Off the Beaten Plan

plan: to devise or project the realization or achievement of

And the World Goes Back to Normal

Seriously - isn't she cute?

Photo by Shine4Him8

Well, perhaps the whole world wasn’t crazy yesterday, or the day before, but mine was. Now, knowing that there will be no more short store hours, or store closings altogether, for another week, I can breathe easy.

Crazy that store closings do that to a girl, huh? It makes me realize how dependent I am on commercial things. McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Target, Barnes & Noble…perhaps I’m more of a Material Girl than I thought.

I got a ton of story ideas from Santa Baby, and purchased the Taylor Swift version so I could figure out exactly what she was asking for. Then I watched Uptown Girls, and wondered how I could write a story that wasn’t exactly like that, and wondered if I could even make the story enjoyable without the morality lesson.

Because I think it would be fun to live that life. (Now I feel obliged to say, “Just for a little while, at least,” but I don’t know if I really mean it.)

At any rate, getting off that tangent, I’ve got some Birthday shopping to do today for my little girl who is turning 4 on Monday. Argh! She is officially no longer a toddler, although she hasn’t really acted like one in a long time. In fact, the only time we don’t understand her is when she’s in full melt-down mode, most likely because she can’t get something she wants, and then we can’t understand it anyway. It sort of works out.

There are still things I need to get done before December 31st, but I’m off the next week so hopefully I’ll have the chance to do them while in between children’s movies and making the kids clean up the horrendous mess that is surely inevitable in my living room. I need to:

  1. Finish my 2010 goal list (Annual Review by Chris Guillebeau, Nickified)
  2. Finish Running Towards Home, my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel, and edit it
  3. Get my Shopify store up and ready for the contest

Oh, and normal stuff like feeding my family, cleaning the house, and sleeping still apply. I sincerely hope the last bit of 2009 is a wonderful roller coaster ride. I’ll keep you updated! (And get back to early morning posts at the start of next year. Right now, it just seems too formal for this week of sleeping in and child wrangling!)

And the World Goes Back to Normal was published on December 26th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , under the Completely Off Topic category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Cheesy Tuna Mashed Potatoes

Well it’s not exactly meal planning, and it may not be original, but it certainly was yummy! Cheesy Tuna Mashed Potatoes is something I came up with from the Kitchen of Dad.

My dad is about as far Off the Plan as you can get in my opinion, and that doesn’t stop at the kitchen. He cooks one way – big. Making enough food for a week is his modus operandi. At one point when I was growing up, he lived in a different town for an entire summer doing an internship in his schooling to become an ordained minister. He cooked once a week, and he ate the same thing for lunch and dinner for that entire week. The next week, he made something different.

On top of that, Dad is what I think of as a Winger. He “wings” it when it comes to recipes, following the instructions maybe once before he starts adding in his own ingredients and coming up with his own concoctions. I know a lot of people do this, but not a lot of people I know, so this makes my dad special.

And that’s mostly where I learned to cook.

I love mashed potatoes. Not homemade, the instant kind from Sam’s Club (not BJ’s – those are completely different and not at all tasty IMHO). And I love cheese. Shredded, string, squeaky, sharp, crumbly, I love it all. I don’t like swiss, but that’s an anomaly. Plus, I like tuna. When I started high school, a friend (while I lived at seminary, coincidentally enough) introduced me to the wonders of tuna in water straight out of a can.

So when I was making myself supper late one night after my kids and DH went to bed, I decided I wanted mashed potatoes. But I needed protein – why not mix in a can of tuna? And then some shredded cheddar, and put it all in a bowl, with only a tiny amount of Blue Bonnet margarine (you don’t need as much when you add tuna to the potatoes, apparently), and more shredded cheese on top.

OMG it’s wonderful. Now my mom, DH, my kids, and pretty much everyone I know are completely disgusted with my cheesy tuna potatoes. And I’m fairly sure that instant mashed potatoes in the quantity that I usually consume aren’t really good for you (serves four? I don’t think so!).

But they’re yummy.

It’s a little thing, but it’s part of what puts me Off the Plan, and I like it. I like having things that in my little corner of the world set me apart.

Have you ever thought about how everyone wants to be different, and that’s what makes us all the same?

Cheesy Tuna Mashed Potatoes was published on September 9th, 2009, with the tags , , , , under the Completely Off Topic category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.