I feel like someone's been here....

This one isn't exactly secret and it really isn't limited to when I'm single, but I leave myself lists so that I don't forget things.  A lot of the time it's stuff that as an adult, I should be able to remember when I leave the house.  Like my wallet.  After enough days at work without a badge or a pager.I decided that it is in fact more adult to acknowledge that I just won't remember this shit 50% of the time and just leave myself a reminder.

Lately though, I've been finding helpful additions popping up on some of these lists. 

Because one certainly wouldn't want to forget Poland.  Much like forgetting one's wallet that could totally throw a massive kink in my day.

Then on Saturday afternoon I went to make GBC, my all time favorite fall food and I just knew there were fewer onions in the French's Fried Onion container than I had left the last time I made it.  Yesterday I checked my grocery list (yup - coffee, cat food and kitty litter; that's my life) and was vindicated: 

While I apparenlty have elves trolling my cupboards for tasty treaties, I guess I should be thankful that the that they are considerate enough to put the depleted items on my shopping list for me.  :)


 Just more evidence that my friends and family really are the mischief makers that I make them out to be.  

The more drinks than I like to lay claim to series

I hate it when Project 365 makes me feel like a need more diversity in my activities. Definitley not the company though...definitely not.  

April 5, 2012

Happy Thursday Sangria!! The Virgin Mary totally approves.

April 6, 2012

Happy Friday Sister!

April 7, 2012

It's not a trip to Tampa unless it smells like SPF 100, you can hear the ocean and you're drinking hurricanes made by a really surly bartender.

Spring Break 2012

He's drinking margaritas...it's DEFINITELY Spring Break!

March 14, 2012

The Hurricane

There's something about the ocean that makes the absence of hush puppies seem bearable. :-)

March 3, 2012

Happy Birthday Mama and Aunt Sue!

I know how much I love having a sister, so I can only imagine that it must be pretty darn awesome to have a twin.  Plus, Fred and George Weasley were twins and if it's in Harry Potter then it must be a good thing.

January 15, 2012

Two of my favorites...may 2012 bring them happiness and laughter.

January 1, 2012

Happy Dirty 30 Gabe!

Happy Birthday Gab! 

'Twas the Season for Celebrating

There aren't a whole lot of perks to having your parents live on a completely different side of the country.  I mean, it's not something that I lay awake at night worrying about but truth be told the distance makes the holidays matter more because its one of the few times a year that we're all together. 

December 24, 2011

This year was not one of our quieter holidays but it was...to choose a word...wonderful.  I never really saw this coming when Erica married Gabe but he brought a level of just plain fun to our holidays that wasn't there before. This year, the fun was mostly centered around professional sports and a certain someones fantasy football triumph. 

So Christmas day arrived, the presents were opened, egg sammiches and pecan rolls consumed and we all settled in for a cozy day of cooking, playing with our presents.

December 25, 2011

Amid the normal hubub of Christmas Day, you know, YouTube watching (surreally including The Lonely Island's Like a Boss), NRP Click 'n Clack listening and ascent to fantasy football fame recounting, came the banjo. 

Nobody knew that my mom has wanted a banjo for years, nobody that is except Papa.  So add to our usual Christmas hullabaloo a the da-da-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-dang of a banjo and we have ourselves a hum-dinger of a Kukulka-Blake Christmas.

December 24, 2011

It was a great weekend, probably made even better by the fact that having us all together only happens once every so often.  We watched football, meandered around downtown Minneapolis, saw a Timberwolves game and ate and drank amazing, home cooked food all weekend.  

December 26, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, I boycotted cleaning my house.  After several years in a row of hosting dinner at my house, admittedly for people who couldn't have cared less if I had cleaned but my Mama taught me better than that.  So this year, in an attempt to celebrate circumstances that may otherwise seem undeserving of celebration, I did not clean.   I slept in, I had some coffee and worked a little on my knitting but I did not clean. 

The day was beautiful: blue skies, white fluffy clouds and an abundance of sunshine. All on it's own it was a day to be thankful for but then you add in spending it with fun people, eating delicious food and drinking coffee sweetened with heavy cream after supper?  It was a good day.

The Hostess with the Mostest
November 24, 2011





That's how you do it bitches...

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, what's not to like about good food, good drink, family and a long weekend?  Especially when there's pumpkin pie to the be had!

Continuing the long standing tradition of baking pies with Erica the Wednesday before Thanksgiving ... beautiful pumpkin pies were made.

November 23, 2011

My Mom's FAVORITE tree!

This is my mom's FAVORITE tree....

November 21, 2011

....right before it dropped all those beautiful leaves in the gutters. 

Happy Papa's Day

I started looking for colleges when I was 16.  I looked at UCLA and the University of Iowa. I probably looked other places that I don't even remember anymore but I do know that I didn't look anywhere within four hours of home. I remember so many of my girlfriends dads were telling them to stay close to home, that they would be safer and happier if they could come home on weekends.  My Papa told me find schools that taught what I wanted to learn and that wherever that was, home was only a plane ride away.

In the months leading up to my leaving for the University of Iowa I was asked again and again by teachers, coaches and friends parents, how did my dad feel about my going so far away for school.  I didn't really get the question because honestly, my Papa seemed fine with it.  I didn't really get at the time that they were asking this question, in part, because I was a girl. 

I don't have any brothers so I don't know if there would have been a difference in how we were raised, but I do know that my Papa raised me to take care of myself, to not depend on other people and while it went unspoken, that being a girl was not an excuse for, well, anything.

My sister and I drove stick-shifts, changed our own flat tires, used power tools, did yard work and were expected to do as well in science and math classes as we did in english and history classes.  We watched Monday Night Football, well, I didn't actually watch but I did sit in the same room reading a book while he, my sister and my mom watched Monday Night Football. :-)  We had to speak up at the dinner table if we wanted to be heard because when you have an opinion, you won't get an engraved invitation to share it.

He taught me one of the most useful things I've ever come across, that when something is broken, look at it and then see if you can fix it.  It is so simple but I can't even count the number of times in my life that I've done just that, and in doing so impressed the pants off of whoever else was in the room.  Broken ceiling fans, clogged drains, broken coffee pots and tripped fuses have all fallen in the face of the Carl Kukulka fix-it method. 

I'm pretty sure that my Papa does not consider himself a feminist, but I do know that he is a huge part of why I am one. In a society that (often) unconsciously expects women to be weaker and rely on a man, be it father, husband or boyfriend, to take care of her, my Papa (and Mom for that matter) made sure that my sister and I could take care of ourselves.

Feminism doesn't really have a place in my family because it's just how things are and I am grateful for that.  So let me be clear when I say that it wasn't until the you've-got-a-brain-so-use-it attitude that I was raised with, ran full steam into the but-you're-a-girl-shouldn't-you-call-someone-for-help? attitude of the rest of the world that I became a feminist.

You don't get to pick your family and I've been beyond blessed with the one's I was given.  So, just another long-winded way of saying that when I comes to my Papa, I think he's the best in the biz and I am beyond grateful for him.  I love you Papa, Happy Papa's Day.

Mother's Day, Version 2.0

I know it's a little past the day 'o celebration but I never intended Version 1.0 to be the last word in mothers day musings. Why is my Mom better than your mom you ask?  And why is my Mom a proper noun and yours is just a piddly, little lower-case noun? Don't take offense to the proper noun part, it's because she's mine and this is my blog so she gets proper noun status.  You can, however go right ahead and take offense to the "better than yours" because I'm not backing down from it.

I could fill a book with all of the memories I have of my mom but for the sake of your sanity and the bandwidth available to me on this blog I'll restrain myself to one that has inexplicably stuck over the years:

One Saturday morning when I was in high school I stumbled out of bed  and into the kitchen where my mom was unloading groceries. She looked at me and said: I got raspberries at the store that are great, do you want some ice cream with raspberries for breakfast?    This?! From the woman who fed me carob and kefir growing up?  Yes, yes I did most certainly want raspberries with french vanilla ice cream for breakfast.

It's an odd memory to have stick with me for all these years; at first it stuck because it seemed so out of character for my Mom of all people to be offering me ice cream for breakfast.  In retrospect though I think it sticks because it's so in character, I just didn't know it at the time.

I realize how insanely lucky I was growing up to never question my Mom's mom-ness.  I never doubted that there would be breakfast (not to mention lunch and dinner), that I'd get picked up from school or that I'd get woken up every morning and there would be clean clothes to put on.  I took entirely for granted all of these things that were a given in my life because of the time and energy she dedicated to making it so. While I am endlessly grateful for the Mom that she was while I was growing up, there are so many things that I've started to appreciate in my Mom who, as I've gotten older, become as much friend as she is Mom.  Her loyalty to the people that she loves and the kindness that she values so highly.  Her love of beauty and music, and the fearlessness with which she attacks new projects and hobbies.  She has a penchant for ceramic bowls, art festivals and sitting in the sun. She can Snoopy like a pro, appreciates the odd glass of wine on a Saturday afternoon, gives some of the best hugs around and when I'm with her, I'm home. 

How insanely I love my mom and how very much I admire her can be (insufficiently) summed up by a conversation that Wes and I had the other night while watching TV.  Wes had commented that he hoped to be as good a dad someday as the character we'd been watching.  I thought about it for a minute and realized that I am familiar with that sentiment, it's just that I hope someday to be as good a mom as my mom is.

Love you Mama, Happy (Belated) Mothers Day.

Mothers Day: Version 1.0

My Mom's better than your mom.  BOOOOYAHH!!!

There's a new sheriff in town

The parking situation at my place of employment is a complex beast replete with bureaucratic hoops to jump through, classism, color coding and invisible gates through which certain colors may not pass.  It's complicated I tell you and even worse for it because to get any answers or explanations one must visit the transportation office personally and speak with a woman who steadfastly refuses to make eye contact with you.  I'm not sure if she won't or cant make eye contact but either way I inevitably find myself either craning around on my tiptoes or sprawling oh so attractively across the counter trying to make her LOOK AT ME DAMMIT! This being said, beyond re-purchasing my rather expensive blue decal online each April, I do my best to avoid contact with Parking and Transportation Services. 

On Monday morning though,  my blue decal and I pulled into the garage closest to my office and by some strange happenstance managed to snag one of the thirteen spaces allotted to my low-ish decal level.  Walking jauntily towards the stairs (because hey, I just got a rockin' sparkin' space man) I saw him standing in the shadows and knew right then and there that he meant business.  He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, gray polyester shorts fresh and crisp with socks pulled up neatly around his shins.  Ticket machine in one hand, the other arm bent at a right angle as he examined his digital watch waiting, just waiting for the numbers to click over from 7:29 to 7:30.  The clock ticked over and he was off, efficiently checking the cars in a methodical and rehearsed pattern and writing tickets for all those unfortunate night shift workers who didn't take the 7:30 deadline seriously.    By 7:35 it was all over, yellow tickets fluttered silently on decal-less windshields and he was gone, moved on to metered and over-sized parking I assume.

His tenacious reinforcement of regulations reminded me instantly of my brother in law and for a moment I wondered if maybe Gabe had changed jobs and was in fact the gray parking menace.  So much reminded me of him: the swift efficiency,the tube socks, the clear elation in bringing a swift and heavy hand of justice down upon those who disregarded the clearly posted rules.  Alas it was not Gabe but another rule enforcer with a love of comfy feet.

All week long he's been here, poised to strike just outside the stairwell when the time changes.  He's been caught in action several times by frustrated night shift nurses who return to find their cars besmirched by a little yellow envelope but their complaints fall on deaf ears.  From whence he came I am not sure but his presence is pervasive and constant; there is a new sheriff in town.

Christmas in Florida

We're quite a bit past Christmas, as is proven by the fact that I breathed a huuuge sigh of relief when the Christmas tree was finally taken down last weekend.  It's a chilly day, far, far away from Christmas when the Christmas decorations start feeling like clutter and my squeaky compulsive soul heaves a hug sigh of relief to have the living room back to rights.  So it's a bit belated to be writing about Christmas now but apparently my coping skills have declined since graduate school and it's taken this long to screw my head back on straight. 

The Seven Hours of Solitude was quiet and lovely:

It was quiet and lovely but I have to admit that it didn't really feel a whole lot like Christmas.  Maybe it was maybe it was the functioning heater, maybe it was the notable absence of traveling but I strongly suspect that it was the lack of family.  Thankfully that was soon rectified and a mere twenty-four hours later I had spent a portion of Christmas with almost every person on this plant that I love.  Almost, which in this case I count as more than good enough.

I could run you through the weekend blow by blow but lets face it, another person's holidays are only entertaining if they're played by Chevy Chase or Sarah Jessica Parker. So I'll just stick with the take-aways, which I'll warn you are all rather corny, perhaps bordering on trite. 

I got to have coffee with my Mom almost every morning.  I'd wake up and there'd be coffee and a Mama sitting on the couch with a book.  It was a bit like being a kid again, my mom and I used to spend a lot of time quietly reading in one room or another but it was better than being a kid.  It was just...comfy and familiar.

My mom and I made pie. :)  I made pirogi all by my lonesome the other week but Grandmother's pie crust is still a bit beyond me and there is truly nothing as lovely as my Grandmother's pie crust.

I talked my Papa into taking cold medicine and while he'll never admit it, it worked and he knows it! This is a triumph that those of you who received cold medicine as children can never understand. 

I was reminded (for about the 80 billionth time) that I am more comfortable being myself around my sister than just about anyone else on the planet.  She's known me my whole life and while I can't guarantee that she still likes me, I suspect she isn't repulsed by me. 

People talk about their parents, siblings, boyfriends etc being their best friends.  These people aren't my best friends, they're my family and to me that's something unique and holds its own special corner in my heart.

7 Hours of Solitude

Christmas Morning First: waking up with no fam around.  I thought that I'd be bummed but with Wessy and Club to fill the void, I should have known better.  After a round of coffee and snickerdoodles on the couch,  Kristin came over and we had a festive morning with homemade waffles, bacon, oj and coffee.  It was a Christmas morning feast and no worries, we kept the Christ in Christmas, Wes wore his Raptor Jesus shirt:

Happy Christ Christmas Christ Steven Colbert!

So after a final trip to the dog park, and after leaving my bathroom cleaner than it was when they arrived, Club Fun departed.  They did not depart however until Sabra and Murlester forged a friendship:

JoeJoe never left the bedroom during Sabra's visit but given his history with doggies, we can only respect this. 

With the egress of Club Fun we have entered our 7 Hours of Christmas Solitiude.  7 hours until my parents arrive from their bastion in the frozen tundra of Minnesota and the Kukulka Christmas festivities begin!  I think perhaps a nap is in order :) 

Operation Peirogi

To complete the weekend of ill advised cooking adventures, yesterday I attacked pirogi. This is a first for me in that while I'm an expert pirogi eater,  I've never made them myself and haven't seen them made since I was in elementary school.  So despite a distinct lack of hands on experience I ventured forth armed with my Grandma's recipe, a gray, cold Sunday and cleaning the house to procrastinate.

Mary Kukulka's Pierogi Recipe

The Recipe (yes this is a proper noun) was supplemented with some scattered verbal instructions (when in doubt double, better yet triple the butter) but also did a little Googling to fill in the gaps in the hopes of missing a few common pitfalls.  This guy is way ramped up over his pirogi making as it is apparently very, very serious business.  While he should probably cut back on his caffeine intake, there was helpful information buried amongst the passion.

There's all sorts of stuffing for these tasty little suckers and while I'm sure I will attempt the others at a later date, potato and cheese are favored by my fam so I went with those.  The potato pirogi stuffing was made the night before per the practice of Grandma.

She always said that it was best to get it out of the way and after all the rolling, stuffing and boiling that was about to commence, she was right. 

Thankfully I had become quite well acquainted with my mixer the day before because I ended up making three batches of pirogi dough.

Apparently one batch of potatoes requires a triple batch of dough - duly noted. And can I just say that there was nothing more I wanted this weekend than a KitchenAid mixer?  I spent a decent amount of both Saturday and Sunday cursing my sister for not registering for one when she got married so that I could have borrowed it this weekend.  Sigh...the girl just doesn't think ahead!

According to my Mom (hi Mama!) I showed a penchant for rolling out this dough as a 12 year old, so 25 years later I attacked it again.  I mean, it can't possibly be as hard as making Grandmother's pie crust right?  right?!?  Right:

It isn't nearly so difficult as that stinkin' pie crust, maybe I'll try that one when Mama's here next week.  Stay on the edges of your seats and keep a tight hold on those nipples, this is thrilling stuff. 

Stuffing placed:

Sealed with water, finger pinchin' and then finished off for good measure with a fork:

Boiled: 

and laid to rest:

Four and a half hours and four explosion casualties later I had 83 hand-made pirogi to gaze up on with glee.  It sure looks pathetic for 4 1/2 hours worth or work.  Then we ate them:

Not quite as good as Grandma's (as was expected) but a sight better than Mrs. T's if I do say so myself.   Plus a whole load frozen for later consumption once the fam arrives.  

This Christmas will be a lot of firsts for me  It will be my first with Wes- yay!  It will be the first one where I do not wake up with my parents in the same house - boo.  It will also be the first one in over a decade that I won't be at my Grandma's house. My Grandma passed away this past summer, peacefully and without pain which is exactly what she deserved.  I haven't found a way to write about her, it's hard to know what to say about a woman who I knew for my entire life but only a tiny portion of hers.  I'm still working on that but what I do know is that of the things that are quintessentially Christmas to me, my Grandma's pirogi is a big one.   My Grandma is not here this year and I think that I can speak for my whole family when I say that we miss her terribly.  My Grandma is not here this year but the tradition of her pirogi 's (imperfect as they are) will be.

Grandma, Christmas 2009

This post brought to you under the supervision of Kitchen Cat. 


He iz slepin' in ur kitchen



Wotchin' u kook and tipe



My Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

With Thanksgiving all said and done I turn to decorating for Christmas. 

This is my very favorite of the holidays (I mean, who doesn't love twinkle lights!) So as soon as the turkey fryin' peanut oil had be scrubbed from the kitchen counters, it was time to find a tree. I know that some people decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving but I for one oppose this.  As fabulous as it is to have twinkle lights and decorations up, it's just positively brutish to brush over perfectly respectable and enjoyable holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving in the rush to begin celebrating Christmas. Christmas has the whole of December dedicated to it, there's just no need to go encroaching on November. However, November is now over and  I see no reason to drag my feet. 

I really love to celebrate: holidays, birthdays, seasons, presidents, natural phenomena...I love them all.  I've written about Birthday Month before (here and here) and how so very often this penchant for celebration is seen as selfish or egocentric and maybe it is.  Still, if we don't celebrate the good times, then how will we remember them? How will we be able to stock pile them for future use during the bad times?  This (and I say this with the appropriate amount of humility and gratitude) is a good time for me and come what may, I want to remember it.

I've never really even thought twice about getting a Christmas tree but this year I have to admit that I was a little nervous about the havoc Murry might choose to wreak over said tree.  I'm okay with some innocent batting at a swinging branches or two but I'm just not looking forward to coming home to the tree toppled and crashed through the coffee table.  Joe Lewis is a pretty laid back kitty and I don't worry so much that he might kamikaze dive bomb the Christmas tree while we're at work but Murry has been a bit of a maniac as of late.  He's developed a propensity for turning kibble into a huntable substance in order to maintain his energy levels for attacking the toilet paper rolls and then celebrating his triumph with a celebratory writhe amongst the masticated bits of conquered t.p.  Thus, our tree may be in danger and a plan was formulated. 

Wes purchased our tree (a first for him!) and we decided to set it up and just leave it for a day or two to let the branches settle and test run the determination of Mur-Monster in conquering the tree.  It was thusly I discovered that an undecorated tree is just a creepy tree lurking the corner of my living room.  Not quite the festive aura I was hoping for and so only 24 uneventful hours passed until, fortified with a glass of Malbec and the Muppet's (with John Denver) singing Christmas carols in the background I created my Charlie Brown Christmas Tree 2010.  Not to be confused with Charlie the Christmas Plant of course, but festive all the same.

And so replete with twinkle lights and stockings for the kitties we snuggle down and prepare to enjoy the holidays.

Quote of the Day

"Hell's just another word for far from home, without your mittens on."