Surviving A Marathon Workout

Astrophe's Journal

August 27, 2000 -- 9:21 AM EST

Congratulate me. I survived the first 18 week schedule! Now onto the second 18 week schedule. At the end of that one -- it's marathon time!

Very mellow weekend so far. This is a good thing. Lot of together time -- either window shopping, reading, talking or playing games. I love Parcheesi. I think the first time I got involved in that the game originally it belonged to my parents and they let me throw the dice for them while they played. I do remember playing with both of them on the bedroom floor and I remember there being no Karen, so I must have been about three. I couldn't handle anything but shaking the dice in the little cup and flinging them back out. One of them would move my pieces for me. For some reason, I remember liking to sniff the inside of the cardboard tube that you put the dice in. It smelled good to me.

Yes, I am still a cardboard sniffer. I really dig the smell of paper stuff.

Eventually, my parents let me keep the game for myself and sooner or later I learned to count enough to manage moving the pieces around on my own when playing with Mom. I don't know what happened to that set. Not that it matters. I just bought a new one! Now Paul can play with me -- yaaaaay! Paul refuses to get Candyland. He things the gingerbread men pieces are ugly and he got sick of playing it with our nephew when he was little. Too bad -- I have fond memories of Candyland and I LIKE the gingerbread men!.

So it's that kind of weekend... mellow.

I woke up yesterday morning and I stuffed myself into his sleeping armpit and took a long deep breath and wriggled my toes under the covers. See, this is good. Good, good, good weekend. NO alarms, no stress, nothing pressing to do, I could stay in bed all day long wriggling my toes, sniffing Paul's armpit. He woke enough to pat my back absent-mindedly and then he nodded off again.

Meanwhile, I made a mental note to update my recipe journal. If we have something new that it a definite repeat, I scribble it into the recipe journal. Made crockpot Coq Au Vin for Paul and it turned out well. He liked it, and it's something he can handle making in the future so that was a definite keeper. I skipped the bacon in it -- he's not wild about it and the recipe wanted me to cook it. drain it, and then chop it up and that's more meat handling than I want to deal with!

Coq Au Vin

2 cups sliced onion

1 cup sliced mushrooms

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. thyme

1/4 tsp. pepper

1/2 cup red wine

3/4 cup chicken stock

1/4 cup tomato paste

assorted chicken parts, skinless

Dump into crockpot, cook on low 6-8 hours.

Pretty much assemble and get it going before I go to bed and then in the morning when I get up, pack half to freeze and then leave the rest to nuke that night for his dinner. I'm still not fond of handling meat. It grosses me. But since he's trying so hard to cooperate with Karen and gain weight, I figure I can meet him halfway somewhere to help him and then later he can take it over himself. Crockpot stuff is ideal as a compromise. Minimal handling for me, and he's pretty confident that he can't screw something up in a crockpot when he does it himself.

I am sending Karen (my sister) the smaller Rival one, and mine is a larger Corningware one. But I keep meaning to call Rival to see if their bake pan will fit into a corningware model.

Today, he actually asked ME if I was hungry and if I wanted to get lunch. That struck me as funny -- usually it's the other way around. He's starting to pay more attention to his body needs. Good, good, good thing.

Made gingerbread to use up some sad apples. Turned out nice -- so that's another one for the recipe journal:

Applesauce Gingerbread (makes 18 muffins)

1 1/2cups unbleached flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2/3 cup sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 cup applesauce

1 apple, peeled, minced

1 cup molasses

3 tsp Ener-G egg replacer mixed with 4 tbs water (or you could use 3 egg whites)

Preheat oven to 325 deg. Mix everything together, put into lined muffin tins and baked for 30 min or until toothpick test comes out clean.