The Blog of Bert Jones

Amy grilling our dinner

I have always been a summer baby. I like spring too. Some­thing about not needing to wear a jacket, get­ting to wear my favorite san­dals (see last post). And grilling.

I love to grill (although lately Amy or my mom have been doing more of that). The smell of the food cooking, the socializing…

Amy bought me a new grill a few years ago…I loves it!

Fall is okay too, the crisp air, the smell of bonfires.…but I still like summer and spring better.

Winter…eww.…no thanks.…

I really need a Junk Food Friday Night. I haven’t had one in forever.

I am just craving so many dif­ferent kinds of food right now.

I am craving pop­corn, pizza, cream cheese won­tons from Pink Flower, Nachos and Cheese, Pret­zels and Cheese, Cake, Pie, A Hot Cookie Ice Cream Bowl, Taquitos, Taco Fla­vored Pizza Rolls, Que­sadillas, Big N Tasty, Chalupas, French Toast, Waf­fles, Panokoeken, Did I men­tion cake?, Banana Shake, Mon­ster Omlette.…okay, maybe I am just plain olé hungry, and all of those sound really good.

(Dis­claimer: No, I don’t eat that much on a Junk Food Friday Night…just 3 or 4 dif­ferent things while I stay up for a few hours watching movies or playing games…See my fat post from a few years ago, I don’t eat like that…I’m not a “hoarder”.)

Well, we were over at the park com­mu­nity room/storm shelter to sign up for the co-op that is going in place on Oct. 1. And someone comes charging in to make sure the room will be open because a storm is coming. So Amy and I finish up and start walking back to our home (which is across the street) and we see that the sky is dark.

So we get home, flip on the news and see that is is a severe thun­der­storm. So we keep watching, thinking were okay, and then they announce that there is a tor­nado warning for Anoka county. And then, as if on queue, the sirens go off!

So as we are going across to the shelter, some guy comes walking towards me pointing at the sky and I turn and look and lit­er­ally behind my house, about a block away, there is a HUGE cloud that looks like a un-formed tor­nado, and it looks like it is touching the ground.

So here we are sit­ting here, in the storm shelter, I have never seen it this full. And HOT. Too many bodies in such a small place.

I can’t even remember the last time there was a tor­nado. Gosh, years ago. But I hope it passes us by. There is no radio in here either. So of course, no one has any idea what is going on outside.

I orig­i­nally brought my laptop to see if I could get online and keep track of the weather, but of course, no, my wire­less net­work is just not strong enough. Which sucks. And there must not be any net­works on this side of the park. There is about three by my house (across the street). Oh well. It would have been kind of neat to be THE person everyone looked to for weather info in here. The hero that saves the day (or in this instance, night).

And man, kids these days use such language….

Well, were back at the house and we are sending Cindy out to get Dairy Queen. Aren’t we nice?

Still watching the news though.

Okay, Just as Cindy went out­side, the sirens went off, so she is in the house now and we are NOT get­ting Dairy Queen. Maybe another night.

Gonna go watch the news now..

(UPDATE: After it qui­eted down, Cindy went out to get ice cream. Dairy Queen was closed because half of their rood tore off from the winds!)

Well… it’s been awhile. I am so bored right now. Waiting for art files so I can do some work.

My life has been very stressful.

I don’t even know where to begin. I guess not working as much as I would like is stressful, then add having another baby with no health insur­ance, would add to that. Add to that a parent who com­plains about money (with a small degree of being right) doesn’t help any.

My birthday is coming up, but with me being so stressed, I don’t know how I am going to enjoy it. I hate doing the finances, but Amy doesn’t like to do them either, and someone has to. I hate that we have no money. I want to pay of my card, car, get a bigger home that is on land I own, get a new washer and dryer, a new fridge, stove and enter­tain­ment center. A nice sec­tional would be nice too.

I want to start up col­lege funds for the kids and retire­ment funds for Amy and I, but without money, that is impos­sible to do. I feel like I am in this sinking hole and I just can’t out.

Food would be nice too. I can’t remember the last time our fridge and cup­boards were stocked with food. It always seems there is nothing to eat. And since Amy has been feeling sick and not feeling like cooking dinner, her usual knack of making some­thing out of nothing, isn’t happening.

I am so depressed all the time. I have learned how to keep up a happy appear­ance, but even Amy can see through that. I love how she assure me every­thing will be alright, but lately that hasn’t helped.

I just need a mir­acle. or a job.

We had a pam­pered chef party last night, which was fun it was a Tappas party.

We had some amazing food. We only had two other people show up, other than Amy, Charmin, Cindy and myself.

The end of the night, somehow Amy got some shrimp on her and started having an allergic reac­tion. Our pam­pered chef lady is a nurse, so she had Amy take some benedryl and sit down and relax.

This next part I didn’t want to post, but I am tired of just keeping my feel­ings all in and I need to vent some­where, so here goes:

When everyone was leaving her mother wanted us to call the doctor and maybe take her to the emer­gency room. The only problem is I have no insur­ance and no one to watch the kids for me. She assumed I meant for her to take Amy, and she started com­plaining that she had work/school and couldn’t stay out all night, etc. etc. (Which, I never asked her too)

She wanted to have Tony stay the night in case I had to take her, but he didn’t want to, because he had no clothes to wear. So he got upset and she started get­ting upset and I told him to just go, cause I didn’t need to deal with atti­tude and a bitchy boy, while trying to take care of Amy. So I told her, “It would be fine and I will handle it, we’ll just take the kids with us.”

So then she decided to have Matt stay, but he didn’t want to and got upset and I told him, “just go, it’s fine.” So he was upset and then Mona started in on him, saying, “Do you even know what’s going on?”, he said, “Yeah I do”

I told her it was fine, I don’t want him there or Tony, and I started get­ting upset and then she told me, to “Just Quit”.

I got furious. You don’t tell me what to do in my house. I had already told her it was fine, I have other people we can call, just go. And then she goes and tells me to just quit. Sorry, but your not my mother. And frankly, my mother wouldn’t tell me to do that in my house either. And she lives here!

So I got pissed, and Matt started for the door and she started in on him and I just turned towards everyone and said, “Everyone, just get out of my house.” I don’t remember if she said any­thing back, because I was so pissed off, and mainly at her, because she wouldn’t let it go.

Matt got to the door and said some­thing, and she said some­thing back and he said some­thing about, “Your the Problem” and I wanted to agree with him, but I held my tongue. Or I was just to pissed off to say anything.

So she kept telling me to call the doctor and basi­cally made me feel like

1. she didn’t trust me to take care of her daughter.
2. Made me feel incom­pe­tent. (Okay, so maybe they are the same thing or very sim­ilar, bite me)

I just wanted everyone out of my house. I would handle it. I didn’t need all these people telling me what to do.

Even though all through the night, I was doing other things and wasn’t right by Amy’s side, I had my ear and eyes on her. I was lis­tening to her.

Appar­ently, I was the only one, because if people would have lis­tened to her, she said she was feeling much better and even though her throat was tight, it wasn’t as tight as it was before. Just a few weeks ago, she acci­den­tally touched wool and the same thing hap­pened and it too passed.

People make me so mad and after the fact I always end up telling Amy what I would have said. Since she has finally been telling people off, I decided I should prob­ably start too, oth­er­wise people won’t realize how I feel.

So there ya go. Don’t tell me what to do in my house, and if I say I will take care of some­thing, I will. I don’t need someone to keep telling me what to do.

My kids are so much like me. They would rather watch infomer­cials than car­toons. And they mem­o­rize every single thing so they can repeat it to us later.

Ask my son what the vacuum food saver can do and he will tell you it can crush 24 cans, save you thou­sands on your gro­cery bill by buying in bulk and keep your meat fresh for up to a year or more.

Ask my youngest daughter about bare essen­tials and she will tell you that it’s makeup that doesn’t feel cakey. It is only three powder foun­da­tions that allow your nat­ural beauty to come through, yet hide blem­ishes and age spots.

Ask them about the magic bullet and they will direct you to our kitchen. yep, we bought one. And it was worth it.

We are a frugal (is that the word I want) family when it comes to our kitchen wares. We have the Mir­acle Blade III knife set and they do every­thing they say they do. We are a pam­pered chef family and have about 80% of the cat­alog. And now we have the magic bullet.

For those of you who have no idea what the magic bullet is, it is basi­cally a blender/grinder/food processor. But the unique thing is that you put every­thing into spe­cial cups (small, large and handle mugs) and attach the cor­rect blade (you get two types) and put it on the bullet base (where you can lock it on or use the “pulse” tech­nique where you tap it for quick bursts of spinning).

But what it neat is that you put every­thing into the cup and attach the blade cover and then turn it all upside down and place it on the base. Unlike a blender where every­thing is thrown in on the top. It also comes with a blender size con­tainer and juicer attach­ment (that works very well).

The dif­ferent blades and dif­ferent cups are handy. In 5 min­utes everyone had their own fla­vored smoothie in their respec­tive mixing mug. Do that in a blender and you have to clean it out between fla­vors. Amy and I had 2 dif­ferent types of omelets for break­fast. I made apple­sauce, apple juice, and chicken salad for my work dinner all in 10 minutes.

Usu­ally we don’t go for gim­micks on TV. Like the griddle/sandwich maker thingy or the rotis­serie thing. But what we do buy, we usu­ally are happy with.

So take a look at the magic bullet, and see that it is worth it. (it also came with a 101 recipe book that tells you how to make breads, frost­ings, dips, cakes, sauces, marinades…should I go on?)

After get­ting home from Onamia Sunday night, we decided to get food for dinner, but get some­thing some­what healthier than fast food or pizza. We had our choice of Wendy’s, Quizno’s or Subway. We set­tled on Subway.

We get there and they are having a dinner rush. There are about 3 people in front of us, but the first person is ordering for a family so we are waiting for about 20 min­utes before it is our turn.

We tell the guy we want 4 kid’s packs. He pro­ceeds to tell us they are all out of rounds, so they will have to put them on 6″ size bread for no extra charge. Fine with us.

There are 3 people working. The bread/cheese/meat guy, the top­pings guy and the cashier girl. The cashier girl is trying to hurry us along by asking us what kind of 6″ subs we have while the top­pings guys is asking what we want on the first one, while the meat/bread guy is asking us about the next sand­wich. So my mom is trying to talk to 3 dif­ferent people at the same time. Mean­while the girl isn’t under­standing that we are ordering kids packs.

The bread guy keeps smooshing the bread when cut­ting it so he gets all mad and throws the bread (lit­er­ally throws the bread) in the trash. The top­ping guy dis­ap­pears. So now the bread guy also has to do the top­pings as well.

We then pro­ceed to tell him we want a foot long wheat. He says the wheat is still too hot to cut. Okay, how long until it is cool. About 20 min­utes. Fine, we will have it on white. Oh wait, they are all out of white and it won’t be ready for another 20 min­utes. (couldn’t they have announced all this BEFORE WE WASTED 20 MINUTES IN LINE!) Fine we will wait.

So we step aside to wait and I look back and see about 20 people now in line. So I tell my mom forget it we will just take the kids sand­wiches (and then very loudly) AND WE WILL JUST GO TO QUIZNOS TO GET OUR OTHER SUBS. Everyone in line starts looking at each other like, uh oh, why is he going to another sub shop? Mean­while no one bothers to announce to these poor people that they are out of these breads.

So we go to pay for the kids packs and she asks if I want milk or juice. I say juice. She says we don’t have any juice left. WELL, THAN WHY DID YOU ASK ME WHICH I WANTED! So I sigh really loudly and tell her milk. By this point she knows I am pissed. So we leave.

We drive back home to tell Amy that we now have to go to Quiznos (she was against it to begin with, because she has never eaten there and doesn’t know what she would like)

So I take the phone with me. We walk into Quiznos–no one in line. We peruse, order our sand­wiches, tell them thank you and how won­derful they are and how nice they are com­pared to our recent Subway expe­ri­ence. And if they all of a sudden have a crowd, they know why. We were in and out in 10 min­utes. Less if we wouldn’t have taken our time looking at all the food they have, soups, salads, desserts, ton of sand­wiches. WHICH TASTE GREAT!

So I am boy­cotting subway. Quiznos is the way to go and they are HOT sand­wiches with WAY more taste!

I have a funny story to tell you. Amy filled me in on the hap­pen­ings of the weekend and this story is too good to not share.

While I was away at Guys Weekend, she was cleaning on Sat­urday night and she hears a “hel­loooo” out of no where.

She goes to the front door and there is my dad standing at the end of the steps, he says, “someone wants to talk to you”, and Amy says, “who?” and he says, “Their in the car”.

It turns out that Muriel and Lor­raine had come over and he took them for a drive in his new minivan. While they were out, he decided to show them the out­side of our new home (he lives close to us).

He drove by and saw our minivan in the dri­veway and decided to knock and see if we were there, but when he saw the door open, he decided to holler so he wouldn’t have to try and climb the steps with his bad leg… or scare anyone.

So Muriel and Lor­raine (My great aunt and grand­mother) come in and see the house and they all love it! As they are standing around talking, my dad looks at Amy and very qui­etly says, “We are going to get some tacos”.

So Amy picks up his hint and says, “Well, we were just about to leave and go get some dinner, because we haven’t eaten yet.”

Dad winks at her and says, “Do you like tacos?” and Amy says, “yeah we love tacos.”

Muriel pipes up and says, “Is there a taco place around here?” and dad says, “Yeah, they just put one up in the new vil­lage a few miles away.” So Muriel then invites everyone to dinner. (My dad can be so sneaky…course it helps when they are both half deaf!)

So they arrive at the restau­rant and Amy is standing behind My dad and Muriel and they are facing each other at the counter deciding what to get and Amy is facing the order-taker-chick.

They both are looking at my dad and Muriel like it is a tennis match, back and forth, Muriel would ask how much some­thing was and dad would then say, “well, why don’t you get this, or this or this” this went on for like 15 minutes.

Finally they decided what they wanted and Muriel kept asking how much each thing was or second guessing her­self, so the order taker looks at Amy and Amy tells her the order and says to put it in. So she does. Amy is just gig­gling the whole time.

So then Muriel is asking for the total. And everyone is trying to tell her and she can’t hear, so then they are trying to show her the dis­play that has the amount. The whole time her hand has her pen and is in the spot where you write the number amount in your check. So Amy reaches around and grabs her hand and helps her write the amount. Muriel is kinda laughing about this and the clerk is trying so hard not to laugh.

Then, Muriel is trying to figure out the date, and dad wasn’t lis­tening and tells her the total, so then Amy tells her the date again. So Muriel fin­ishes with the check and then tears it out of her book, but leaves it sit there as she is writing in her reg­ister. So Amy reaches around, slips the check out and gives it to the cashier. The cashier then is telling them their order number at the same time as the cook calls the order number out… wait, it gets better:

They get a booth and a table next to it. Amy, my mom and Muriel and my dad are sit­ting in the booth, while Lor­raine and the kids are at the table.

This is a Taco Bell/Long John Silver’s combo restau­rant, so the cashier comes over with little pirate hats for the kids. A few min­utes later Amy looks over at the table and starts gig­gling, everyone asks her what is so funny and she says, “This is the adult table and that is the kid table.” Everyone looks over and all the kids have their hat on and so does Lor­raine! Everyone starts gig­gling… wait, it gets better.…

Lor­raine sees this little girl who has on this cute outfit, she wants Muriel to see it so she can make one for the girls (my great-aunt is a won­derful seam­stress). So, for 15 min­utes everyone is trying to get Muriel to see this girl, but every time she finally hears them and looks, the girl goes behind the counter or her par­ents stand in front of her and Muriel keeps saying, “I don’t see anyone!”

By this time Amy is cracking up, she is laughing so hard that she sounds like she is hyper-ventilating. So everyone (except Lor­raine, who can’t hear any­thing going on) is laughing and asking if she is okay, and Amy quips, “Lor­raine, give me your oxygen”. Lor­raine somehow heard that and takes the tube out of her nose and hands it to Amy.

This just kills Amy and she falls over on my mom laughing so hard and my dad starts laughing so hard that he almost falls out of the booth. Which makes Amy laugh even harder. It took them a good 10 min­utes to calm down!

The whole time, Lor­raine and Muriel have no clue what is going on!

So always remember, old people are cute, but half-deaf rel­a­tives are a riot!

Man am I tired. I am up waiting for the panokoeken to finish so that my wife can have her break­fast in bed. I AM TOO TIRED!!!! But it is mother’s day.

I have been bat­tling fluid in my ear and have had tem­po­rary hearing “dull­ness” in my left ear. I have been sleeping on raised pil­lows so it can drain out. I woke up at around 7 and I could hear, but my tired ass fell back asleep instead of get­ting up and now I can’t hear again in that ear…

Then this morning as I was making the wife break­fast, I went to grab the flour (which is in some spe­cial tup­per­ware con­tainer that has a really tight lid) I went to open it and it lit­er­ally bent half of my fin­ger­nail back. Talk about painful. I had to hold it a few min­utes to stop the bleeding. Not a good morning.

Can I got back to bed?

Just got back from work and are my feet sore. Why, you ask? Since I sit on my butt all night? Because my co-worker and I went on a field trip.

We wanted dinner. We didn’t want Keiran’s Pub (it wasn’t Wednesday and so our bar­tender wasn’t there and it is too expen­sive). We didn’t want to walk all the way to Subway. We didn’t want to order Divanni’s.

So we talked with the last Day person before he left for the night and told us to try a few of the skyway shops. Even though most close at 6pm (it was now 6:35), there should still be one or two still open.

So we got all excited. Let’s GO! So we punched out for a half hour break… and here our adven­ture begins.…

We started walking the sky­ways in the direc­tion he said to. closed… closed… closed… closed… we past 4 sub­ways, 5 Caribou Coffee’s, a Jimmy Johns, a Cousins subs, a few pizze­rias… 8 asian places… ALL CLOSED.

So we thought, let’s keep going. We are close to city center (Which is 6 blocks away from our office bldg.)

So instead of a straight shot down the street, we were zig-zagging through the skyway. Finally, we get to City Center. Every­thing closed at 7pm. It was 7:30.

Let’s try Gavedaii Com­mons next door… all closed at 6pm… Let’s try Mar­shall Field’s Marketplace.…EUREKA!!!!!! LeeAnn Chin (YUMMY Orange Chicken!) So we had found food. And tons of it… we were happy. So we start walking back.… and get lost… twice…

We finally got back and real­ized we had a 1 and a half hour lunch/break. Yuk… But we fig­ured we both need to get in shape, so we will walk everynight to Mar­shall Field’s and Back and see if we can get there and back in 1/2 hour.

So again… my feet are sore… next time wear tennis shoes and not san­dals… No matter how much of a hurry your in… and light-weight clothing… some of those walk­ways still have the heat on!