Dirty Martini: In My Mouth And On The Wall

Holy crap! I'm sitting here trying to compose my thoughts and my stomach is all, "no you didn't!" It's pissed over what I've put it through this week. It was all out gastrointestinal war last night when I was drinking a dirty martini while eating habanero popcorn. I'm hoping my eyeballs don't begin to protest next. They've been subjected to nearly every show on the OWN Network. I didn't even know we got this channel and I've cried during both the Rhianna and Jennifer Hudson interviews. Oprah must have one of those clickers in her pocket that she pushes every time she sees tears. You know, like the one the flight attendant walks up and down the aisle with, to count the number of people on the plane. I imagine Oprah high-fiving herself if she beats her own record. She has everything she could want so now success is only measurable in tears, famous people tears.

Besides doubling my body weight and watching so much Intervention I no longer flinch at the site of a heroin needle, I've been considering the guest bedroom paint color. Obviously this has been a weird break. I have some sentimental pieces in the room that I want to play off of. The inspiration photos have me looking at rich, yellow-based, olive greens.

Little Green Notebook

House & Garden

Image from Tokyo Bleep on tumblr.

apartment therapy

My fear is a color palette reminiscent of JCPenney's in the 90's. I'll walk in and everything is forest green, navy and burgundy. Forest green and sage are what my nightmares are made of. I'm thinking olive green, with salmon, gold and black accents. The samples I've been testing are all Benjamin Moore; Timson Green, Guacamole and Windsor Green. Below you can see the room itself and my samples up on the wall. Yeah, I'm a professional photographer so don't let the picture quality intimidate you.

I'm leaning towards Timson Green at the moment. I didn't include swatches or closeups on the wall because, frankly, they never look like they do in person.

I'll be spending the next few days continuing to overindulge, feel bad about myself, repeat, until next weekend. Then I'll lie to myself about making a change for a clean and healthy lifestyle on Monday. Somewhere in between all that conversation between my earballs, I'll paint this room. I'll have some photos to share and maybe someone who knows what they're doing will take them. Until then, let me know what you think about the olive green OR you have to help me paint over it when I make this horrible mistake that you did not warn me about.

Holiday Wishes and Glittery Protest!

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and then, and THEN, IT'S CHRISTMAS!! This year there's been less dramatics and sprinting to the finish line for the holidays. The Beard and I decided to take a holiday where we celebrate our house, Snelson and each other. We travel each year to others and this year it feels good to know I'm not going to be stuck in Detroit without clean underwear or borrowing my mom's snow boots in Wisconsin. You know, the simple things. It also means that I'll be working tomorrow, on Christmas Eve. Don't you worry, I'll be wearing something gold and sparkly, with a skull and crossbones in silent, fabulous, #glitteryprotest. Come tomorrow night The Beard and I will be eating #crispyduck from our favorite place on Buford Highway and lounging in our pjs. #tistheseason

This year I stepped out of my comfort zone (if only just my big toe). I decided to pursue some new interests and push myself a little harder than usual. In my down time I'm going to work on some more content and post more often. I still have to fill you in on the soap opera called This Here House, my trip to South Korea, my adult thrush, my bedroom, living room, studio and dining room progress and hopefully some new projects.

So I'll see you next year and don't do what I do and make your New Year's resolution unattainable. This year's motto, "reach to the top shelf where you have to stand on your tippy toes and then give up and ask a taller stranger to grab something for you." #forgetthestars #keepingitreal

Gold and Bright and Everything Right: Bright Edition

Well shoot! I couldn't help but put together another gift guide. This one is all needy and flashy and starved for attention. I think I just described every middle child, including myself.

My fondness for blinding color and pattern was started in the era of the Hypercolor t-shirt. Mine was purple and turned to pink with body heat. (How did they do that?) Looking back there is something very wrong with a t-shirt that encourages others to touch you for long periods of time. The gifts below, however, can be enjoyed alone or with others, no touching.

Fluorescent Note Cards by Le Typographe on OrangeArt Store

Geometric bib necklace by AnAstridEndeavor on Etsy

Applicata Lily Blossom Candlestick from J.CREW

"Seeing Double" Cocktail Napkin Set by Waiting on Martha

Corded Handwoven Khadi Silk Peach Cushion Cover from aniika

Vintage Pink and Gold Horse Head Planter from Chairish

"Shut In" print by Jennifer Davis on Etsy

Mien Beads Pompom Necklace by CHEZMOIMYHOME on Etsy

Pink Chanderi Cushion Cover from aniika

Orange Leopard Small Dish on Furbish

Striped Moroccan Pillow from BABA Souk

doves kissing bookmarks from Starling store

Orange Herringbone Pom Pom Throw from Waiting on Martha

Watering Can from Poketo

Winking Girl Clutch Silk - Shocking Pink from enSoie

Pom Pom Spotted Lumbar Pillow by Furbish

That's Bananas, Print from BABA Souk

Serax Canvas Planter Pink Set of 3 on FAB.

Pink and Blue Jumbo Clutch from aniika

I might part with a finger or two for the orange leopard dish, the "Shut In" print or that clutch. Not the important fingers, maybe just my pinkies. Which gifts would you chop off body parts for?

I leave tomorrow for a trip to South Korea. I promise not to take any long walks up North and to take a lot of photos. I'll be back with a post when I return. Happy shopping, er, chopping!

Gold and Bright and Everything Right: Gold Edition

So I know we all need another gift guide like we need a hole in the head. For those of you who already have a hole in the head, I'm sorry. Also, you're probably not reading this. You have other priorities.

It's no secret I love color or colour or color. I would also live in a Liberace, gold gilded house if Liberace were still alive and I was a character played by Matt Damon. We can be just as fabulous with some bright lights to get us through the dark winter. I don't adhere to the color palette of the season. Winter, you don't tell me what to do! 

So here's what you need. I mean, what your fabulous, gold gilded friends need...

gold brooklynd bow necklace by f. is for frank

Leather Tote Bag Gold by Leah Lerner on Fab.

Champagne Bubbles Highball Glasses from Anthropologie

gold dune necklace by f. is for frank

Melting iPhone Case from Urban Outfitters

Horseshoe Drink Stirs by Waiting on Martha

Large Pale Pink Polka Dot Notebook by Waiting on Martha

Skinnydip London Earbuds - Black/White from Nasty Gal

Sugar Paper Gold Hearts Note Card Set by Waiting on Martha

Zuzu Metallic Glass Set from Nasty Gal

"Fold" Copper Decorative Pillow by John Robshaw Textiles

Lila Rice XL Crescent Hoops from Bona Drag

Happy shopping and there's no judgement here if you get a gift or two for yourself (or me).

Dead Limb Friday

Friday was a hot, slightly paralyzed mess. I woke up at 2am and realized I couldn't use my arm. Not in a numb way, in a where are my muscles, why can't I lift my dead extremity kind of way. This was supposed to be a post about rice pilaf and kebabs. Instead I'm adding to my list of weird afflictions. I'm a conduit for accidents, medical anomalies and reasons for The Beard to miss work.

If an ant bites my foot, it swells up to the size of a football and I have to take steroids and antihistamines. The possibility of roid rage makes me feel like I'm living on the edge, giving me an excuse to flip a table or punch holes in the walls. "Myke, I couldn't help it. I was raging." I'd start hanging out with Danny Bonaduce because he'd be the only person who "gets me." My foot would go back to it's normal size but now I'd have a steroid addiction. It wouldn't all be for not because Bonaduce and I could have a reality show until our falling out over my attempts at sobriety. Then we'd go on VH1's Couples Therapy to work it out. (#anyway)

I have been rushed to the ER three times, once with a police escort, after my face started to swell and my airway began to close. The nurse said, "Five more minutes and you would've been dead." She had an amazing bed side manner. Such a nurturer...really. I like to think her next patient came in with a stomach flu so she put his arm in a sling and she finally got fired. Maybe she'd join the reality show with me and Bonaduce. If she hadn't been my nurse I think there's a real possibility that we would've been great friends. Her personality was just so salty and I put salt on everything. I saw multiple allergists who couldn't tell me what I was allergic to besides answers. I was given an epi pen and sent on my way.

There was that one time I got married. I decided to break my toe in the middle of the night while trying to find my way back to bed in complete darkness. I wore flip flops under my wedding dress. My entire foot was black and blue. After our nine hour flight to Hawaii for our honeymoon my foot looked like a caricature of itself. It was the size of a newborn and kept me from scuba diving, hiking, swimming, really anything The Beard wanted to do. Feels like one of those times someone probably said, "You'll look back on that trip years from now and just laugh." (#ummno)

Have you ever heard of pityriasis rosea? Yeah, me neither, until my upper body was covered in spots that looked like hives. When they didn't go away after being at work all day I went to urgent care. I thought it was simply an allergic reaction to a nine to five. The doctor said it was a pretty common skin disease. (#mmk) She said there was no specific cause, no treatment and it would probably linger for three months, spreading it's way across my body and possibly my face. Great information and totally worth my copay. I would walk around the house topless because the rubbing of fabric on my person was irritating. It was a gift to our neighbors since we are still without window coverings. And by gift, I mean a sac of coal...

There's also that time my little (#big) brother and The Beard had to push me around Disney World in a wheelchair. I had a fractured foot and a free pass to the front of every line. My dad would yell, "it's a miracle" every time I stood up. My brother, Spencer, would see how fast he could push me while weaving in and out of the crowds. At the end of that trip I developed strep, you know, just to punctuate that sentence.

I started having aura migraines about a year ago. I see flashing lights in my vision as a warning sign for the nausea and dizziness to come. The first time this happened I got a shot of morphine in my arse and a satchel of anti-nausea pills. Maybe I still use those...

The Beard, my sister from another mister and I decided to take Snelson and Stanley to Stone Mountain for a bit of a hike. We were at the base of the mountain, taking in the view. We got maybe twenty feet when my foot got caught on a tree root and I went down like this here oak tree. I don't remember the last time I've felt that much pain. On the same path was a father and his triplet girls. (Yes, I'm serious.) They were taking a health class at school and decided to take this learning moment to keep me calm and tell me how to breath. They were maybe eight years old, standing around me like I was a sacrificial lamb. The father whipped out a splint from who knows where. His fanny pack was fully equipped in case a thirty something year old woman didn't watch where she was walking and took a tumble in the middle of the woods. The Beard called the Stone Mountain police who called the Stone Mountain paramedics. We heard sirens and suddenly I was on a stretcher being hoisted by five to seven men. They carried me out of the woods and of course had me sign a stack of waivers. They offered a ride to the ER in the back of an ambulance that would set us back $500. Obviously we passed because you CAN put a price on good health. The Beard and Mary turned the back of the Element into something quite comparable. Like if Uber decided to show up for emergencies it would look like my sweet ride to the hospital. I had a blanket, I could lay down fully extended and Mary inserted an IV. (Not really but wouldn't that have been amaze?) Something, something, cast, something and my friend Lara pushed me around in a wheel chair at work for a few weeks. I should really invest in my own wheelchair.

When living in Savannah I had pain in my abdomen that had me doubled over and screaming for my mommy. I went to the ER and they admitted me to the hospital where I spent the next three days. I had no control over my bodily functions. Three different specialists came to my room to poke and prod me. This is where we get real, REAL. I had soiled all my undergarments and asked if they had something for me to wear. The nurse handed me mesh underwear and I looked at her with tears in my eyes. Had she not been privy to what had been going on for hours on end? Maybe it was the same lady who kindly let me know I almost died. Let's just say yes.

These stories could go on forever but it's almost time to cook a turkey... 

Lara, my co-worker and friend, took me to my first appointment on Friday. We bonded in a way that someone who drives a person with a dead limb to their doctor's office would. She saw me topless like our unfortunate neighbors. We decided the physician's assistant was relying on Dr. Google when she would leave the room for long spans of time. Apparently the intrawebs didn't know what was wrong either so she sent us to another doctor. 

Both doctors asked if I had been doing any new, unusual activity. My mind ran wild with things like, roller skating interpretations of Stephen King novels or hang gliding while knitting a throw. I said, "No." The second physician's assistant at the second appointment at the third building seemed very concerned. She told The Beard to rush me to the ER if I had blurry vision or if my speech was confused and uncharacteristic. Without the ability to verbalize this to him how would he know that this was different from the everyday? I'm like an amusement park ride, sometimes I run smoothly, sometimes a bird hits Fabio in his gross, romance novel face and sometimes I get stuck upside down with twenty people, blood rushing to their noggins.

Over the weekend I gained use of my arm and still have some lingering pain. I'm waiting on my MRI results and for now, I've put away my roller skates. I'm going to look for merit badges chronicling my medical afflictions and sew them onto a denim jacket. I'll wear it every time I go to the hospital so I don't have to fill out the medical history form. I'll do a quick spin and then tell them my height and weight. 

I think we've established my tendency to over share. I just wanted to cement this fact and make sure you were still (#allin).

Happy Turkey Day and here's to making it out alive!

Finding Your Place And Stuffing Your Face

Cooking for me is more of an experiment than a science. I tend to take what's available in the fridge and come up with my own concoction. I know flavors and what works well together so this hap-hazard approach has served me pretty well thus far. Ask me for a recipe and I'll have to rack my brain, mentally searching for the ingredients I used. It's like an episode of Chopped. What can I make with this one piece of sliced sandwich ham, a granola bar and lasagna noodles? Don't worry, that hasn't happened, yet. (I usually don't have lasagna noodles.)

My "approach" stems from a desire to use things up and to never be wasteful. I'm that person who keeps the to-go ketchup in case we run out of the good stuff. I find some sort of weird satisfaction in using something up and throwing away the remains. (That just got real #Dateline.) One of my dearest friends was dating a guy who threw out all the hot dogs and burgers after a cookout. I just stared, mouth agape, like he had just run over a tiny dog, backed up and ran over it again. I glanced at Myke and he knew exactly what I was thinking.

Somehow I got sidetracked by leftovers, experiments and guys who will never be good enough for my bestest lady friend. What I'm trying to get at is my cultural curiosity led me to make a meal with purpose AND recipes. This meant a little bit of research and a little bit of measuring. I mostly measure with my eyeballs when it comes to cooking. The Beard is the baker and Snelson is our candlestick maker.

We decided to make lehmeijun, an Armenian meat pie. We asked Snelson to sit this one out since the recipe did not call for candlesticks. (Also, he has no thumbs, which I hear is integral to cooking Armenian food.) 

Meat mixture:

1 lb ground lamb or ground beef (we used a combination of the two)
1 14-oz can whole tomatoes, drained and crushed
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1 tbsp. chopped mint leaves
1 tbsp. tomato paste
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. black pepper

The dough:

1 package quick rising yeast
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp. olive oil
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Now you have to read stuff, like directions and you have to follow them. I thought it might be comical to take the lead from Ikea and use stick men to tell you what happens next. I want you to like me and stick around for awhile so I changed my mind. Also, this should not be a four day process.

Go ahead and chop, chop, chop until you have all of your ingredients for the meat mixture. I recommend using those onion goggles they sell late at night on the picture tube to limit the amount of salty tears that fall into your meats. Remember, you are following a recipe, DO NOT DIVERGE.

Add everything together in a mixing bowl, you know, to mix.

Adjust the seasoning however you see fit. I guess that would mean tasting raw meat. If you're into that no one is looking. Set aside your mixture and move on to the dough.

The Beard made the dough for this recipe. Again, science, measurements and accuracy are not my strong suit. You'll need to dissolve the yeast into the warm water. Preferably these next steps should be done in a stand up mixer. The Beard used god's ultimate tools, his hands, like a man. Stir in the olive oil, sugar, salt and 1-1/2 cups of the flour. Mix the dough for about five minutes or until it looks smooth. Knead in the remaining 1-1/4 cups of flour and continue to knead until it is again a smooth texture. Continue to knead until the dough is elastic, about 10 minutes by machine, 20 minutes by hand, 3 days by foot.

 

Form the dough into a ball and cover with a large bowl for 1-1/2 hours. This will allow the dough to rise and double in volume.

Get ready to work through your issues by punching down the dough. Then make nice and shape it into twelve or so balls. Flour your surface and roll each ball into a six to seven inch circle. You don't want to make them too thin.

Arrange the flattened dough onto a lightly greased baking sheet and allow to rise slightly. Cover the surface with a thin layer of the meat mixture.

I put on a scarf so this picture wasn't entirely inappropriate.

 Bake your beauties in a 375 degree oven for 25 to 35 minutes. THEN, put them in your mouth hole.

So there you have it, Armenian lehmeijun. I'm looking forward to sharing a few more recipes in the upcoming days. That'll give you some time to grow in a uni-brow and to digest your first culinary creation. Wait, maybe that's just me. Until then...