girlfiend

A while back I lamented the fact that I suck at making chocolate chip cookies. I had no problem getting them to taste right, I just had trouble getting them to look right. My cookies were flat and misshapen, looking more like lace cookies than the chocolate chip cookies of my dreams. I tried just about every recipe, from the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips to the fancy schmancy recipe in my Williams-Sonoma cookbook. Eventually I gave up and found an Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookie recipe I stuck with for a while. Then, on a whim, I tried this recipe for Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies. They came out perfectly. So I made them again. And again. I’ve made them at least half a dozen times since trying the recipe for the first time in February. I’ve left them in the oven too long, forgotten to toast the nuts, used too many or two few chocolate chips, salted butter when I’ve run out of unsalted, and dark brown instead of light brown sugar. I can not fuck these cookies up. They taste great and look great every time.

I wrote this a few days ago. With just 4 cookies left I had to make another batch today. I accidentally overcooked them again (I was straining chicken stock which is messy business) and they still turned out well. I showed remarkable restraint by only baking two trays instead of the usual four. I froze half of the batter knowing I’ll need some warm chocolate chip cookies after the baby is born and won’t want to go to the trouble of actually mixing it then.

Reprinted without permission from Smitten Kitchen who reprinted the recipe from the cookbook

Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (120 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) (115 grams) unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/2-inch (1cm) pieces
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt or 1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt (Deb option)
1 1/2 cups (200 grams) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup (130 grams) walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped

Adjust the oven rack to the top third of the oven and preheat to 300F (150C). Line three baking sheets with parchment paper.

Beat the sugars and butters together until smooth. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and baking soda.

Stir together the flour and salt, then mix them into the batter. Mix in the chocolate chips and nuts.

Scoop the cookie dough into 2-tablespoon (5cm) balls and place 8 balls, spaced 4 inches (10cm) apart, on each of the baking sheets.

Bake for 18 minutes, or until pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

Store at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

After my ranting about Boyfiend spending too much time on his boat and not enough time on the Fiendling’s new bedroom Boyfiend actually made things worse. Last Saturday he put his boat in the water. He got up in the morning and his brother came over to help him get things set up. Passover dinner at my aunt’s house was scheduled for five. I told Boyfiend I needed him home by four. He agreed.

My morning was fine, but walking takes a toll these days. I was looking forward to nap time. Of course the Fiendling didn’t nap for more than fifteen minutes and woke up miserable, clingy and angry to be awake. I thought I was going to lose my mind. In tears I called Boyfiend to remind him that I really NEEDED him to be home on time. He said he wouldn’t be home by four, but he’d be home by four-thirty. That did not please me. When he wasn’t home by five I got the Fiendling and myself dressed and in the car and left without him. I was furious.

Then he made things up to me. The Fiendling spent last night in his new bedroom- a full 24 hours earlier than originally promised. I doubted him, but Boyfiend came through working until ten o’clock most nights to get the painting finished. The room looks fantastic and with the addition of a train table and a few trains Mix found on the side of the road the Fiendling loves it. After the big unveiling, after yet another day without a nap, the Fiendling spent two hours happily playing in his room by himself while I vacuumed and rearranged things. Then he slept through the night.

The nursery is clean. I washed the gender-neutral newborn clothes, the newborn diaper, and the covers and seat pads for the baby bouncy chair, car seat and swing. The glider is in the upstairs parlor where we spend most of our time and the pack n play where the baby will sleep the first few months is in our room. Nothing is set up in the nursery, but I thought it might be best to leave it empty for a bit, just in case the Fiendling gets it in his head to move back in. I don’t have a bag packed for the hospital, but I did put aside a few nursing tops and pajamas to bring along. Last time I just wore the gown the whole time I was there, but this time since the Fiendling will be there to visit I want to look as normal as possible

I am sick of being pregnant. I don’t remember it being quite so bad last time. I know I was swollen for a lot longer and uncomfortable, but I didn’t have any Braxton Hicks contractions, I could nap daily, and I didn’t have a two-year-old to chase around. My feet hurt, I’m tired all of the time, and all the work I’m doing around the house is exhausting.

Now that I’m ready for the baby I’m sure it will be at least two weeks overdue.

A week without a post and all you get is this meme swiped from Ladybug’s Picnic.

Where is your cell phone? My pocket
Your significant other? Across the room tying knots.
Your hair? Looks better when I blow it dry.
Your mother? Probably shopping online.
Your father? Most likely watching something on TV.
Your favorite thing? Sleeping, uninterrupted, through the night
Your dream last night? A sex dream about a guy from college. Weird.
Your favorite drink? I’d like a margarita please.

Your dream/goal? I’m sure that I had one at some point, but right now I’d like to sleep all night, every night for a week.

The room you’re in? Our 2^nd floor parlor.
Your ex? Which one?
Your fear? Something happening to my babies.
Where do you want to be in 6 years? Anywhere, as long as I’m well-rested.
Where were you last night? Watching In the Heat of the Night.

What you’re not? Comfortable.

Muffins? Not my favorite food, but I bake them anyway. I think zucchini muffins are next.
One of your wish list items? Have I mentioned I like sleeping?
Where you grew up? Philadelphia suburbs.

The last thing you did? Bake cookies. The second batch is in the oven.

What are you wearing? Linen maternity capris and a black maternity shirt with pink flowers. I look superhot.
Your TV? 32 inch flat screen. No cable. We’re living large.
Your pets? 3 cats- Howard, Isaac and Phyllis.
Your computer? Toshiba Satellite.
Your life? Good, except for the sleep thing.
Your mood? Tired.
Missing someone? Not really.
Your car? Toyota Corolla.
Something you’re not wearing? Socks.
Favorite store? Does the water ice stand a few blocks away count as a store?
Your summer? Will be spent at the shore if I can keep myself from killing my mother.
Like someone? Many people.
Your favorite color? Orange.
When is the last time you laughed? Earlier this evening.
Last time you cried? Two days ago while reading a magazine.
Who will repost this? Anyone who wants to.

Boyfiend is at the Phillies game. I am having contractions of the Braxton Hicks variety. The Fiendling is screaming for me at his gate. Minutes ago, after the fourth time I went in there, we had a brief conversation that I found very unsatisfying.

Me: You have your trains, your teddy bear and your water. I’ve given you kisses and hugs and cuddles. I’ve rubbed your back and rubbed your forehead. I’ve held your hand and snuggled with you. It is 10.30 at night. It is time to go to sleep.

Fiendling: Don’t want to.

Now he’s yelling, “I’m sad.”

We finished painting one of the rooms upstairs- the former storage room- and set it up. It’s the room without a radiator so it will be the new guest room since we have overnight guests so rarely they don’t need a heated room in the winter. Promptly after setting it up we filled it with crap from the other room. It looked really nice for about five minutes. Now it’s crammed with baby gear, lamps, and assorted boxes of shit we’re half-assedly trying to sell on craigslist. (Speaking of craigslist, anyone want to buy anything?)

We started painting the second room up there- the former guest room that will be the Fiendling’s new bedroom. It’s bigger than the room we painted first and I haven’t had uninterrupted time to work on it. I was able to get all of the primer edging that I needed a ladder for done yesterday, but I still have to prime the fronts and backs of three doors and the moulding before I can start rolling. My dad is coming over tomorrow for a couple of hours which should help, but I don’t think I’ll have enough done so I can prime the walls.

Once I do prime the walls there are at least two coats of paint (the Fiendling alternately requests “geen” and “ahnge.” I think I’m going to have to make the executive decision.) followed by two or three coats of trim paint on the doors or moulding. The trim and moulding was painted a hideous shade of colonial blue so it requires a great deal of effort. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

We haven’t made quite enough progress for me to feel confident that we’ll be able to move him up there with plenty of time (at least a few weeks) to adjust before the baby is born. (Mrs. T., you are making things worse with your reminders that I could go early. No, I cannot. This baby will be born in mid to late May, no sooner, thank you very much.) Doodlebug took the Fiendling off of my hands a few times last week so I could get some painting done during the day which was awesome, but that was the guest room. Now Boyfiend’s attention has turned to his boat, which he hopes to get into the water this weekend. A weekend that will not be spent painting. He’s still working on the room a little bit, but I hate that we’re losing another entire fucking weekend.

It sucks that I can only really paint during nap time which means between setup and cleanup I’m only getting an hour of painting in a day. By the time the Fiendling’s in bed I’m just too tired and don’t want to risk waking him by moving around too much up there. And I’m starting to swell for real now. My hands and feet hurt from the swelling and even my size larger pregnancy sneakers hurt after a while. Right now I should be up there painting. I’ve rested long enough. Okay. I’m off.

Two questions that have come up in the comments:

Gina (and probably someone else, only I can’t remember who) asked if the Fiendling is prepared for the new baby. In a word, no. There is no question that he’s aware there’s a baby coming. He sees my huge belly and talks about the baby in it. He sees babies on the street and says things like, “Baby’s crying,” or “Baby’s sleeping.” He knows he’s going to be a big brother. But prepared? I don’t know how he could be. He’s so young that I don’t think he can really understand that a new, crying, nursing, attention-grabbing baby is going to be living in our house.

I don’t particularly like most of the new baby books aimed at older siblings. They all seem to stress the negative in order to prepare the other kid for the inevitable- crying, pooping, lots of presents for the baby, but none for the older sibling- and I don’t want the Fiendling to think it’s going to be bad from the beginning. We’ve gotten an Arthur book about a new baby from the library because he loves Arthur and a video with the same story from the book with two other new baby stories on it that he picked off of the library shelf the other day. He watches them and I make offhand comments like, “You’re going to have a new baby soon,” but I generally leave it at that.

As for the new baby’s sex, a question asked by many, we don’t know.  Boyfiend is a spoilsport who likes surprises and has dutifully attended each my ultrasounds with me, leaving me no room to find out on my own. Right now it is KILLING me that I don’t know, especially since Target now sells Dwell bedding.

I’ve hit the stage in my pregnancy where I’m painfully aware of my cervix.

There are baby feet in places where I don’t want them most of the day.

My own feet are now growing out of my shoes. They don’t look monstrous yet but, with more than five weeks to go, they will.

People now think I’m “ready to pop.” They seem surprised that I have as long to go as I do. This is interesting because I’m significantly smaller than I was when I was pregnant with the Fiendling.

The Fiendling moved around much more than this kid does. This one likes to find a spot and put a lot of uncomfortable pressure on it.  My bladder is a favorite hangout.

This one doesn’t get the hiccups as much as the Fiendling did. I appreciate that.

At some point someone hacked my blog. Nothing showed up on the blog itself so aside from some things that had been broken and I couldn’t figure out how to fix I had no idea. But some nice guy emailed me to tell me that he found my blog searching for webmaster tools and the source code showed a ton of invisible spam links. I attempted to upgrade my version of wordpress myself and failed miserably so I recruited Mix who patiently worked through it all with me. Friday night, Mix, Boyfiend and I spent the evening searching for cars and upgrading wordpress. We’re party animals.

We found and deleted the invisible links, upgraded to WP 2.whatever it is these days and all was well. Until yesterday when I checked my stats and saw I had something like a kajillion page views from people searching for ring tones. I followed the referrer pages to the various Google searches. Each search landed me on the front page of the blog- no mention of N@kia, Ericcs@n, or T-M@bile to be found. Viewing the source code also showed nothing. I went back to the Google searches and viewed the cached pages. Somehow, whoever hacked my blog was able to actually replace it with something else entirely.

Freaky shit. Anyway, it seems to be fixed now. The cache is still screwy, but I can’t find anything in the site itself. I feel sorry for the people who have come here searching for Christian ring tones. They are definitely in the wrong place.

In pregnancy/baby news:

After reading Pigs’ complaints about pregnancy this morning I feel like I should come clean and admit that since my last pregnancy related post I’ve gained a good 7 pounds and several inches. After measuring my belly at my last appointment my doctor said, “You’ve really gotten big, have you noticed?” Um. Yes. I am suddenly huge.

I guess I spoke too soon since my fingers have swelled out of my rings and I’ve purposely avoided looking at my feet for fear that they are next. I’ve grown out of two maternity swimsuits and waddle into water aerobics with my tankini bottom rolled down and my belly poking out of the teeny-tiny top that once came to the tops of my thighs. My belly has also busted out of most of my shirts. I look super hot with my maternity underwear hanging out of the tops of my too small sweatpants. I think I scare the little girls on the swim team who see me change into my bathing suit in the gym locker room.

My eating habits are atrocious. For lunch yesterday I ate potato chips, applesauce and chocolate covered pretzels. Most days this week I’ve eaten a tofu dog with American cheese and ketchup around 3 pm. I figure I need the protein and since it only takes 30 seconds to microwave I don’t mind taking the time to eat “healthy.” In a moment of weakness I busted open the Fiendling’s bag of Easter candy last night and ate close to a dozen mini Twix bars.

The good news:

I’m still sleeping. After a rough patch where I was up half a dozen times a night I’m sleeping through again mostly, only getting up to pee once or twice. The nights the Fiendling also sleeps through the night rule.

Contractions have slowed down. I’m still uncomfortable, but at least I’m not contracting several times an hour.

We’ve actually started preparing for this child. While the Fiendling naps I’ve been priming and painting one of the rooms upstairs. Today I’ll have to forgo painting as we’re out of rollers and the house desperately needs to be vacuumed, but the one room should be done by Sunday and we’ll be able to start on the other room next week. We’re still not sure who’s going where- if we’ll move the Fiendling upstairs or if the baby will go upstairs, but we hopefully have time to figure that out. I was reticent to move the Fiendling. He’s such a shitty sleeper I’m afraid to disrupt his already tenuous sleep patterns. But then again he’s such a shitty sleeper that it doesn’t really matter if he’s upstairs or downstairs. He’ll still take two hours to go to sleep and wake up randomly throughout the night demanding to be carried. Maybe he’ll sleep better up there because it’s slightly quieter. The next question is which room to use for a child and which room to use as a guest room. I feel like if we’re going to move the Fiendling we should just move his stuff in there before we show to him so it looks exciting, shiny and new.

The bad news:

Boyfiend still can’t really see out of his injured eye

We still don’t have a car and car shopping sucks. We are the lamest, most sensible people in the world and have spreadsheets comparing Kelley Blue Book values to Edmonds values, retail pricing, private party pricing and trade in pricing. I spend way too much time at fueleconomy.gov and even though we don’t believe in buying depreciable assets (like new cars) we’ve discussed buying a Prius because we’re nasty little do-gooders and do more city-type stop and go driving than highway driving.

I’m driving my in-law’s Kia. I hate it. The brakes squeal and the back windshield is way too small so visibility sucks. It’s awkward to drive and especially uncomfortable for a very pregnant woman. I am grateful to have a car to drive for the time being since the Fiendling still only naps in the car, but I really miss my ugly little teal Corolla. (We are considering buying ANOTHER Corolla. Because I need a third one. One from this decade so I have three decades of Corolla ownership under my belt. And besides, nothing says lame and sensible like a super fuel-efficient Corolla)

My house is really, really dirty and I just don’t feel like cleaning it.

I have to cancel my haircut this week because I can’t justify spending $50 on a haircut when we have to buy a fucking car.

The DVD remote broke rendering our DVD player almost useless since it won’t work with any universal remotes and we can’t access any menu functions on DVDs. Unfortunately we can still watch Thomas movies 7000 times in a row.

My neighbor, thinking he was being nice, gave the Fiendling a Thomas “yearbook” which is essentially a catalog of all of the different trains and accessories available for purchase. This yearbook has become the Fiendling’s favorite book which we must “read” to him several times a day. It takes close to half an hour to get through the fucking thing and that’s if I manage to skip pages without him noticing. Bedtime is even more unbearable than usual.