Compromise

I've heard it many times.  In all of my marriage advice seeking, I often heard the term "compromise" thrown in to the mix.  And it's true.  I've learned that not only in marriage, but well before throughout the course of our relationship.  Everything from restaurant choices to duty stations have encountered a compromise at one time or another and this Christmas was no different.

My husband is not really a fan of Christmas time and holidays in general.  Which leads to interesting conversations this time of year.  For me, holidays have always been a really special time.  My family wasn't the close knit white picket fence kind of family growing up, but around the holidays we always had special moments together.  Some of my favorite times with my parents and my siblings involve putting the tree up with Christmas music in the background, driving around to look at Christmas lights, and my brother and I rushing downstairs on Christmas morning secretly, and an ungodly hour, dumping out our stockings all over the floor to see what was inside, and then putting it all back up and going back to sleep for a couple more hours.  I LOVE CHRISTMAS TIME.  I love celebrations and holidays in general.  I love gift giving and decorating and on and on and on. 

My husband... not so much.

So.  The questions remains... how do we find a common ground here?  How do I relinquish some of my passion for Christmas in order not to crowd him?  And how does he pep up and act joyful this time of year when he can hardly stomach it?  We're still working on it.  I hope that we can find a way to create our own traditions and memories around this time of year... but I think it will take time.

We've done pretty good this year.  For example - Sgt. helped me put the tree up, and then I did all the ornaments and decorating.  We're doing gifts but we put a spending limit on it, and we're doing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" where we get to open a gift (starting tomorrow) every day until Christmas.  We also made a gingerbread house! 

Gingerbread house?  Well that sounds pretty festive and traditional.  Doesn't it?  The compromise here?  We make a gingerbread house, as long as the husband gets to decide what kind of house it will be. Fair enough. 

Made all the more interesting by the fact that we created this type of house as a competition between two of our couple friends who also made the same type of house.  Just to spoil the end... we totally won :)

I hope you enjoy pictures of our Gingerbread house compound.  Complete with C-Wire, sandbags, guard towers with candy cane M-4s an ECP up front, and a moat with radioactive sharks.
Merry Christmas!

To Bridalplasty or not?

Ok... I have no idea why I'm watching this, maybe it's because it's the first channel I flipped to when Sgt. went to study and I saw an airman in uniform and a bunch of women oohing and awwing.  I've seen a few commercials for this and wondered if I'd want to watch it.  I must say I'm a sucker for trash TV...

While I'm not really for or against plastic surgery as a general rule I wonder how Sgt. would have reacted if I said I wanted to go on a game show to win a bunch of plastic surgery for our wedding.  You're about to get married... do you think your future husband wants you changing up on him?  Of course there is the "They love you for what's on the inside" and while this may be true, I can't help but think that I wouldn't have gotten the same reaction from Sgt. (huge smile, deep breath, trembling hands.. I still love thinking about it) if I had gotten head to toe plastic surgery before the wedding. 

I did watch Bridal Boot Camp when it was on VH1.  Really over dramatized but I watched anyway.

The current challenge is to put a puzzle of their "future self" together, then grab a syringe and head down to the "First class injectables party!"... yowza

I may just stick with Jersey Shore as the tip top of my trash TV tower.

** Oh my gosh!  The way they send someone home is by saying "I'm sorry... your wedding will still go on, but it just won't be perfect" How sad!

Well, I'm not dying. So that's good.

Thanksgiving came and went and my first Thanksgiving hostess job was a great success! The turkey came out wonderfully and everything tasted pretty good.  I broke the cardinal rule of hosting and used a few new recipes that I'd never tried before but all in all they were good.  We had some friends over and had a great time!  The wine I picked out was even requested the next day! (I know my wine)

Overall, the highlights are:
* Remind your husband not to eat all the apples you will be using for your apple pie, or all the cheese you will be using for your green bean casserole, because said husband will have to brave the grocery store on Thanksgiving day if he does.
* Your back and feet WILL hurt after standing all day in the kitchen.  Surprise!
* While rubbing butter all over the turkey and then under it's skin felt extremely dirty and risque... my husband didn't seem to mind since he was taking pictures of the whole thing.  I promise we're not that weird fetish couple... but really, it felt like the turkey and I had a special relationship.
*Timing everything is hard.  Especially with an apartment sized kitchen. All in all I think it turned out ok, but I wouldn't mind investing in some warmers.

And now on to my trip to the big white light.

So, you've all heard about my root canal episode, which if you were wondering, takes place tomorrow morning at 10:00 am.  I am just praying the infection is gone - especially because the dentist made it a point to tell me "If the infection isn't gone it will fight off the anesthesia and then you'll feel it all." Nice. Well because of the whole abscess tooth thing I've been taking the antibiotic, the pain killer, and most frequently - Aleve.  because I've still been going to work and it's not really appropriate to be high on Lortab's while working (although some days I feel like it would be a happy medium) I've been taking Aleve like it's going out of style for the tooth pain.  So what if the box says only take one per day... one per day is not working!  So I take two... ever 3 hours or so... and it works just fine.  What harm could come of a little OTC pain reliever?

This started last Tuesday... but then Saturday morning I woke up with horrific chest pain.  Sporadic tightening but constant dull pain... it sucked.  I chalked it up to heart burn even though I've NEVER had heart burn so I don't really know what it feels like.  It got worse when I'd eat something, and it was worse when I laid down but I got some antacids and figured it would start to get rid of some of the pain.  It didn't.  This continued for two days. Monday I went into work - same symptoms - and was just feeling really off... then I threw up... a lot and my throat didn't burn, which I thought was weird if I was experiencing heart burn.  And then the more I honed in on my problem the more I realized it was really pain down the center of my chest but at about the top of my boobs (for lack of a better, more medically correct term)  to about an inch past them.  So then I called my doctor's triage line...

"Hi, these are the medicines I'm taking, I took way more than directed of the Aleve... what do you think I should do?"
"Well you should probably come in. So your symptoms are just vomiting and heart burn?"
"Well I don't really know if it's heart burn, because I've never had heart burn before... it's just bad chest pain."
"Well, I'm just going to put heart burn for now because if I put chest pain the doctor will just tell you to go to the ER."

Umm... wait... so should I go to the ER?  I immediately had a flash back to Heath Ledger and freaked out thinking I needed to go to the ER because my heart was about to explode. (did I mention I'm also PMSing?)
My husband convinced me to call the nurse back to get more information about the difference between chest pain and heart burn just to make sure I wasn't scarring myself for nothing. After talking to her again I agreed to go see the doctor first.

The diagnosis? Severe Peptic Ulcer. (or Stomach Ulcer)

Oh and I'm not allowed near the Aleve anymore.  Apparently that's a bad side effect of taking too much - stomach bleeding. Fun huh?

So now, I'm cursing my tooth pain as a catalyst for all of this (I certainly can't blame myself... I was in a lot of pain) and I'm even more sad about my no coffee, no Red Bull, no wine, no chocolate, no bad for you foods for a while until this heals up. 

So, like I said, I'm not dying... but without Red Bull and wine for an undetermined amount of time, I just might be anyway.  Stay tuned.

My First Thanksgiving

Well tomorrow is D-Day folks.  My very first role as the Thanksgiving hostess. 

Sgt. and I just had the wedding of our dreams down in Texas which meant frequent trips by me, and a good amount of money spent by us both so to save my employer from any more heart attacks by asking off and to save money by not traveling - we're staying home.  Our first Thanksgiving as a married couple.  We've invited over some friends who couldn't make it home for the holiday either so we should have a nice little group of ROTC cadets and their significant others along with a friend from work, her husband and her little girl.

So, here's a little preview of our menu (so that you can say a prayer for me)

Appetizers:
Deviled Eggs
Spinach and Artichoke Dip
Pepperoni and bacon puff balls

Dinner:
Turkey (and yes, I am cooking it in a bag)
(possibly also a spiral ham)
Green bean casserole
Sweet potato casserole (with brown sugar and pecans - not the one with marshmallows)
Mashed potatoes (made by one of the guests)
My Grandma's stuffing
Rolls

Dessert:
Mississippi Mud Pie
DAR's Carmel Apple Pie
Pumpkin pie (brought by a guest)

Most of the recipes I have stolen from online (one being from a blogger :) ) other than the stuffing.  As far as the turkey goes - I got one of those pop up timers, and so far everyone has just said to stuff it with whatever I want... so I'm putting garlic, apples, celery, cilantro, onion, butter, and seasoning in it.  Any other suggestions?  Any ideas on ANYTHING?  Really, I will take all the tips I can get.  For example... I'm wondering how to keep the spinach dip warm while it's sitting out without sending it back to the microwave every thirty minutes.  Also, any wine recommendations? Like I said any tips for the newly wed would be great!

I hope you all have a fabulous turkey day!  Oh, and how do you like the new look?!

The Great White Chili

** Please excuse the un-appealing look of my blog.  I'm still waiting on my new design to come through!

So, we had a chili cook off at my school as the finale for our canned food drive.  I was determined to enter a white chili.  However, finding a recipe I was happy with was a little more difficult. I could have sworn I saw a recipe on my friends blog so I looked and looked to no avail. (Now, I still SWEAR I saw it on someone blog so if it was yours... send me the link to put my crazy mind at rest.) Finally I found one I was willing to try (this IS a contest after all) on a favorite recipe site of mine - Food.com. (Formally recipezaar)  The result?  WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER! That's right - I won. I'd like to thank the Academy and the official taste tester at the Cabin Fever Household - my husband.

Here is the original recipe:

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon lemon pepper
1 teaspoon cumin seed
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 minced garlic clove
1 cup chopped onion
2 (9 ounce) packages frozen white corn, thawed
2 (4 -8 ounce) cans chopped green chilies 
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 -3 teaspoons lime juice
2 (15 ounce) cans great northern beans, undrained
crushed tortilla chips
shredded Monterrey Jack cheese (or whatever cheese you prefer)

Substitutions I made - I did half water half chicken broth instead of all the water. I used yellow corn because that's what I had around the house. I added in more garlic (because I love it) and some of a homemade seasoning that we have around the house that includes Lowrys, lemon pepper, black pepper, garlic salt, onion powder, and some other something that I can't remember now. Didn't use tortilla chips to serve.

Directions:
1. Mix water, lemon pepper and cumin seed in large saucepan and heat to a boil.
2. Add chicken breast halves, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until chicken is fork tender and juices run clear, about 20-25 minutes.
3. Remove chicken from pot and cut into 1 inch pieces.
4. Add chicken back to liquid in saucepan.
5. Heat olive oil in skillet and cook onions and garlic for a minute or two and then add to saucepan with the chicken.
6. Stir in corn, green chilies, ground cumin and lime juice and heat to a boil.
7. Add beans and cook until thoroughly heated.
8. To serve- place crushed tortilla chips and some shredded cheese into each bowl and ladle hot soup over them.


My opinion on it was that it was good - not fall-down-pee-on-yourself-delicious but pretty tasty.  Actually I was pleasantly surprised that it tasted a lot like tortilla soup to me, which I've been looking for a good recipe.  It wasn't very thick as far as chili's go, more like a soup. Definitely worth a try though!  Let me know how it turns out for you!