Long overdue update

I apologize for not updating my blog very much lately.  Things have been really crazy for me the last few weeks.  As you know, I started the second rotation of my internship on January 4.  New site, new people, new routine, and the stakes were high because our population is just about as high risk as you can get in the outpatient world (and way moreso than a lot of inpatients). One week in, I thought things were great.  I came back to work the next Monday to find that the whole place was upside down.  One of our clients was murdered and another client was AWOL and the presumed suspect.  The fallout from it has been absolutely earthshattering.  We all could have guessed that the clinical issues would be difficult to manage, particularly with our very ill clients, and because all of the staff were also so affected (clients are often part of the program for many, many years, and therapists work with clients every day for many hours and are involved in every detail of the lives).  Never, even with my vivid imagination, could I have fathomed the political and administrative repercussions or the level they'd reach.  The last few days at work have been unreal.  My colleagues and I feel (and look!) like the walking wounded.  And we're the ones trying to be sure our clients are staying stable!  Although it is a long way from being over, I am hopeful that the worst is behind us.  For now, it seems that I'm staying put.  I'm glad about that, but it also means that I'll be in a really stressful environment for the rest of my internship.  My goal is to survive through June 30, and then I'll be proud to say that I had the experience and that I'm leaving with three additional letters after my name (Ph.D.) 

Anyway, that's why I haven't been writing. 

I did have a respite from from this chaos, at least in body.  I was off for three days around the MLK holiday weekend to return to the South.  I had an informal interview for a potential job at Fox Army Health Center at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.  Everything about this potential job is ideal.  I want it so badly.   They have to get permission to create the job, and then of course, it will be competed.  But I am extremely hopeful that I'll get it and will be anxiously awaiting more news about it (although it will take awhile). Rebecca and I enjoyed a delightful little trip to TN, despite the fact that she got sick just a couple of days before we left and although I injured my knee somehow on the redeye flight and have been nursing that ever since.  We didn't have enough time to see too many friends, although I did get to have dinner with my Girl Posse and got family time.  The day after we came home, Paddington had surgery to remove a tumor from his leg, which, thankfully, was a fatty tumor and nothing more serious.  Ramy is currently consumed with a trial.  Thankfully, Rebecca is her usual extraordinary, marvelous, delightful self!

Italian Wedding Soup

In celebration of our recent cold(ish) and very rainy weather, I decided I needed to make some new soups for dinner.  Tonight, I hobbled together several different recipes for Italian Wedding Soup.  It is delicious!  It's actually for our dinner tomorrow night, but now I'm really looking forward to it!

Here's the recipe that I ended up with, after I took bits and pieces and adjustments from about 5 different recipes of the soup. 

Italian Wedding Soup

For the meatballs:
1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground turkey
2/3 cup fresh white or sourdough bread crumbs
2 cloves minced garlic
3 Tbsp. fresh chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 Tbsp. fresh chopped basil
1/2 cup fresh grated parmesan cheese
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp. milk
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

For the soup:
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup carrots, diced
1 cup celery, diced
3/4 cup red onion, diced
8 cups chicken stock (homemade is best, but if using boxed/canned, go with low-sodium)
1 cup water
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups orzo pasta
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 to 1 1/2 cups fresh baby spinach, washed, trimmed of stems, and coarsely chopped
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Place all meatball ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork or clean hands.  Roll into bite-size meatballs (1 in. in diameter), which do not have to be perfectly round.  Place meatballs on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.   Bake for 30 minutes or until completely done and lightly browned.

While the meatballs are cooking, heat olive oil in stockpot over medium heat.  Add carrots, celery, and onion and cook 6-8 minutes or until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally.  Add chicken stock and wine, cover, and bring to a boil.  Cook on full boil, covered, for 8 minutes.  Add the meatballs, parmesan cheese, parsley, and spinach and cook for 1 minute until spinach just wilts.  Taste to determine whether additional salt and pepper is desired.

Ladle into soup bowls and sprinkle with additional parmesan cheese.

Girls Out and About

I just realized that I never posted these cute pics!

We arrived back in California (after New Year), just in time to have an afternoon of lunch, shopping, gossip, and fun with Addie and Julie (and Derek too, although he tried to avoid the shopping and gossip part!).  It was so good to see them again!  It was nice to be able to catch up on the Woltil's exciting life in the Big Apple and for Julie and I to compare notes on internship, postdoc plans, and general gossip.  The day was much too short, and we are eager to see them again when they come back for Julie to defend her dissertation.  At that point, there will be a fourth member of the Woltil family, and we are excited to meet him too.  Then we'll get to see them again for the big GRADUATION!

Rebecca really enjoyed playing with Adelaide.  The other night, Rebecca had gotten some stickers in the mail that had different states on them.  When she pulled off the New York sticker, I told her the name of the state.  She immediately said, "That's where Addie and Miss Julie live!  Amember when we play with them?"  I think that is better than when Rebecca thought that Addie and Julie lived at Victoria Gardens (mall).  For months, every time we went there, Rebecca would ask about Addie.  Actually, she did that most any time we went to a mall at all, but especially VG.

The flu

On Monday, when Rebecca woke up from her afternoon nap, just after Ramy and I got home from work, we thought that Rebecca felt hot.  Sure enough, she had a 99.9°F temperature.  Nanny Rebecca had told us that she'd had a great day at the park, playing and having a picnic.  We just watched it, and she got a bit cooler before bed and was cool when she woke up on Tuesday morning.  However, by lunchtime on Tuesday, her fever went above 100°, was 101.8° within the next 15 minutes, and while I was on hold with the pediatrician's office to get an appointment, climbed to 103° despite a dose of acetaminophen in the meantime.  Nanny Rebecca met me with her in Colton so that I could take her to visit Dr. Jeng.  He listened carefully to her lungs and looked carefully at her ears and throat and was confident that she had influenza (not H1N1).  Dr. Jeng's observation was that there seemed to not be a very good match between this year's season flu vaccine and what people were coming in with. 

I told him that Rebecca and I were scheduled to take a red-eye across the county the following evening.  He said she would be fine to travel and would not be contagious by that point.  He felt confident that with the Tamiflu he was prescribing, she'd be fine and dandy quite soon.  I had a little adventure as an amateur pharmacist because of the horribleness that was the attempt to put the contents of the Tamiflu capsules into ice cream to get Rebecca to take it.  My work to put it into a suspension of simple syrup and adding it to her favorite juice worked well enough to get her first couple of doses into her, and then I was able to get them to call in a new script for it into our local compounding pharmacy who put it into a true suspension. True to form, she perked up pretty quickly and was her usual wonderful traveling self.  She would start running a fever and you could tell she felt wretched when her ibuprofen would wear off, but 20 minutes after a new dose and she was playing and talking.  She still looked quite pale and really had no appetite at all until the weekend.  On Saturday, she was definitely feeling good and on Sunday, she was feeling GREAT.  I think having undivided Grammy attention and concentrated snuggle time made her get well super-fast. 

Knock on wood, neither Ramy nor I or Nanny Rebecca have come down with it.  Hopefully we'll all stay well through the rest of flu season!

Disney on Ice

ast weekend, we got to go to see Disney on Ice in Long Beach.  The tickets were a Christmas gift to Rebecca from her Auntie Myrna (Ramy's eldest sister), Uncle Ed, and cousin Jessica.  Rebecca had a blast!  We got to start off by attending a showcase of all the Disney princess costumes, where we also got to see a couple of the princesses in person. Seeing Sleeping Beauty and Princess Tiana was a huge treat for Rebecca!  I was excited to get to test out my new zoom lens that I got for Christmas.

After selecting the souvenir of choice (an Ariel doll) and getting a drink/snack for the show, we settled into our seats to take in the show. 

Mickey and Minnie drove in to open the show.  Rebecca gasped when she saw them in their cute little car.

The various Cars "characters" had the next scene.  Rebecca watched it but said to me, "'Dat's for boys."

The Little Mermaid scene was awfully cute.  Rebecca was spellbound watching Ariel and Flounder and Sebastian.

Rebecca also really liked the Lion King portion of the show, although she was a little scared by all the wildebeasts storming in and was sad when Simba's daddy died.

Tinkerbell was Rebecca's (and my) favorite scene.

Rebecca even caught some of the confetti that rained down at the finale.

At the end of the show, Rebecca declared, "That was fun!  I wanna come back tomorrow!"

New Years with the Rives Family

We were blessed to start off the first day of the new year with some special friends, the Rives family.  Back when Brian and I became friends in tenth grade, I bet neither of us would have imagined that  17 years later (yikes!), we'd be hanging out with our families at a Mexican restaurant in Fayetteville! 

I'm certain that neither of us could have imagined that we would have kids as cute as these two!  Look at the chunk of adorableness that Benjamin Reid Rives is.  Those pinchable cheeks and gorgeous blue eyes slay me...and then he flashes that precious grin!

Long-time friends

There isn't a better way to celebrate the end of a year than by spending it with old friends.  The Caudles had us over for lunch on New Year's Eve.  It was good to get to spend time with them.  Molly is my longest (most enduring?) friend.  We don't talk very often now that we're separated by a lot of miles and occupied with a lot of different things, but hopefully that will change sometime soon.  Even still, we've got each other's back.

Jack and Rebecca had a lot of fun playing together!  

It makes me a little teary-eyed thinking about how Molly and I were friends from the time we were born, and now we have these two cute little people who are almost the same age as well.  I hope they'll always be friends too!

More New Year's Eve with the Girl Posse

On New Year's Eve, the Girl Posse gathered to have our annual Christmas exchange, as well as to ring in 2010.  We were fortunate to have all of us there, plus the toddler posse (Rebecca), Husband Posse (Ramy, Randy, and Jim), a teenager to help us old folks all feel more hip (Jim 2), and our friend Paul (brother of our posse-member Brenda H).

Does it look like this group can even make it up to midnight?

Then it was time for presents.  Rebecca showed everyone the correct way to open gifts.

Next, it was time for the girls to open our gifts to each other. 

Brenda had drawn Jackie's name and got her some new bathroom artwork to go with her new decor. (The other Cashions looked on, approvingly).

Lucy shows off her cute kitty card.

Looks like Kathy is going to be smelling good!

Apparently, Terry had to finish telling a story before she could open her gifts!

I have no idea why Kathy and I look afraid of the tank top.

Thank goodness my friends will buy me DVDs that my husband will not. Thanks Sandy!

Seems like we were all excited to find what was in the cute green box!

Now Lisa's hair will be even more gorgeous!

Okay, Sandy, we're expecting lots of tasty stuff from your new cookbook and cooking magazine subscription!

These clowns should not be trusted.

Midnight!  Happy New Year, everyone! 

While she was awake to ring in the new year, Rebecca couldn't care less about pictures or the new decade.  As exhausted as she looks here, by the time we got home, she was wide awake and ready to celebrate!

I'm hopeful that 2010 will be a great year for all the Girl Posse and associated families and friends!
 

New Years Eve with the Girl Posse

For New Year's Eve, we partied with the Girl Posse.  I realized that I rang in every new year of the 00's with my group of fabulous pals, with the exception of one, which was when Ramy and I had flown back early to CA when his dad had his first stroke.  It's a good tradition!  It's a blessing to have so many BFFs!

Christmas

It's hard to believe how quickly our holiday visit to Tennessee went by.  The week of Christmas, before we left California, I'd felt like I was getting sick but I managed to fight through it and got finished at Upland on the 23rd.  That night, Ramy's sister Myrna and her family took us to the airport after a nice little dinner with all of us together.  I'd had a bit of a sore throat, so my voice was scratchy.  Somehow between the time we got through security and boarded the plane, I completely lost my voice.  I joked that it must be Ramy's Christmas miracle, because I had no voice until a couple of days after christmas.  The only other thing that was eventful was that I got to see Lady Gaga in the airport, in all her bizarre, only partially-clad glory.  I didn't recognize her at first and thought she must be a porn star, from the way she was dressed.  Yet another brush with a celebrity I care nothing about.  We had two great flights and arrived bright and early in Nashville and then were at the Cracker Barrel enjoying breakfast by 9:30 a.m.  It was quite a tiring, hectic day getting ready for all the big Christmas Eve events, and I didn't get to do as much decoration on the wrapping as I would have liked or as much baking as I'd have liked.  Nonetheless, it was a great, fun day, and Rebecca was very excited!

We put out all kinds of treats for Santa and his helpers.  We made chocolate chip cookies for Santa and left them for him with some chocolate milk and set out a snack of cheese for Santa Mouse. 

We also made up a batch of reindeer food for Santa's reindeer, with a special snack of carrots for Rudolph.

On Christmas Eve evening, we went to candlelight communion at my mom's church.  Then we went on to Aunt Margaret's house for our annual family gathering.  Everyone in the family contributed several dishes of good food, so it wasn't quite as stressful for Aunt Margaret as it has been in years past.  We had lots of food - turkey, ham, barbecue, dressing, hashbrown casserole, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, bread, deviled eggs, and the most important - the caramel and strawberry cakes.  After dinner, we opened gifts, and as usual, there were boxes and ribbons and wrapping paper flying everywhere.  Rebecca exclaimed over each and every gift.

Santa couldn't come until all children were fast asleep, so we had to make an early (well, 10 p.m.) getaway from Aunt Margaret's house to get back to Grammy's.   Santa must have been exhausted, because our little girl was so excited that she didn't fall asleep until 1:30 a.m.!  Ramy went in around 11:00 to lay down with her in hopes that she might more easily fall asleep.  Around midnight, I went in and found that she was still wide awake and watching the Grinch on tv but that he was fast asleep!  Somehow Santa was finally able to get down the chimney and all the gifts set up.  Mercifully, Rebecca slept in a bit (9:00 a.m.)!  She woke up ready to discover all the wonders of Christmas....and there were many!  I have video of her first sight of the tree and gifts that I hope to upload soon.

Santa Mouse had left his small gifts tied to the Christmas tree.

The stockings were all filled and waiting on us.

We had so many presents that we ended up waiting until the next day to finish opening all the gifts!  After our Christmas morning first round of gifts, we had a wonderful brunch and then took a refreshing nap before preparing for Christmas night dinner.  I don't think I've ever been quite as tired as I was that night, but it was well worth it to see the look of wonder on Rebecca's face! 

I'll be posting a collage of pictures from Christmas very soon too!