A cat can save the day

If you think about it, a house cat has it made! Someone to take care of them, feed them, love them, hug them, clean up after them, etc. But Ares does a lot for me as well. Today was a blah kind of day. I wake up to three cell phone messages, none of which were the best. The first message was from a reference of mine telling me that he/she put my reference letter in the mail...yesterday. Unfortunately, the place has to have everything in their hot little hands tomorrow. The second phone call was from my temp agency calling about the job I did yesterday, the office manager couldn't find the key to the money drawer and wanted to know where I had put it. Gee, right where she told me to! The third message was from the temp agency again asking for me to call them back immediately for a job opportunity.

So today, before I had coffee (you know what, I got so busy I completely forgot to have coffee today!), I was returning phone calls. Luckily the place I'm applying at will take a faxed letter as long as the reference letter will be there shortly. I missed the job opportunity and I let the temp agency know that I had indeed put that blasted key right back where it belonged, I almost added, "Tell the nasty old bat to open her eyes!"

Well after all this, I was storming around the house and went into the bedroom and there was Ares sleeping on the bed. Curled up in a tight little ball. So of course I had to hug him! And I instantly started to feel better. Nothing like hugging a warm cat when you're upset, and its even more of a bonus when he purrs and tries to lick your tears!

Frustration....oh, and a really cute polar bear cub

So I'm in the job hunt again. And a fantastic opportunity has come up! I am so excited about this job opportunity. So of course, everything must be perfect. Perfect resume, perfect cover letter (the bane of my existence) and of course the perfect references. References, that's the problem...I have a number to choose from, but I want this particular person to write one for me, who has in the past, but for some reason has been unreachable for the past week! I know this person has got my messages, so why aren't they returning an email or a phone call. And then of course, I start to think, that he or she is mad at me for some unknown reason, or maybe they don't want to refer me because they think I suck, or worse yet, they know someone else who wants the job and referred them instead!!!! (And before you think I'm over reacting, in the academic theatre world, you are always less than six degrees from someone else, so that could be a very real fear!!) So hopefully this person will return my messages, I will still go on to plan B references, but make sure the references don't feel like they are plan B's. :(

But after all this ranting I need to look at a cute baby polar bear picture. The Toledo Zoo has three of the four baby polar bears born in North America. It has been fun watching them grow up. The twin girls were out when I took my mom and dad-by-marriage a couple of weeks ago. One of the cubs decided that the den area was fun to play in, and there is a window right there. Yours truly got the best pictures! The cub even tried to bite me through the glass, ah, how cute! So enjoy the pics!

Cooking! I can do it without setting the kitchen on fire!

For the past week, I have planned and executed all of our dinners and lunches. I never had the time before, but since I've been playing house girlfriend, I've had lots of time. While it can be a pain in the butt planning a whole week of meals, in the long run, it ends up saving money and time. Go figure. I even had dinner planned and cooked by the time I got home from my one temp job. So for the last week here has been our menu.

Cranberry Chicken - this recipe was done in the crock pot. Apparently the smell of cranberries permeated the house the entire day and drove Scott nuts. I substituted the chicken pieces for boneless, skinless chicken breasts and it worked wonderfully! We had it with couscous and a salad. Quite a success, if I do say so myself. I found it in my Fix It and Forget It, cookbook on page 175.

Mac's Meatloaf - family recipe with my own tweaks. It calls for 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef, but we doubled it and baked it with a bunch of potatoes. We got six meals out of it! Works great for lunches. If you really want the recipe, I guess I could share, but I'll only mail it through snail mail!

Pasta with Broccoli, Sausage with a Ricotta Surprise - a Rachael Ray recipe. Sometimes it is a hit or miss with her recipes. The first time I make one of her recipes, I follow the directions exactly. But sometimes I find that the sauces don't reduce enough in the time the book says they should. Also, I don't have a lot of fresh herbs on hand (sometimes they are too pricey and the farmers market is winding down) so I substituted dried parsley for fresh. Also, use only 3/4 cup chicken stock (I used chicken broth) instead of what the recipe says. Pretty tasty recipe and not too bad reheated, this dish serves 4, but we got six meals out of if. It is on page 80 of Express Lane Meals.

Lemon Steamed Fillets - Desperation Dinners at its finest. I have yet to meat a Desperation Dinner meal that I have yet to like. This one is really easy and really tasty. Fish prices, being what they are, we went to Costco and purchased a large package of tilapia (it was 4.59 per pound, by far the cheapest in the area) and what we didn't use we individually packaged in snack bags and then put all the snack bags in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer. This way I won't have a fish popsicle when I go to defrost them. Very light and tasty and not fishy at all! We had ours with rice pilaf and salad. This is on page 278 of Desperation Dinners! They now have a number of cookbooks out, but this recipe was in the original cookbook.

This week, will be shorter as far as cooking goes. Tonight it's a round roast done in the crock pot. That will last for dinner and lunch for probably two to three days. And then a chicken recipe with feta cheese. Wednesday night is celebration for Scott's birthday so we're going out, and then of course Thursday is T-Day, which I don't have to cook this year. So I'll just post the picture of the perfect bird from 2004. (Didn't get one from last year, it was carved into to quick!)

I want a pizza....now!

Ok, so I'm having a crappy day and all I want to do is eat an entire pizza on my own. I'm not going to, because that would require leaving the condo, which would require me to brush my hair and look less scary, so no, not happening.

I'm trying to stay positive, but I hate looking for a job. I've been at it for two weeks now. You'd think the temp agency I'm signed up with could find me something. I've applied at more retail stores today than I care to think about. I've answered the same question twenty times! Whoever said that it is easy to find a job once you've had an education should be dragged through the streets by wild horses or NYC cab drivers, whichever is available.

And this is just the Internet side, tomorrow I get to go out and about and find the places that only want you to apply in person. Oh goody, I get to wear heels then tomorrow. I draw the line at pantyhose! Where's that damn pizza!!!!

I have a Bacon number of 3!

Everyone has played "Six Degrees of Keving Bacon." Started by some college kids the idea is that Kevin Bacon can be linked to any actor in 6 steps or less. So I got on the IMDB database to see if I could link myself to Kevin Bacon through Allan Kayser.

Allan Kayser attended CMSU (now UCM) my freshmen year of college and we were in the musical Into The Woods together in the Central Missouri Repertory's 1999 season. So on my own I linked my self to Kevin Bacon in 6 steps:

Macaela was in Into The Woods (1999 CMR)with Allan Kayser.
Allan Kayser was in Night of the Creeps (1986) with Jason Lively.
Jason Lively was in European Vacation (1985) with Chevy Chase.
Chevy Chase was in Christmas Vacation (1989)with Randy Quaid.
Randy Quaid was in The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002) with Illeana Douglas.
Illeana Douglas was in Stir of Echoes (1999) with Kevin Bacon.

Pretty neat. However, I came across another website called the Oracle of Bacon, here they do the work for you. So I typed in Allan Kayser and he can be linked to Kevin Bacon in two steps, so that links me in three steps, thus my Bacon number is 3.

Macaela was in Into the Woods with Allan Kayser.
Allan Kayser was in More than Puppy Love with Lisa Sloan.
Lisa Sloan was in Starting Over with Kevin Bacon.

I will never be a homemaker...

Since I'm unemployed at the moment and currently in the throes of job hunting, I am a stay-at-home girlfriend. I do not know how the homemakers of the world do it. I am currently going through a list of things I've been meaning to do but haven't had the time. So today, it was cleaning out the closets. Talk about fun. I then made a trip to my storage unit and pulled out my winter clothes. Just the thought of unpacking all of those things and then restoring all of my summer clothes makes me tired.

This morning found me on the couch going through my recipe books and planning a week's worth of meals. I am glad, I'm doing this, but yikes it is a lot of work. The good thing is pizza is on the menu only once. So hey, that's a positive. But I think the thing that gets me the most is doing the dishes. I now have a routine of doing dishes! I do the dishes while I cook dinner. And I almost always time dinner to correspond with the time Scott gets home.

Last week, I swept, mopped, dusted and polished. I even found myself folding Scott's clothes last night. I don't even fold my own clothes! I also scrubbed the shower, I mean really scrubbed it. As in I was on my hands and knees with the Comet and a scrub brush. And yes, I had my hair pulled back with a bandanna on it and wearing mismatch clothes to boot! In my spare time I knit.

I don't have the energy to be a stay at home anything. I'm just lucky we don't have kids, I'm pretty sure they would have been locked in a closet by now.

The beginning of many...

I know. I haven't blogged in a very long time. Let's just say that I've been working through some things and the thought of writing, even for leisure, was just too difficult. In fact, I haven't even chatted with friends during this time either. I think I had to go into a hermit-like-state in order to work through stuff.

Ok, so here it goes. I have an eating disorder. I've kept this private for a number of reasons, mainly, I just couldn't deal with it. At first I thought if I said it out loud, that would be enough to admit to it. But I think keeping it to myself and not writing about it was just delaying the "recovery" process. So, there's that. I feel better now, and hopefully this will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between me and my keyboard...wait that didn't sound right, oh well.

Oh, and I quit my job!