Journal Revolution

People, you need a peephole

Last Friday, and odd dog with a dental problem appeared at our back door. His legs also stuck out every which way, like a badly drawn cartoon.  If I didn't take pictures of the things that go on in my daily life, I am sure I would not believe half the stuff that happens. I started going door-to-door asking my neighbors if they were missing their sweet dog. The weird train kept on going. I noticed some interesting things:

~The majority of my neighbors do not have peepholes in their front doors. PEOPLE, you need a peephole! That is so dangerous. Do not answer your door without looking at who is knocking. How do you pretend you are not home if at first you come to the window and look out at who is knocking? The person at the door can see you.
~Not only did nobody have a peephole, they also either had no window coverings on their huge front windows or had sheers. I can tell you everything everyone had in their great rooms, including how many kids they have based on the family photos on their mantels. Does nobody remember Polly Klaas, Elizabeth Smart, or JonBenet Ramsey? Come on you guys, go to Target and get some curtains for the windows that face the street.
~Most men who are home at 10:30 AM answered their doors half-dressed. I can safely say my husband is the hottest in the 'hood. Put your clothes on before answering the door, it's not that difficult to say hang on a second and grab a shirt. I am scarred for life. Bras for men might be a good thing afterall.
~Despite sharing a fence with us for 13 years -and despite our house being bright yellow with a red door in a sea of beige -and despite me always being outside, three of the neighbors that share a fence with us had never seen me before and were totally baffled by my existence. One of those neighbors being the ball tossers. The other being the house where I think the mom is a blogger and her desk window faces our kitchen. The other house had a cute guy in it who was dressed so I am going to let him off the hook. He actually helped me try to find the dog's owner. Anyway, the fact that nobody has noticed me for 13 years is pretty damn good. I actually AM invisible! Well, it's weird, but it's good. If people can't see you, they can't complain.I'm not going to worry about my music being too loud.
~Everyone has stacks of magazines and mail on their counter and everyone has multiple remotes for their TV.

You can learn a lot about people by standing in their doorway for a minutes...a good reason to never answer your door when a stranger comes knocking, unless you see them holding your dog.

What not to ask an author

The worst question you can ask an author is about what they are working on next. It's not that creative people don't want to talk about what they are working on, but a huge chunk of creative work is often not what you are holding in your hands. The secret that artists, writers, and musicians are holding on to when you ask what we are all working on is that we are thinking (and living). It's not a romantic answer, so we just say some rehearsed thing and change the subject until we are ready to discuss our next thing. Our next thing involves a lot of staring into space and figuring shit out. Nobody wants to hear that, but that is what we do. Our heads are full of ideas and it takes planning -and fiddling- and futzing around to get those ideas out in a way that works. That is the fun of it! Like every great story, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. The figuring shit out part is the middle and often the part people want to fast-forward through to get to the blockbuster ending.
I like the middle best, just like a custard filled doughnut.

The glorious sound of silence

Today we are FEELIN' GROOVY about:
~The sound of silence. The barking dogs neighbor has a new job, and is now home at night! Ahhhhh! Sweet relief! We'd forgotten how nice it is to sit in our yard, have the windows open, and hear ourselves think.
~A new orange tree in our backyard.
~American Idiot the musical. If you like Green Day, see it. Do not take your young kids to see this even if they sing along with you in the car to the edited versions of the songs. There are sex scenes, drug scenes, and it's not appropiate for kids. You have been warned.
~Bumble & Bumble Color Minded Styling Balm. It's one of the only B&B products I like and one of the only ones that doesn't make our hair all staticy. It smells good, too.
~Almondictive Bits from My Boyfriend Joe. Caramelized almonds in chocolate. You'll eat the whole tub, hide them from yourself.
~Emily has chosen the Vanderbilt hoodie!

Our Bêtes Noires:
~Late the other night, some strange animal attacked a bird nest in our tree. We've tried to put it back in the tree for the bird who is looking for her home, but we just can't get it to stay in. We were surprised to see the nest is made mostly of fur from the barking dog! Cool and weird.
~Our TV and our A/C are broken. I have ordered repair parts for the tv and the a/c repair guy is coming on Thursday. Who will fix what first? My money is on us fixing the tv.
~AAA insurance sales people. They are worse than debt collectors. I went to register my car and they offered to give me an insurance quote. Just to see, I said ok. Their  homeowners insurance was more expensive than what we have. Now they will not stop calling me. When I emailed the representative back and told her that since their rates were HIGHER than what we have already and I would stay with our original carrier, she called MY HUSBAND. Well you for sure will not be getting my business now, Miss 1955!
~Cashiers keep telling me how sick they are with the stomach flu while scanning all my groceries.  How long do germs stay on cereal boxes?

Grooving on our first ever blog post

I've been getting emails lately about why we haven't been blogging our lists of things we are grooving on and things that are bugging us. I have no reason other than I was doing it for so long that I just felt like taking a break from it. Though, in our daily conversations with each other we always say the good and the bad of our day (or of the hour depending on the day). We are huge list makers, as you know. We have a collection of our lists from when we were kids and they are prized possessions (and really funny). Last night I was wondering how long exactly we'd been doing the list blog posts so I took a look through our archives. We've been blogging for NINE YEARS! This is our first blog post from September 30, 2003:

We are glad you could join us as we journey through this life.
Today we are FEELIN' GROOVY about:

~ECCO shoes
~Sparkling H20 Paints
~Cheddar Cheese on Low Sodium Triscuits
~Air Condtitioning
~RAID
~Diet Vanilla Coke
~Friends who get all our jokes

Our Bêtes Noires:

~Ants
~Bad Internet Connections
~Bad Cell Phone Service (each call begins and ends with HELLO? HELLO?)
~Flavorless chocolate that we bought when we REALLY needed chocolate but couldn't find a See's Candies anywhere.
~People who call talk radio shows and begin with, "Like I was telling your screener,....."

 

Remember Diet Vanilla Coke?! Oh how we loved it. Of course it was discontinued shortly after that blog post. The Low-Sodium Triscuits are now called "Hint of Salt" Triscuits and we still eat those. As for bad cell phone service, who talks on their phone anymore? We text each other all day with our iPhones that never leave our hands. My how things have changed and yet how they have stayed exactly the same. My exterminator was just here yesterday spraying for ants...and spiders. Our good and bad list will be returning soon.

*One thing I have grooved on for over a decade is ebay! My Lake Houses abstract landscape is one of my 99cent auctions this week.

You Rule and life the next few weeks

We are doing some serious mixing of life and art around here the next few weeks. Our new art journaling book YOU RULE: The Art Of Taking Charge will be out in early May and we are so excited about it! We've loved working on it and can't wait to see how it inspires people.
Around the time YOU RULE comes out, our dear Emily will have made her decision about where to go to college and that will be cause for celebration. And, I suspect, it will be cause for us to learn some new airline schedules to the east coast.
Then, once the college decision has been made, Dearest Beloved Seester Karen is going to have some major surgery. This will be the cause of me sitting in a hospital cafeteria eating macaroni and cheese for days while rocking back and forth. My tweets those days should be really interesting! I will spend the remainder of May and the beginning of June encouraging everyone to RULE their journals from Karen's side while I spoon feed her soft frosting and do her hair and makeup. As if I would be the type of nurse who just feeds apple sauce. Seriously, who craves applesauce while on pain killers and immobile? NOBODY!
By June, Karen will be up and moving around and we will be sitting next to each other beaming with pride and crying our eyes out as Emily graduates from high school. I hope there will be some of that soft frosting left over.

I'm will be more forthcoming on details as things happen. I think you are all aware of the Woods Dinino Curse. Mercury may not be in retrograde right now but that damn curse is active all year round! I don't want to jinx us. I'm saving all my talking about things to the point of irritation until they are actually happening.

*I have some 99 cent art auctions at ebay this week with no reserves. Go here to look or bid.

The eye thing explained

Last week, I went to get my hair cut. When I came out of the salon, it felt like a bee or something stung me in the eye. Or maybe a piece of hair from my cut got in my eye and was stuck. I figured since it was me, it was a bug with a vendetta. I drove home kind of squinty and then spent the next few hours squirting every type of solution my husband had in his medicine cabinet for his contact lenses in my eye trying to get whatever it was out. My eye was continuing to swell, turn red, and I could not keep it open. Any amount of light was making it worse. So naturally, I took some photos and texted them to my sister in a time zone 3 hours away. If you are not sure why I did this, this is how Jewish people diagnose illnesses. We consult our family members first, take a poll on what disease we think we are dying of, then decide when we should go to a doctor. We decided I should go to the eye doctor  in the morning if whatever was stuck in my eye did not come out by then. Also, we relived every moment from our childhood hoping the tears would flush out the intruder. No such luck.
The first optometrist I went to was lovely. He  saw me right away and did some gross tests with dye in my eye and told me the problem was not caused by a bee, spider, or a hair cut. Oh the luck! He determined my problem was too serious for him to treat and I'd need to see a specialist right away. While he was calling his buddy the specialist, I was tweeting that I was about to be blind and was hoping they'd give me a cool eye patch. I went to see the specialist, though I don't have any memory of how I actually drove there with one eye covered and full of vegetable dye. But, whatever. What a do remember is there is a cool lobby at the specialist's office that I intend to sneak in for a photo shoot next week. I hope there are no security cameras. After more gross and painful tests, the specialist who has no sense of humor at all tells me I have Iritis, a condition that affects the iris where the iris becomes inflammed. It's controlled with steroids, dilating drops, and DARK GLASSES. What? No eye patch? The dilating drops definitely help the excruciating pain, but it's making it very hard for me to see clearly anything not right in front of me. If I am not wearing sunglasses most of the time, it gives me a really weird headache. Having one eye dilated and the other not, is freaky looking, too. On the bright side, I love sunglasses! On the down side, now I can't make jokes about Bono always wearing sunglasses inside. Poor Bono! Well, not really poor-poor. I don't think he got his extra pair of glasses at Target like I did.

 

A visit from the Wizard

This morning I was sitting in our garden soaking up the sun, planning a new herb garden, and enjoying some matzo with cookie butter* when a strange thing caught my eye. There at the end of the yard on our fence, in vines, was a message from The Wizard. The Wizard tags fences in organic graffiti? What is going on?! This was not there a few days ago when I was sitting outside playing Draw Something instead of working. Are lollipop flowers and poptart bricks going to appear next? Maybe a roll of edible wallpaper will suddenly appear for our loft. This is way better than finding Mother Mary images in vines on your fence.
Wait, could it be that Ignacio, our beloved gardener is really THE WIZARD? What does it all mean?
Things around here just never stop being weird. I love it.

*If you haven't gotten the Cookie Butter from Trader Joe's, get it! Stock up, it sells out fast and it is addictive. It's cinnamony, gingerbready, sweet deliciousness.

Matzo Eclair Icebox Cake

After yesterday's Matzo Toffee experiment, I thought I'd try another matzo recipe adaptation. Or, as I more commonly call it, I thought I would procrastinate. The original recipe I'm adapting is for an icebox eclair cake made with Saltine crackers. I figured if it's good for a Saltine, it's good for a matzo. This recipe is often made with graham crackers, too. I think what we can take away from my matzo experiments is that any recipe that is good with Saltines is usually good with graham crackers or the other way around.

What I used (you can click the links above for those actual recipes for the other cracker versions):

2 small packages of Jello brand instant vanilla pudding (I use fat-free)
3 cups of milk (I use fat-free and lactose-free)
1 8 ounce container of Cool Whip (uh, yes, fat-free)
4 squares/pieces of unsalted Matzo
1 bottle of Hershey's Chocolate Sundae Syrup (You guessed it! Fat-free)

You can use the full fat, full lactose, full sugar, full whatever you like versions. I also used the Trader Joe's matzo which I DO NOT RECOMMEND. Do not use that. It tastes kind of burnt. I prefer Manischewitz brand. Use an 8 or 9 inch square pan. In a large bowl, mix the pudding with the milk. Stir it well. When blended, add in the defrosted Cool whip and mix that all together. Take a few tastes, YUM! Put some of the pudding mix in the bottom of your square pan, enough for the first piece of matzo to rest comfortably in a bed of fluffy pudding mix. Cover the first piece of matzo with enough pudding mix to go all the way to the edges of the pan. Repeat this process until you end with one matzo on top. Cover the top matzo with chocolate sauce so the entire thing is covered. Cover it well, not  a thin layer of chocolate so you can still see the matzo shining through. A thick layer of chocolate. Cover and put in the refrigerator for AT LEAST 6  hours. If you can do it over night, even better. The longer this chills, the softer the matzo gets. When you want to serve it, set the pan on the table and hand everyone a fork. Or, cut it in squares and serve it on nice plates. It is kind of hard to get the first piece out so that one can be  your test piece that you eat by yourself when everyone is playing Call of Duty. I had a hard time getting good photos because my Jewish cat LOVES matzo and she kept photo bombing my desert. I think this would be really good with coconut pudding instead of vanilla, but my husband hates coconut so I haven't tried it yet. It would also be good with caramel sauce instead of chocolate. This is not a super sweet desert but it is nice and comforting. I'd add some berries or a fruit sauce on top or on the side for a little zing. It tastes really similar to the Saltine version. I do think it needs to chill longer than the Saltine version so if you have made that one, stick a knife in the matzo version as the day progresses and use your best judgment.

 

Almost Matzo Toffee

I came across this recipe for Matzo toffee and it looked very unhealthy and delicious so I thought, what the hell, I will try it! The recipe is very similar to one my grandmother taught me years ago but instead of graham crackers as its base (her recipe), it uses matzos. It also calls for butter and chocolate, two things I know are good with matzo. Most people are familiar with the Saltine toffee and I am pretty sure it's the same idea, but a Jewish version. Maybe I should google Saltines before I say its the Jewish version of a Saltine toffee. For all I know, Saltine could be short of Saltinestein.
The Matzo Toffee recipes calls 1 cup of butter, I cup of brown sugar, and 12 matzos  spread over 2 cookie sheets. My grandmother's recipe was the same amount of butter and sugar but one cookie sheet covered in graham crackers. I don't really get how you can fit 12 Matzos on 2 cookie sheets even if you broke them in tiny pieces. I managed maybe a total of 6 between the 2 cookie sheets, with the matzos broken into pieces. Following the directions, I poured the butter sugar mixture evenly over the two sheet pans of matzos but knew from my experience with the graham cracker cookies that this was going downhill. There was not enough butter-sugar mix to cover each piece of matzo. I should've just poured the mix over just one pan and totally ignored the recipe. Instead, I followed the directions while going what the hell is this lady thinking? Twelve matzos on two sheets my butt.
I watched through the oven door as the dry edges of the matzos burned.
I followed the rest of the recipe directions, ate the parts that were not dried out, took some photos, and am now writing this. The parts of the matzo that were drenched in the sugar-butter mix were delish! This recipe has potential for being a winner. If you make it, ignore the 12 matzos on two sheets thing. Fit as many as you can on one sheet, and use the entire amount of sugar-butter mix on that one sheet pan of matzos. Be sure the matzos are swimming in that heart attack/diabetes soup. This matzo toffee is hard to stop eating so consider yourselves warned. Well, it's not hard if you make the bad, dried out version. Make whatever version suits your needs.

*I used almonds instead of walnuts. Use whatever you like.

Another Secret Revealed

Karen and I have a new journaling book coming out soon. I will give up more details about it shortly but in the mean time, I am thrilled to be able to share the cover with everyone. It was a joy for us to be able to work with the designer who worked on Visual Chronicles and Journal Revolution again. And of course, it's always a joy for me and Karen to be up  late working on secret projects together, eating food out of bags and drinking straight from cartons. We can't wait to share You Rule with you!