Sushi

I have realized that sushi is really cool and it makes people think they are cool.  To me (the fat girl that I am) sushi is food.  Food that I love.  Food that I ate when I was pregnant because I valued it more than the brain of my unborn child.  I've been eating sushi since before sushi was hip so, I feel like I am an expert on all things sushi and I want to enlighten you. (I'm really not at all, but I do like it a lot)

First off, those of you that are like, "Ew, I don't want to eat raw fish."  This is what you are imagining when I say sushi:

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It is nothing like that.  A lot of people eat cooked fish inside their little rolls of rice heaven.  I like it all types of ways.  This is an example of what we ate last night:

california roll, spider roll, cha cha roll

diablo roll, 502 roll, orange salmon roll)

My dad, my step sister (Hey Carlie!) and I went to Sake Blue (more on my favorite restaurants in a bit).  We started with this:

Which used to be this:

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We also had their house salad (which is basically just really expensive ice berg lettuce drenched in a dressing made of ginger).  My dad is a fat boy and asked my step sister to order a salad even though she didn't want one so that he could eat hers and not have to order two.  I also ordered a side of fried rice.  

The point is, eating sushi can be an experience (one of the best dates I ever went on was to eat sushi, good date but dude had some major road rage and we didn't go out again) so go for it.

Be courageous.  Order something you have never had.  I tease my trainer (Hey Joe!) because he talks of his love for sushi but only orders the california roll.  Don't get me wrong, I share a california roll everytime I go, but it's strictly because my first experience eating sushi was a california roll.  I was like 12 and my Dad and his girlfriend took me to Shogun (more about restaurants later) and it was so much fun and I loved it.  I eat a california roll because it makes me happy to remember that day.  

Try using chopsticks.  Don't use them because you are a pretentious butt hole, use them because they are fun.  Carlie rocked it out last night.  **Hold the bottom one like you hold your pencil, the top one does the moving, practice makes perfect.  If you can't use chopsticks, at least use a fork.  If you use your fingers you are embarrassing yourself.  If you use a fork, please for the love of all things sushi, do not cut it in half.  The Ex is a sissy baby nancy pants and can't fit a bite in his mouth so he cuts it in half.  He fails to realize this is an insult to the chef and he doesn't get the full flavor because it's split in half.

Best sushi in Louisville:

Osaka:  Very small place (they are on restaurant.com if you are interested in a cheap deal).  Nice atmosphere, they have a roll that they set on fire.  I can't remember the name but it's really good, ask for it.

Mikato:  They used to have $2 rolls on certain days of the week.  They don't do that anymore, but the restaurant has cool fountains in it and every once in a while a bird flies around.  Plus, sometimes your waiter doesn't know English.  That's always uncomfortable and funny at the same time.

Sapporo:  My very favorite!  Must order the Mango Crunch Roll.  It will make you want to slap your grandmammy in the face.  And be really cool and order a Sapporo beer while your there.  Bonus, if you eat at the sushi bar, you get a free cucumber salad.  The only thing that sucks about this restaurant are the other people eating there.  It's very trendy, with loud annoying techno music playing, and overly crowded dressed up weirdos sitting everywhere.  They're all like, "We're so cool because we eat sushi in our stilletos." And, I'm all like, "I'm here in my sweat pants, just give me some food."  Call ahead and make reservations so that you don't have to wait forever

Shogun:  SUCKS!!!!  Never eat there.  It's cheap but it's foul.  Trust me

Bendoya: On 5th St. downtown- only open for lunch.  It's very small and you can see the chef from any seat in the restaurant.  Very fresh

Sake Blue:  The Ex's favorite.  He loves the 502 roll.  I like it there but if it was up to me we would go to Sapporro every time.

Fuji:  Only go here if you are desperate for sushi, you live on Dixie Hwy, and  you don't feel like driving to the East End.  The food is just ok.

Hit me up if you ever want a sushi date- I'm your huckleberry. 

Rape Defense

I told y'all before that I look at weird stuff on the internet.  Anyway, I have been practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at Derby City MMA.  I have only been practicing for a few weeks.  It's a very humbling experience.  I always leave bruised up.  See Saturday's bruise:

Besides bruises, today I left with a bleeding nose, and a hurt foot (hurt like I need to limp when I walk- hurt like I ended up going to the ER Sunday night to get an x-ray, not broken).   I started thinking, do I really want to do this?  This crap hurts.  Do I really want to leave feeling like I got my @ss whooped (and that's the real) after I workout.  What's weird is yes, I do.  I feel empowered- like look what happened to me and I'm still alive.  I think about someone that would try to attack me and I think, maybe I could hold a big dude off long enough to get away.  Also, if a female attacked me, I have enough confidence to think I would break her arm or choke her to unconsciousness (as long as she did not have any BJJ experience!). But if I'm keeping it real, I am not to the point in my practice (or anywhere near) that I am breaking arms or cutting off air supply, but it's fun to work on it.

The point of all this, after I left class I started watching videos on Youtube and I came across a video of an interview of a convicted rapist (found here).  At one point he talked about how he would make the women strip down completely naked.  He did this so that they would be less tempted to run away from him (because they didn't have on clothes).  I found this to be so interesting because I don't give a whip how naked I am- if I had a getaway option, your girl would be on Dixie Hwy in her birthday suit if need be.

March 14, 2006

This is the day my eldest daughter was born.  It is so weird how on your child's birthday you can look back on the day they entered the world and remember so much of it when normally I have trouble remembering easy things like my husband's name and such.  Bring a person into the world makes that much of an impact on your life.  There is not another day(s) in your life that you remember so clearly with so many details.  For instance, I remember not feeling well the night before she was born (having no idea she was on her way 3 weeks early), and all that sounded good was a piece of my Nana's chocolate cake.  I remember the pain I was in and how they sent me home from the hospital after my water broke saying I must have thought it happened but it didn't.  How scared I was, how I knew I was in labor but I trusted the "professionals" and stayed home with The Ex panicking about the contractions I thought I was imagining.  (This is part of the reason I decided to go natural with mh3- by the 3rd I knew my body knew what to do without intervention from a hospital).  I remember the first time I saw her face and how when I reached out to grab her away from them they pushed me back on the bed.  I remember hearing her APGAR score being a 9 and asking the Pediatrician the next day why it wasn't a 10 and him being surprised I even remembered hearing that number with everything going on in a delivery room.  After that day...seven years has been a blur.

All I know now is that she is smart, smart mouthed, kind, sensitive, literal, a rule follower, and most of all that girl LOVES her Daddy.

I wanted to start her day off special for her birthday so this morning I got up at 5:30 and went to Kroger (limping my way through the store- I hurt my leg the night before) to buy supplies for a special Cinnamon Roll Cake to eat for breakfast:

Recipe:

Yellow cake mix

4 eggs

1 cup sour cream

3/4 cup oil

(mix and pour into pan)

1 cup brown sugar

1 tlbsp. cinnamon 

(pour over cake mix and stir in in a little)

bake for 35-40 minutes on 325

add icing

(you can make your own with powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk but I bought a cream cheese icing)

Happy Birthday Miniature Human #1.  You make my life better by just being in it.

To leave you with a funny note, I feel like this is what me, Dawn, Amber, Chrissy, and Kisha look like when our old butts are clubbing it in our 30s (I'm the blonde in the blue shirt)

Quick update

1.  I love the movie Great Expectations with Ethan's bad teeth and all.  One of the reasons it is so good is because of it's soundtrack; particularly this song:

2.  I got up the mother f'in rope at the gym (see this post if you have no idea what I am talking about)!!!  Sadly, I cannot upload a video of it because I intended to have The Ex video it on Saturday.  We arrived at the gym and they have taken the dang thing down!  So, as disappointed as I was to have mastered it only to have it taken away, I'm glad I did it before it came down.

Random

• What I look forward to the most on days that I am off work is waking up, getting a cup of coffee and going back to my bed.  Sometimes children put a damper on this activity.  They see you sneak past them headed for the coffee pot (why don't I have one in my bedroom) and start demanding things.  Like, "We're hungry!"  "When's Daddy going to be home?"  "What are we going to do today?"  What's awesome is that they are getting to the point where I can pour some dry cereal in a bowl and let them eat in front of the TV.  They think this is a big treat!  Stupid little girls.  The moral of the story is, feed your children good breakfasts at the table (regularly) so that on days when you don't feel like it, you can give them a bowl of sugar and let them sit in front of the TV and they think it's something special while you lay your lazy @ss in the bed.

• Right now I am reading Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  This book is hilarious but that's not why I love it.  I love it because Mindy Kaling is my long lost best friend (I would have said sister except that she's Indian and I'm white bread and we look nothing alike).  She describes her experience in high school and explains how the jerks that were all popular end up burning out too early and she's all successful and they like work at Walmart or something.  I started thinking about my own experience in high school.  High school is full of insecure little people who think they are grown.  I remember I would crush on these boys that were a year older than me and think that I never would have had a chance, now I know they were probably thinking the same thing.  They walked around like they didn't have a care in the world or notice anyone yet I probably pretended the same!  My best advice to high kids around 18:  get after it.   Don't be nervous be excited, go to away to college, don't have a long term boyfriend/girlfriend, don't major in Women's Lib (that's stupid).  I don't want my daughters wasting their time or feelings on other kids but I know it's inevitable.  When you are in high school you think it's the end all be all.  Try to remember there is a lot of life left to live.

• FYI...I've got a hard working man.  The Ex got off at the Fire House to go straight to do some landscaping work this morning.  That's impressive.  

Sad day

(I started this post on March 1 but didn't get finished until today)

Today my baby turns 3.  I'm so weird that I made The Ex go upstairs at 11:00 last night to take a picture of her while she was sleeping so that I could capture her last moments as a two-year-old on camera.  Tonight my family comes over to celebrate.  I'm sure I'll have more to write about after they leave.  That's a whole lotta crazy in one house.

After work today I went and got my nails done.  I was in a hurry to get home to lay on the couch get the house ready before everyone got here so I didn't wait for my nails to dry.  I had to stop at Toys R Us on my way home to pick up mh3's birthday present (I love ordering stuff online and picking it up there, no shipping or shopping).  I had to walk through Toys R Us pretty much like this:

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(I was even wearing a shirt like that).  I was walking through the store feeling like an idiot with my hands in the air and I started to think about the article that I read this morning.  You can find it here but I will condense it for you.  It's basically saying that before moms have kids we have all these ideas about how we will treat our kids and how those ideas never come to fruition.  These are the things that she said before kids (in bold) and then everything changed after kids (the original writer is in black, I'm red)

I will never let my kids sleep with me:  "In a desperate measure, I tossed him into bed with us one night and we've all had a good night's sleep ever since".  I always knew my kids would not sleep with me- after I had kids they only slept with me while they were still young enough to need to nurse in the middle of the night.  Once they were big enough, they were kicked to the curb crib.  Anyone who knows Conni Jo knows that Conni Jo needs sleep and stinky breath little kids are not the way to get it.

My kids will eat what they are fed "don't like dinner? Well, I guess you're not eating. Then I walk away and think about how I'm already worried about his calcium intake and if he's eating enough protein."  I never feel guilty about this- I make food, you eat or not.  Mothers need to realize that kids won't die from one night of not eating their dinner.  They WILL wake up very hungry in the morning and they WILL not skip dinner again (usually- that dag on mh3 does this regularly but I'm starting to think she's a robot spy so she's trained for that kind of thing)  I have too many people around here to feed.  (Let me be clear though, I know what they truly like and don't like and I try to work with that).  With this mentality, my kids pretty much eat anything and everything.  We eat lots of vegetables and you won't see them turn down a piece of fruit.

I will never ignore my kids like that  I have never thought about this one, but I ignore the ish out of them. There is no particular time of the day or need that I ignore.  It's all fair game and sometimes I ignore them more than others so as to spare their lives.

Why don't you take your kids to the park, it's so easy  I'm confused why this one is even in here.  It's freaking weird.  I must have not thought about this stuff as much as some weirdo moms did

Why would you take your kids swimming, it's so hard?  Again, weird statement..we swim, it's a pain in the arse changing clothes, protecting skin from cancer, drying off, making sure no one drowns, but it's fun

Kids shouldn't eat crap "I once threw an open bag of cheesies down the basement stairs to stop my kids from fighting like drunk white girls while I was on a really important phone call".  My kids eat crap, but mostly they eat fresh, whole foods.  I don't sit around and think about any of it or feel guilty for going to Mickey D's every once in a while when I'm too lazy to make a real dinner.  But, if they lived with any one of our parents that would be little fatties.  Why must grandparents pump their grand babies full of sugar?

How hard is it to look half decent after you've had a kid? "I wore glasses with one arm missing for a year-and-a-half because it broke off and I couldn't find time to fix it. I haven't been to the dentist since my second son was born and he just turned two"  This is a problem a lot of women experience.  I say STOP IT.  Stop letting yourself go in the name of kids.  Take care of yourself so you can feel good about yourself. 

How hard is it to keep your cool? "Pretty hard sometimes"  Agree.  This is something I do feel guilty about.  I try to stay calm and when I focus on being calm I usually am, but sometimes I don't think about it and I end up losing my mind and then remembering that beating and killing is illegal.

I would never let my kids become my whole life "I used to go over to my "previously cool" friend's place and think how sad it was that her house was overrun with sippy cups, Polly Pocket shoes and Dora the Explorer crap. Now I lay in my hippy bed reading Goodnight Moon until my right eye twitches and they fall asleep.  Then I look at their perfect, little faces and wonder how I ever lived without them".  If you are a good parent, your kids should be your whole life.  Good parenting means putting them in front of your own needs. 

She wrapped it up saying basically saying if you don't have kids don't put all these stipulations on yourself because you have no idea what you'll encounter.  I agree and furthermore, if more mothers trusted themselves, instead of the government, doctors, nurses, authors, "experts", etc. they would realize that they were already know everything they need to know by way of their instincts.  Put your kids first, then trust yourself and they'll turn out fine.

And, I had to throw this in here because it's so freaking creepy and disgusting.  The first thing I thought of is "What are they looking at?"  Then I realized I'm the weirdo for my first thought not being, "why are they naked like that?"

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