Spicy Cod

Home tonight after lunch out with girlfriends and viewing Amelia with Hilary Swank - fabulous movie, BTW.

Anyway - home and started to think about dinner. Found some cod in the freezer and did a quick online search for recipes, and found this one - and it's a keeper!

Easiest Spicy Cod

1 1/2 pounds cod fillets

1-2 cups salsa (enough to cover cod filets in pan)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Crushed tortilla chips (I used Red Hot Blues)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350º F

2. Rinse and dry cod fillets. Place fillets in a lightly greased casserole dish, on

top of crushed chips. Pour salsa over fish. Sprinkle with parsley, salt and pepper.

3. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Serve warm over rice.

Mmm, Mmm, GOOD!

booooooooo

It's still breast cancer awareness month, but I have to use my pumpkin pie ...

Happy Halloween!

YAHOO!

Just in time for the snow...

Coming Soon

I'm thinking about posting again, really I am. I am sick of seeing that Twins thing there. It was all timely and such when they were winning but now? Not so much. I even have some fairly good ideas about what I want to write about.

But then I sit down and on the one hand I could blog, and on the other I could read other people's blogs or play Farkle or watch videos or just walk away from the computer entirely.

So someday I will blog again. But not today.

Never mind.

Wanderlust

With Mama Ava in Beijing and Lucy in Malaga, Lonnie in Gjoevik and Kelly and Jil planning thier next trips to Disney (Kelly to World and Jil to cruise) ... well, let's just say I am feeling really sad that I have nothing in the works which involves an airplane.

Looking at Lonnie's photos makes my heart ache for Norway. It's a physical pull, heightened when I read her blog or look through her Facebook photo albums. Malaga and Beijing have the lure of being new and exotic to me (and I am going to Beijing, just haven't figured out exactly when yet ... so that does help some!) And then Disney... one year ago today I was starting to pack to take the boys on our first-ever cruise, with Disney, and the memories now are flooding back as I talk to Jil about their upcoming journey.

I think I'm going to Two Harbors next weekend, and then I do have a road trip up to Moorhead planned for November.

It's just not the same.

It's all about the birthday cake

My birthday is coming up in just a few weeks (ok, about 9, but that's less than half the year, right?) and I have found my cake.Whichever of you, my darling friends and family members, chooses to provide it, here's a handy link to its creator's website. So she's in Dallas, aren't I worth it?

Thanks, Cake Wrecks, for finding my dream cake for me!

Flash Forward

Is anyone else here watching it? I have this need to talk it to death ... into a greater depth than Brian is willing to go with me ... anybody?

Dog is gonna be OK

Well, the dog has allergies, and possibly hypothyroidism. Which transfers into $225 of exams and medicine. But they threw in a free nail-clipping, so I'm not complaining!

The new, ugly, open sore on his head? An allergy burn. The doc said they come up very suddenly and are pretty nasty. In examining Chaco, she found another spot which she said to watch, as it looks like it's about to erupt.

The thinning fur and lack of appetite are probably related to his thyroid function, so blood was drawn and more medicine may be in our future.

Right now, he will be on a three-week regimen of cortisone to help the allergies (someone just was telling me this fall has been nasty for dog allergies ... was it one of you??) and hopefully the itching and burns will disappear. But, she warned me, he may have an increased need to drink and urinate ... hopefully not in the middle of the night, but it's possible. Oh, and we have ear drops to help the itching in them. Because he has scratched them pretty raw, too.

And just for kicks, she noticed he has a dead tooth. So a tooth cleaning and extraction are in our future, the estimate on that is a mere $670. That does not include pain meds for the days after the surgery. But it does include use of the Bair Hugger, the inventor of which I know personally. But that can't be done til the cortisone treatment is done and out of his system, so we are looking at just in time for Christmas.

But everything is treatable and he's gonna be fine. And I guess, at least for now, that is priceless. For everything else, I used my Master Card.

time flies ...

It's October. Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I need a mammogram. (not because I think I need one - need one, but because I haven't had one for a few years ... oh, hi, there, Dad, I'm sure you needed to read this ...)

I realize how lucky I am. I have now been working for a month. Not even full time (I have Fridays off.) But I can barely get anything done. How do women do it who work full time and have kids who actually need constant mothering??? I have not had to juggle life duties like this for .... well, I was going to write in the number of years, then I realized it would be never. I have never had to work full (or close to full) time while also being a parent. Since laundry and cooking and buying milk and picking up garbage are barely getting done, blogging has pretty much completely fallen by the wayside.

The good news today? I really like my job. The variety of tasks, the friendliness of the people, the relative solitude (I know those last two sound contradictory, but for me it's perfect - I rarely see anyone, but when I do, they are really nice.) The hours fly by every day, the weeks are zooming by. And two paychecks so far :-)

The bad news today? I am very worried about my dog. I have been worried about him (Chaco, the little white one) for a couple of weeks, but we were dog-sitting for my parents' dog so I thought maybe it was just the stress of having a foreigner in the house. But today Brian found a pretty good-sized raw sore on the back of Chaco's head, which is tender and scary-looking, and that, combined with my uneasy feelings over the past two weeks, is making me take him to the vet tomorrow to get thoroughly checked out. (then tonight I read Minnesota Matron's post about her dying dog and I am NOT in a good emotional state.)

This is not well-written and it's not getting better the more I type, but it is an update (I fool myself into thinking there are people out there who actually notice my absence) so I am going to go with it.

I'll try to update about the dog after I hear more ...