I read Life of a Doctor’s Wife’s complaint department post this morning and started to leave a comment—and after four paragraphs I cut and paste it over here, because HONESTLY. But then I went and did a summary comment on her post, too, because I got conflicted: if one of my commenters took AWAY a comment because it was “too long,” I’d be all “BRING IT BACK!! I WANT IT!! THERE IS NO SPACE LIMIT!!”
So anyway, these are the things making me crazy this morning:
1. My 12-year-old son keeps turning off his alarm clock, then getting in the shower—and 9 minutes later it turns out he hit snooze instead of turning the alarm off. And he shares a room, and his room is across two feet of hallway from the room of his other two brothers. So then I have three sleepy, cranky boys awake, and one oblivious boy in the shower.
2. My 6-year-old daughter has been pitching sulky fits over EVERYTHING. And I mean like LONG-ESTABLISHED rules that make TOTAL SENSE. For example, she’ll out of the blue assume that even though she ALWAYS goes to bed earlier than the two older boys, she can stay up as late as they do. And then when I say incredulously that NO, she ALWAYS goes to bed at this time, she SULKS. Or, after her teeth have been brushed and it’s only 10 minutes until bedtime, she asks for ice cream—and when I say no, she acts as if she had been PROMISED ice cream and then was UNFAIRLY DENIED it. This morning she is sulking and weeping and stomping because she has to GET DRESSED. As if she has been WRONGED in some way.
3. We keep getting memos from the school, filled with giant typos. The MANUAL is filled with giant typos. On one hand, big deal. On the other hand, this is a SCHOOL!! A school that has come up short on its last two state evaluations! So perhaps we could make a little effort to appear as if we know the difference between “your” and “you’re” ourselves, before we teach it to children! KTHX for you’re consideraton in this matter!
4. Our grocery store keeps being totally out of a few things on my list—different things from visit to visit, but with common repeat offenders. So every time I go, there are a few important things I can’t get. I realize we are lucky not to have to stand in line with ration tickets or whatever, but we ARE IN FACT fortunate to live in a time and place of abundantly-stocked grocery stores and so I WANT TO BUY MY GROUND TURKEY AND BABY SPINACH, AND I DO NOT WANT TO COME BACK TOMORROW FOR THESE COMPLETELY REASONABLE THINGS.
5. Mother-in-law’s estate is still not settled. In 3 weeks, it will have been 2 years. And it is a simple estate, with not much value and with only two children to receive it equally. I realize these things take time…but perhaps they SHOULDN’T.
6. I need to make a recipe, for a post. And the recipe is meant to use leftover turkey, but I don’t HAVE leftover turkey. I went to the grocery store and looked at turkeys and concluded that no, I did not want to buy and cook a turkey just to get leftover turkey, so I asked the meat department guy about it and he was kind of crabby, as if he isn’t really getting joy out of matching the right customer with the right meat. I told him that what I was looking for was “like, just like a package of chicken breasts, but turkey,” and he said crabbily, “Well, they wouldn’t be the same size: a turkey breast is much bigger.” Me: “…Okay. But what I mean is ‘LIKE’ that: a smallish piece of turkey, without bones, in a package, not ground.” So then he was willing to admit that he guessed he did have one tenderloin (me: not knowing what a tenderloin is, not really caring at that point), and then he was trying to tell me where it was and he was getting exasperated: “No, THERE. No, DOWN MORE. *sigh* Next to the ground turkey!” Me: looking at the three tiers of ground turkey, wondering which of the three shelves he means.
Anyway, I left with a 1.6-pound turkey tenderloin, and now it occurs to me that I have to somehow COOK it. Before tonight. And I don’t know how, and I still don’t know what a tenderloin is, and when I look it up I keep finding recipe for “turkey tenderloinS,” and it shows these little discs of meat, and that is not what I have. I have a CHUNK. Somebody just TELL ME HOW TO COOK IT SO THAT I HAVE WHAT LOOKS LIKE LEFTOVER TURKEY MEAT. Or else tell me quick that I screwed it all up, and I’ll go back and get a turkey and cook that sucker.
I will probably also need to make this my own post so I don’t leave you a novel in the comments, but for now:
1. ALSO ME TOO. Except it’s my HUSBAND who does this, and the people he is waking up with his snooze button are me and the baby (who sleeps in our room). STABBY STAB STAB.
4. I’ve made two extra trips to BJ’s for organic whole milk (what the toddler drinks) in the last week and they have been OUT both times. It’s a bulk store! They usually have literally HUNDREDS of gallons. No one drinks whole milk! The dairy guy suggested I just call and ask next time, but honestly I hate using the phone so much I’d rather just drive over there AGAIN.
You can cook the turkey however you want. Pretend it’s chicken breast – when I have to pre-cook chicken I usually boil it, which sounds and also looks gross, but gives you nice moist chicken. Just look up cook times for however much you have.
I’d probably just bake the turkey like chicken, or maybe boil it if that’s easier and you don’t want to turn on the oven.
The alarm clock thing? That would drive me nuts!
What kind of leftover turkey does the recipe call for? Shredded? Sliced?
When you see how to cook tenderloin and it is discs it’s just because they cut the tenderloin into round slices.
But, as PPs said, you can cook it however you would cook chicken breasts.
I’d probably just bake the turkey chunk at 350 until it looks done.
I would take a red pen to any memo received from the school with an error. I find that completely unacceptable. I would then return it, I’m already THAT Mom at school so what’s one more mark against me. They should be horrified.
Please do not cook a whole turkey just for us! That’s…a lot of work.
My younger son must have the same whatever as Elizabeth, because I am about to throw him out of the house and make his three-year-old self get a job so he can leave us alone.
Sorry, no answer on the turkey, but this was great:
“…as if he isn’t really getting joy out of matching the right customer with the right meat.”
Love it!
I think I would Google pork tenderloin recipes and pick one of those. Should be pretty much the same thing. Although, if you’re looking for generic leftover turkey you’re probably going to want to keep it whole and keep the seasonings simple. Maybe stick it in the crockpot with some liquid?
I am currently irritated that parent/teacher conferences are scheduled for the Friday of a 4-day-weekend. Since I’m being forced to take vacation time, I had kind of planned on, you know, TAKING A VACATION. And now I’m the mom who doesn’t show up to conferences. Bah.
Devany- It calls for shredded. Ooo, I wonder if I could just make it in the crock pot?
Ah ha! And Tess too says maybe crockpot! I am liking the plan that is developing.
Yep, if you are going to shred it, go with the crock pot!
I am glad you expanded (and thank you for the link!) because MAN! What a lot of irritations! The snooze thing makes me want to shake your 12-year-old, but that’s really not appropriate and ANYWAY he would simply be a stand-in for my snooze-presser who does it 58 times in the morning and I am the only one who wakes up.
The typos thing would drive me crazy. CRAZY. Anyone who puts copy together for publication – even if “publication” means “distributing to parents” – should know how to edit. Or GET SOMEONE who knows how to edit. But especially so here because they are TEACHERS!
And TWO YEARS?!?!
For the turkey – I did a big hunk of turkey (breast, not tenderloin) last year for my Fakesgiving test: http://lifeofadoctorswife.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/fakesgiving-take-2/
That may be more involved than you want it to be, but it was easy (although time consuming) and the turkey was delicious.
I am glad you expanded (and thank you for the link!) because MAN! What a lot of irritations! The snooze thing makes me want to shake your 12-year-old, but that’s really not appropriate and ANYWAY he would simply be a stand-in for my snooze-presser who does it 58 times in the morning and I am the only one who wakes up.
The typos thing would drive me crazy. CRAZY. Anyone who puts copy together for publication – even if “publication” means “distributing to parents” – should know how to edit. Or GET SOMEONE who knows how to edit. But especially so here because they are TEACHERS!
And TWO YEARS?!?!
For the turkey – I did a big hunk of turkey (breast, not tenderloin) last year for my Fakesgiving test: http://lifeofadoctorswife.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/fakesgiving-take-2/
That may be more involved than you want it to be, but it was easy (although time consuming) and the turkey was delicious.
(My word verification word is “inglyzh” which must be the language your kids’ school is speaking.)
I’m sometimes guilty of the snooze thing, though each time I’m just across the hall and can run over and turn it off right away. Occasionally, my husband will turn on his alarm to get up early on a weekend then get up even earlier on his own and not turn it off. By the time I figure out how to turn it off, I find myself fully awake at 5am on a Saturday. Grrr.
Two theories on Elizabeth’s fits:
1) She is dealing with a new environment at school with different rules and kids who, not used to such rules, are pushing against them. She is testing how far she can go and how much your rules may bend given the new techniques she’s seeing played out at school.
2) School has her stressed, but she doesn’t feel like she can say that there, so she says it in the safety of home with Mom. But she’s just a kid, so rather than pinpointing anxieties about school, she is creating dramas to vent some frustrations.
My own frustration comes from work, where things are changing just a little bit and people are acting like we have entirely new procedures. It’s simple stuff, like write down the code, make a copy, send it to X, but now also initial and date the first page. They used to do it correctly, but the initialing and dating part confuses them so much they forget to even do the coding. When I remind them about it, THEY SWEAR THEY NEVER HAD TO CODE IT BEFORE AND WHY AM I BEING SUCH A JERK ABOUT IT. Seriously, people?
Yes, crockpot!
Only girl; attention; drama queen; maybe they all fit. Maybe she needs a little extra Mommy time and a reminder that she really does need to obey the rules and in a nice way because she’s special and needs to set a good example. Heck I don’t know, I was the youngest and Elizabeth sounds a little like me!
Warning: you have unleashed a torrent in me here re: people hitting snooze on their alarm clocks.
So! Jim and I are both non-morning people. He always has a terrible time getting up and ready for work at a reasonable time (while technically he doesn’t HAVE to be at work at a certain time due to the nature of his job, his OFFICE opens at eight and almost everyone is there by nine at the latest.) He sets his alarm for seven but very often isn’t out of bed until eight thirty, because he hits snooze EVERY SEVEN MINUTES for sometimes upwards of an hour, driving me OUT OF MY DAMN MIND.
But this year, with Addy (and our neighbor girl, whom I also drive to school) needing to be out the door at a certain time and with lunch packed and homework signed, I have started going to bed early and getting up with Addy’s alarm clock and, you know, FUNCTIONING like an ADULT in spite of my sleepiness.
So now, as you can imagine, I have much less patience with Jim’s hit-the-snooze-five-times habits. I mean, I get that his job doesn’t actually mandate an official starting time, so yes, technically, he doesn’t HAVE to be at work by nine or whatever, but I have to imagine it doesn’t look super professional to be rolling in at ten. Also! It’s not like he’s spending that extra time in the mornings bonding with the kids or something. He’s sleeping! Or groggily staring into a coffee mug! If he were staying home later in order to, say, read with Eli or something, then ok, I wouldn’t mind. But as it stands I feel like he’s wasting away his free time in the mornings and then getting home later and seeing less of me and the kids than he could be if he would just GO TO WORK AT A NORMAL (i.e. 9AM!) AND CONSISTENT TIME. Ahem.
It just chaps my ass because he always used to moan, “If only everyone else had to be up at the same time I did, I think I could totally get into the early-morning routine. But when it’s just ME having to get ready it’s so HARD to be motivated.” Well. The time when everyone else is up and around has come, and yet he is still the one moaning at the alarm and pulling the blankets over his head and acting astonished about the time.
Whew. Cleansing breath. Sorry about that, just needed to vent I guess! I’d take my insanely long complaint comment and make it a post, like you did, except that mine is probably not of the appropriate nature to post on my blog that my entire family, including Jim, reads fairly often. So.
CROCK POT!
Anytime I’m at a loss on how to cook something I throw it in a crock pot on low with some cream of mushroom soup. Cream of mushroom fixes everything right?
i kind of hate that i get up, get ready, and leave the house before my bf even gets UP in the morning… BUT it would be FAR FAR FAR WORSE if he got up before me because of the snooze thing. he snoozes for EVER. FOR. EVER. and also it takes him MANY SECONDS to re-wake up each time the alarm goes off, which doesn’t sound like a lot of time until you’re the one lying in bed who has instantly woken up at the first beep and continues to lie there gritting your teeth during MULTIPLE CONTINUING BUZZY BEEPS while your boyfriend takes his time waking up and hitting snooze. AGAIN.
4. I hate when the grocery store is out of things. We are lucky enough to live within ten minutes of multiple grocery stores, but still…it always seems to be the perfectly reasonable things, like Honey Nut Cheerios and yeast in the little glass jar. I understand them not having spring roll wrappers, but I hate making multiple trips for normal things.
6. I would absolutely throw that in the crock pot. I am looking at my slow cooker cookbook and they seem to be cooking turkey on low for 6-7 hours.
The only idea I have on the turkey is to poach it? I know you can poach chicken breasts so maybe poaching a turkey breast, and adding some seasoning to the poaching water? I don’t really know.
Spelling mistakes and errors with respect to simple things like your and you’re make me absolutely crazy. Also things like “the companies policy” instead of “the company’s policy”. GAH.
You should have just went to the normal meat department (already packaged) and got a couple Jenny-o turkey breasts, poached them and shredded them and and then wam bam thank you ma’am!
I see the “your” and “you’re” and “lose” vs. “loose” mistakes so often that I once had to look them up to make sure I wasn’t making up the correct usage of these words. It drives me double nuts to see these typos in publications of any kind.
misguided mommy- OH CRAP, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE. CRAP CRAP CRAP.
In fact, you know what I REALLY should have done? I should have just gotten chicken breasts and SAID they were turkey. Who would have known, from the photo of the finished product? NO ONE, THAT’S WHO.
Or my dad mentioned I could have gone to the deli and had them cut a big thick slice of their least-processed turkey.
SIGH.
ARGH the conversation at the meat counter chuck full of TBI (true but irrelevant) would have driven me insane. Possibly I’m extra sensitive to this because my husband used to do that all the time – I’ve mostly broken him of the habit but he still pulls TBI out occasionally and it makes me so irritated.
Also, last year the school directory came home prominently titled “SCOOL DIRECTORY.” Part hilarious and part depressing.
Well, at least NOW you know all these millions of ways to get non-ground turkey, should you ever get a hankerin’ for such.
I go through the same ridiculous and irrational BS with Lucy several times a day. One day last week after a particularly crazy fit, I actually googled “6-year-old-PMS? Possible?” Because SERIOUSLY.
#3 would make me all sorts of stabby.
I had to make this a blog post, too.
Typos from the SCHOOL! And not just typos but “your” and “you’re” confusion?!? That’s… wow. Irritating.
I can’t believe the estate isn’t settled yet! Yes, these things take time, but I’m unclear as to WHY.
My vote is to boil the turkey in chicken broth. Add some garlic to broth if you have any. It should come out moist and flavorful enough to add as leftover turkey that isn’t leftover turkey.
My husband does that with the snooze alarm. Except that he stays in bed and just does the snooze alarm five or six times and at that point, I have been awake for HOURS and I am not even the one who has to get up.
I cannot believe it’s been 2 years since MIL died!
Oh and I wish you’d asked us about the turkey!! There are whole, cooked turkey breasts in the meat area by the little hams and such. You could have gotten one of those.
Either way, I think the tenderloinS little discs are essentially what you have, just sliced from the log into the discs. I think the crockpot idea is a great one, especially if you need to shred it!
The school typos would make my head explode.
Hello, my name is Hannah and I’m a multiple snoozer. I’m not PROUD or anything, but I am who I am. Basically my sister who’s room was next to mine spent two years solid hating me from 6 to 8 am, before she started having to get up at the same time anyway. When I went to college and shared a room with someone whom I was not related to, well…I was too deeply ashamed to inflict my snoozesyndrome upon her…and yet truly I cannot control the number of snoozes it takes me to wake up! And so I started using my cellphone. I would (and still do to this very day!) set it to vibrate, put it next to my pillow, and the vibrations would wake me up (ish), but not my roommate. I could happily snooze button it up for my customary hour (OHSTOPJUDGING) and she slept right through it.
So. Best argument ever for giving a twelve year old a cell phone or…? No?
2. Every night for the last year, my 6 yo son has to take a shower before bed. And every night, for the last year, when I state the shower requirement, he throws himself on the floor. Thrashing around, moaning and groaning at the absolute HORROR of impending cleanliness. As if my telling him to shower is akin to asking him to stand naked at the bus stop.
Kids are just WEIRD.
Our school is the same way. I got an email from a teacher that was sent out to all the 5th grade parents with the phrase, …’us teachers will take care of that.’. So…um..really?
Hannah: me too. :)
That grocery store thing would drive me CRAZY.
Typos in school memos drives me INSANE. Like, beyond insane. I am sending my child to your institution for an education, and it is apparent your own education is lacking. And it’s not just typos, it’s totally incorrect uses of words and bad grammar. Lose vs. loose and you’re vs. your REALLY put me over the edge. Did NOBODY go to a school that taught the difference???
“…so I asked the meat department guy about it and he was kind of crabby, as if he isn’t really getting joy out of matching the right customer with the right meat.”
I loved, LOVED that collection of words right there.
I think I’m too late for the turkey-cooking party. Hope it went well.
I’m not a great proofreader, but there were enough glaring mistakes in my university’s newspaper that I used to correct them with a red pen. Just for fun. At times I considered sending it back to them, corrected.
My husband and I are both snooze pushers. At least I slap it as soon as it makes noise, it takes him forever to get to it. And they go off at different intervals, so we have an alarm going off every 3 minutes for half an hour. We are stupid.
I have no complaints. None at all.
I would, however, like to brag about my superpowers:
I am capable of taking old food out of the refrigerator and throwing it away!
If I have trash, I can open the cabinet and throw it in the trash basket! Instead of leaving it on the kitchen counter over the trash basket!
I can push my chair under the table after I am done eating, so people can walk through the dining room without tripping over the unoccupied chair!
I could probably think of more, but I don’t want to intimidate anyone, because these are some rare gifts. At least they’re rare around my house.
Slim – SO FREAKING FUNNY.
There are very clearly two types of people in this world: Those who care about grammar and those who do not. And it’s like the two will never get along. We just don’t get each other. I CARE. It drives me CRAZY. People,these are rules that we all agree on. What if I just decided that green might mean ‘go’ to you, but it means stop and open all my doors to me?! What’s the BIG DEAL? Colors aren’t my thing! I hear people all the time say, “grammar, it’s just not my thing.” Well, cool, then get over the fact that MY THING is telling you when you’re wrong. So there, we’re both equally pissed off at each other.
Mine are all newborn related, which I know makes me an ingrate, but I can’t help it.
1) all I wanted to do was come to the hospital and have this baby and now I really miss my kids and want to go home. But I know it will be crazy once I get there.
2) my baby is beautiful and healthy but already so, so fussy and hungry and my milk isn’t in and it’s driving her mad.
3) the ped told my husband today that since ‘mommy’ had a CSection, it can take longer for ‘mommy’s milk’ to come in. I hate when People call me mommy and I hate when people point out what’s bad about a CSection. I know!
4) the lactation consultants are nice but driving me mad.
5) I’m so tired. Everyone keeps coming in my room. My stomach hurts. My baby’s crying and hungry and I can do nothing about it because mOmmy had a CSection.
6) I hate the keyboard on my Phone. HATE.
I read this yesterday and thought, “Huh, nothing immediately comes to mind.” And then the universe made sure that was no longer the case.
Four year old had four boosters and a flu shot yesterday. He woke up in the middle of the night with a raging fever. I tried to get him to take something for it, but he cried so hard he barfed all over everything. (Funnily though, he exclaimed, “Oh no! I’m covered in burp!”)
Sheets changed, carpets scrubbed, bathroom floor disinfected, everyone went to bed… and overslept. He’s fine this morning, of course, and it’s picture day! He went to school without socks and the baby and I had to skip music class because I left her shoes at home.
I think I’ll need to continue all of this in a post of my own. Heh.
No time to read 44 post before I hop in the shower, but wanted to let you know that I cook turkey or really any tenderloin in the crockpot. Just turn it on and don’t look at it until 6 or 8 hours afterward. Not helpful if you are in a rush.