Happy Birthday, Leap Year Hubby

My Leap Year Hubby is 28 today on the rare 29th of February...




And what better way to celebrate than PBJ Whoopie Pies



And beer!

Barbee's Law of Motion and E-motion

My weekly deep yoga class this week got me thinking about emotions and how we store them in our bodies. It is a common ideology that humans store emotions in various parts of our bodies over the years. Different parts of our bodies are more susceptible to this storage based on usage of muscles and proximity to brain (making the neck and shoulders ripe for emotional pack-ratting).
In a way this is a defense mechanism, or merely an adaptation for dealing with emotions that humans have developed. Through physical activity, especially yoga, we have the capacity the stir these emotions up which can be a good thing or a not so good thing depending on what kind of conglomeration your stew pot of bodily emotion is comprised of. I'm sure you've noticed when you're doing physical activity of some kind that at times you may feel happy, frustrated, excited, elated, grief, confusion or a cocktail of any of these and more. This is your life resurfacing itself and forcing you to deal with it in one capacity or another. There are even arguments out there which would assert that the storage of too much negative emotion can lead to mental illness or even cause cancer.

This got me thinking about Newton's Laws of motion and The Law of Conservation of Energy. You remember that one from high school Physics class, right. The law that says that matter is neither created nor destroyed. Basically, meaning that all energy and substance in our world is constant and remains in some form or another. Theorists have long used this as evidence for reincarnation and ideas about constancy of the soul, and I would argue that it also supports this idea that our emotions are constant within our bodies. If we can assume that this is true, then we can assume that the entire body is comprised of emotion woven deeply into each muscle fiber and strand of fascia. And if this is true, then we can also assume that for every motion that one exerts there is an equal and accompanying emotion. Boom! Newton would be so proud.

Delicious

Not only is Fabio Viviani the hottest contestant ever to grace Top Chef, he's a damn good chef too.  Yesterday, I followed this recipe and created a bangin' Italian Wedding Soup. If you can get past the annoying lady with him in the video, he'll tell you in his irresistible Italian accent how to make it.

I substituted turkey for beef and had Jason (doing his best Fabio impersonation, of course) make the meatballs because raw meat weirds me out.  It's painfully easy to do this and it doesn't take that long to develop a ton of flavor. I totally stole the phrase "develop flavor" from Top Chef, so you can say it too while you develop some flavors of your own.

I can't emphasize enough how delicious this soup is...I mean, woah!  It's damn good!  It also makes a ton, so you can have a big pretend Italian Family dinner or eat left over soup until you never want to see it again, either way, you're going to love this recipe.


So, get thee to the groc, and get thee to the kitch, and make this soup!

Ingredients

1 lb. ground beef (or turkey)

2 ea. eggs

1/3 cup panko bread crumbs

3 Tbsp. parmesan cheese, grated

3 quarts chicken broth

3 cups fresh baby spinach

1 cup carrots, diced

1 cup yellow onion, diced

1 cup celery, diced

2 cups orzo pasta

½ cup (to taste) extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Directions

Saute carrots, onion and celery in oil until soft and starting to brown.
Add Chicken stock. Let the mixture reduce on high heat.
While boiling, mix beef, eggs, breadcrumbs and parmesan in a separate bowl to make meatballs. Form into ½ inch balls, and set on a baking sheet.
Cook meatballs on the baking sheet in 375F degree oven for 12-15 minutes.
Add pasta to soup to cook.
When meatballs are cooked, add them to the soup.
Stir in the spinach to the soup.
Boil 5 minutes and season with salt and pepper.

Let me count the ways

I must have been a sandwich in a past life, because I love you and I want to have sandwich babies with you.

Separation of Church and State

Last I checked, Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and the concept of Lent were religious holidays. Right? So, why are we talking about this on the morning announcements in a school?
I'm just sayin'...

My weekend

Trapped in a giant beach house...
An abundance of friends, food and alcohol...
A hot tub...

The other dog

All that's left in our little house is the other dog, an amalgamation of all the dog hair that has accumulated over the years...how sad.


Empty house....








Goodbye, first little house. When we are old, will think back to our first little home with fond memories? I think so.

A Valentine Memory

I'm remembering my favorite holiday from childhood to celebrate in school.

I used to love to cover an old shoebox in red and pink construction paper and turn it into a mailbox to eagerly await valentine missives and candy tokens of affection. I equally loved to labor over my valentines the night before, matching each small paper card befitted with pop- culture characters and silly messages to its seemingly intended recipient and inscribing it with personal messages for each of my classmates. The excitement of dumping out your valentines after each was dolled out only rivaled the excitement aroused by the actual delivering of these little epistles. Each of us our own version of a mailman with our mailbags full of love, tip-toeing about the room depositing the fruits of our labor.

I long for the inclusiveness that the elementary valentines day afforded. The innocence, acceptance, and love of such a little community of peers that later had to be traded in for middle school chub, 6.00$ cards and a sense of social pressure that cast compassion off into a corner.

And now it all seems so far away. Valentines Day is just a day like any other. But the fond memories of unconditional elementary love inspire in me a sense of appreciation and a hope to once again be able love and accept people enough to posses the ability to pick out the perfect small card for them and drop it into their mailbox.

Getting sauce on stuff

People, never never never fill out forms while eating. Every time you do, you will get sauce on your forms. Form readers do not like sauce on their forms. Sauce looks bad on things and several days later it appears disgusting. Sauce on things also begs the question:
Was this person taking this form seriously when they spilled sauce on it?
Where has this form been?
What kind of person is this and what exactly were they eating?
And
Yum, what's for dinner tonight?

MOVED

We did it! We moved. We are now official residents of Durham. Our little house is now empty minus pounds and pounds of dog hair which I am too fearful of returning to the house to retrieve because I don't want to mourn our little Hillsborough life. But I should, and will. We had a good run in that little house.

And...thank goodness we didn't open up any of our boxes and find a small child inside.

Gross

1. Coughing up phlegm the color of swamp mud and the texture of hard brain
2. School bathrooms
3. The thought of what goes on in the kitchens of fast food restaurants
4. Old gum stuck to your shoe
5. Dudes in fedoras
6. Velour track suits
7. Licorice
8. Two people hanging out together, each on their phone
9. Fake laughing
10. Well, fake anything.

So not an app for that!

I have yet to find the perfect app for my iphone and ipad for blogging. Every single app that I've tried needs a serious makeover in ways that I am not even technologically apt enough to articulate. This is why you've all been hungry for blogs from me this weekend. So, for that, I am sorry.

And, now I make fun of myself for even complaining about apps at all. How lame, Blaine. How lame.

Ok, but seriously, app writing people...Decent blogging app, please.

The calm before the storm

This weekend will be mine and Jason's last official weekend of residence in Hillsborough. It's the end of an era. A short 3 year era, but the end of it nonetheless. It is bittersweet in a way. I will miss the small town feel of Hillsborough, hanging out at Cup a Joe where everyone knows us and we know them. I will miss our little house and our neighbors. I will miss our porch. I will miss running the grueling Occoneechee Mountain trail, which is right outside our door. I will miss the tiny town center, and the security that comes with living in a small town that nothing else is happening outside of a 4-5 block radius. But with that security also comes a feeling of suffocation and listlessness, which I will not miss. Seeing familiar faces everywhere is also a double edged sword, leading to contempt and a longing for anonymity. Our small house is great, but not a forever home. To miss a trail is normal and there are trails everywhere. When I begin to feel preemptively homesick for Hillsborough, I have to remind myself of these things and of the fact that change is gonna come and that change is good.

This last weekend in Hillsborough also demarcates the gateway to a short stint back in my hometown of Durham to bookend that last 29 years that I have lived in this area. All my life, all I have ever wanted was to get out of NC even though I kept finding myself here for various reasons, and finally the time has come. Again, bittersweet in a away. Durham has changed so much, and so have I. It will be fun to spend these last 6 months, before our great adventure across the country, having a great adventure in the new 'old stomping grounds'.

But for now, I will enjoy the brief calm before the storm (even if it does involve massive amounts of packing and freaking out).

But I am...

After preaching several days ago the sound advice of a children's book hailing "don't be scared...". I still am. Here's why: This months book club book is this

It's the tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and a maniacal serial killer who preys upon young women against the enchanting backdrop of revolutionary inventions and architectural revelations. Sounds scary, right? I mean serial killers!!?? Not my cup of tea. I'm really nervous about reading it because serial killer things really freak me out and I don't want to have nightmares, people.

So, what I'm probably going to do is read the book only in broad daylight, with a weapon and dog protection close by.

-OR-

I could take the advice of the song and hide under a bigger scary book?