have 3D pictures done when I was pregnant, she had her face burrowed in the placenta. She was trying to sleep! If I had made that connection earlier, perhaps I would have spent much fewer nights awake with her until 3 in the morning!

I keep forgetting to tell you about Keira's "intentional coughing" as I call it. On Christmas Eve I came down with a cold that irritated my lungs just enough for me to cough about twice then feel better. By the time I started getting better I noticed the baby started doing a little cough, but she didn't seem sick. In fact, she was smiling when she did it. Every time she would be happy, smiling, and talking, she would incorporate her "intentional coughing" with a big grin on her face going Cough! Cough! I am pretty sure she learned it from me when I was sick. It is so funny! She is such a happy girl. She even wakes up smiling.

Art has been working at WinCo for the better part of 4 years, and I have been nagging him for quite some time to talk to his boss about moving up in the company. They are paid on a schedule based on hours worked and what position you are and he is maxed out on the freight crew. He can't get any more raises until he makes PIC (Person in Charge) although his hours worked still accumulate toward his next raises once he does get PIC. He finally talked to his boss and their response was pretty much, "What took you so long!?" They had just been waiting for him to ask. They said that there would be some openings coming up early this year and that they want him to apply for it. He brought home his application of interest this weekend and was sitting at the table filling it out with a pencil in his scribbly handwriting and I said, "You aren't turning it in like that are you?" I have a special talent for preparing resumes and using particular wording to make yourself sound desirable. I confiscated his applicated and scanned it in the computer and typed in text boxes on the form. He didn't think it was worth all the effort, but I told him just trust me. I'm sure they don't get that many typed applications and will be impressed when they see this. He turned it in that night and when he got home in the morning, he admitted that his boss was totally impressed and said he was going to put his application in the preferred applicants stack. What would he do without me? It will be so good to see Art moving up from a physically demanding position and start using his brain in a management position. He is a smart guy and his body can't take that kind of abuse forever!

I would like to take this opportunity to stake my claim on the term "blog-booking". I enjoy blogging more than I enjoy scrapbooking, and I enjoy scrapbooking more than I enjoy journaling, so I came up with the idea of incorporating my stories into my scrapbooking as encouragement to do scrapbook pages and as a means to keep somewhat of a journal while I'm at it. I also like the idea of having the story behind the pictures, if there is one. I started blog-booking my pregnancy pictures and I am really glad that I have the stories to go along with the ultrasounds and pictures because it's already a blur to me. Now, every time I invent something I usually find my invention within a week, but I googled "blog-booking" and from what I can find, no one has coined that term in scrapbooking context before me. Have it be known throughout the land, that...

I, Krysta Martinez, am the inventor

of blog-booking.

Plain old scrapbooking is going to go by the wayside and blog-booking is going to take over all because of me, I just know it. Feel free to jump on the blog-booking band wagon, but always give credit to it's creator. =)

Lately I have been ranting about my hair, how it has been falling out in handfuls and how it's way too thin to be so long. I often make threats to chop off my hair, but I generally restrain myself based on the fact that Art cherishes my long, straight, hair. It is hard to convince him to even let me trim it without tears forming in his big, brown eyes. He even has a small lock of my hair preserved somewhere in a plastic baggy from a previous trim. I announced to him Friday night that I was getting my hair cut and he said, "Fine! Do what you want- you don't listen to me anyway!" I had my mom cut it for me on Saturday and I am quite pleased with the results. When she got done and swept up the hair, it looked like a blonde wig on the kitchen floor. I haven't had my hair short since high school, because it seems like everyone I have ever dated has wanted me hair LONG and STRAIGHT. I figured I deserved a new do after all these years of repression. Besides, it will always grow back. I got home that night and showed Art my haircut and he didn't make any negative remarks. Even though he won't admit it, I think he actually likes it.

My little girl is 3 months old!

Coincidence

I believe there is no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason, whether or not we know what that reason is. I always enjoy the times we do discover the reason something happened, because it reminds us that God is watching out for us in some way. On Friday, Art, Keira, my mom, my sister Lauren, and I took a trip to Yuba City to visit my mom's side of the family before I had to go back to work on Monday. We had planned on leaving by 1:00 and I am notorious for being late, so I got up extra early and started getting ready. I even packed the night before, but somehow we still didn't get on the road until almost 2:00. The traffic was UNBELIEVABLE. It took us the better part of an hour just to get to Madera. It was stop and go all the way to Sacramento and we never did see an accident or any apparent cause for the congestion. When we got back to town, we learned that there had been a bank robbery in Madera after which the burglar got on the freeway headed SOUTH on NORTHBOUND 99 and collided head-on with two cars. By the time we went through Madera, the accident had been cleared but traffic had been at an absolute stand still for the past two hours. It was no accident that we didn't end up leaving until 2:00 that day.

We had a lot of close calls on our drive to Yuba City, but made it there in one piece and had an enjoyable visit. Keira got to meet her Great Grandpa Bud, Great Grandma Leeanne, Aunt Heather, her daughters Chelsea and Shelby, Aunt Victoria, and her daughters Tori and Madison (Or is it Madalyn? I will have to verify later. I am too sleep deprived at the moment.) She also got to see Uncle Mark again who spent Christmas with us. He bought us a belated Christmas present that he described as a nicer, larger, digital photo frame. He put it in our car and when I got home and looked at it, I realized it wasn't just any digital photo frame, it is a HUGE super FANCY one, complete with a remote. It has a 15 inch screen! It's more like the size of a computer monitor! I can't wait to get it all set up and on my wall. Keira was SO GOOD the whole time, as always. Even though it took us over 5 hours to get to Yuba City, she didn't make a peep the whole way there. I tell people all the time what a good baby she is and that she never fusses or cries, but they don't fully believe me until they spend an entire day around her. They are shocked to see that I'm not exaggerating. She is such a happy girl and LOVES to talk and play. She is 12 weeks old now and still staying up late. The earliest I can usually get her to bed is midnight, but she doesn't wake up during the night.

Keira with my mom's dad, Grandpa Bud, his wife Grandma Leeanne, my mom, and me.

She loves her mommy and daddy.

Cousins Chelsea and Shelby

Mom's brother, Uncle Mark

My mom's step sisters Heather and Victoria,

and my mom.

As I mentioned before, I returned to work on Monday. Sunday night I was absolutely stressed out and on the verge of tears at the thought. I told myself it's just work- you've done this a thousand times- the baby is going to be just fine- she is always happy- it's not going to be for long- but I still didn't feel entirely comforted. At church lately, several leaders have encouraged us to be reading our scriptures every day and I have always been horrible about reading my scriptures. In recent years, they are lucky to be opened maybe twice a year outside of church. Well, that night as I stressed about my impending return to work, I kept getting the feeling like I should read my scriptures. I sat down with Art, turned off the TV and opened the Book of Mormon to where we left of in 2nd Nephi, Chapter 4. I started to read out loud and I'm sure that it was not just a coincidence that it was my favorite chapter of all, which had until now been long forgotten. "My God hath been my support, He hath led me through mine afflictions... He hath filled me with His love." I felt the Spirit stronger than I have in a long time and not only did I know that everything would be okay, but felt that everything would be okay. Whether or not you are a member of my church, I encourage you to read that chapter in hopes that you will feel the same comfort I did. The Book of Mormon truly is another testament that God lives and loves us.

I know it was also not by chance that I was blessed with such a perfect baby girl. At work this week, I have been shocked at how many people asked me if I was glad to be back and away from my baby, as if I would be relieved. They just can't understand how I would want to spend every moment of every day with her. I adore my little girl and I know how much she loves me too. Even in the way she talks to me, how she tilts her chin forward and closes her eyes. She says the most beautiful things to me in her own baby way. There is no doubt in my mind that she was meant just for me and that I was meant to be her mother. I love her SO MUCH. She is irreplaceable.

Keira - 12 Weeks Old

Determination

Lately, Keira has been trying to develop her hand-mouth coordination. Until now it has been significantly lacking. She decided to take a direct approach to the task by testing out her own hand with particular focus on the thumb. I had a feeling she would one day decide to suck her thumb since I sucked mine relentlessly until the age of 4. Even in the womb we caught her with her hand suspiciously posed.

She tried for the better part of a week to fine tune her skills enough to get just her thumb in her mouth instead of her whole hand. She must have punched herself in the eye at least a dozen times, but in the end her determination paid off and she managed to get that thumb in there just long enough for a few gratifying sucks. I certainly don't want to encourage thumb sucking, but I don't want to discourage her from developing her hand-mouth coordination either, because the sooner she gets that down the sooner she can feed herself! If she does take to that hobby, I hope she is as decisive as I was the day I gave up my thumb.

Our friends Timmy and Tommy were teasing me calling me a baby for sucking my thumb and carrying around a blanket, and though I don't remember their bantering, I distinctly remember stomping into the kitchen where my parents were talking, put my fists straight down by my side and said, "I'm not a baby! I'm not sucking my thumb any more!" Then I threw my blanket in the garbage and declared my independence from it as well. My mom took it out of the trash and washed it, thinking I would be asking for it later, but I stayed true to my word. I never carried my blanket from that day forward, nor did my thumb ever part my lips again.

Love Thy Neighbor

Art and I have lived in our apartment for over 2 years, and our upstairs neighbor has been there since we moved in. We immediately noticed that our upstairs neighbor is very heavy footed and we assumed it was a large man, only to discover it is an average sized girl not much bigger than me. For reasons beyond my comprehension, she has the inability to HOLD STILL and stomps all over every square inch of the floor above us mercilessly day and night, as if she has no furniture. One day my family was at my house visiting and my brother Kyle asked me, "Have you ever considered that there might be a baby elephant living upstairs?" It's seriously that bad. To accentuate our dislike with her noise making, she has a very creaky bed that translates her sexual activity through the ceiling into quite a racket in our bedroom when combined with her love-making vocalizations. She only runs her dishwasher AFTER bedtime, and listens to loud music when I'm trying to take my Sunday afternoon nap. As heavy footed and irritating as she is, we had taught ourselves to tolerate "The Stomper" who had exercised her upstairs dominion over us these past 2 years.

The past few weeks, The Stomper has taken her noise making to a whole new level with the addition of surround sound TV and loud music until at least 2 am every night. God forgive us, for Art and I have now declared our pure hatred for her. I am trying really hard to literally love my neighbors, but she crossed the line with me and the only remedy I can see fit is for one of us to move. Oh what I wouldn't give for a house of my own! To not share a wall with ANYONE. To not be able to hear my neighbor pee in the toilet above my head! If only we had any money saved up for a down payment. It would be cheaper to buy a 3 bedroom house than to rent a 2 bedroom apartment. Donations are always welcome. :)

New Year's Eve couples as Art's birthday at my house. Unfortunately he had to work through his birthday so he didn't get to do anything special. He turned 25 this year and is sprouting a few gray hairs that he blames entirely on me. As much as I want to strangle him sometimes, I have been thinking lately about reasons why I love him. I used to picture myself married to someone who came home from work in a suit every day, but I love that my husband comes home so dirty and sweaty that I can't even touch him, because it shows me how hard he is willing to work for our family. It makes me appreciate him more when he does wear a suit. He cleans up quite nicely if I say so myself. Happy Birthday Baby Cakes.

Art's Birthday 2007 - Sacramemto Train Museum

Art's Birthday 2006 - F. McLintock's at Pismo Beach