i know i'm short, but THIS is ridiculous

Gleaming gold. Shiny Chrome.

First time seeing nephew's rig.

Goodness, that is tall.

snippets

With this crazy, swirly summer i have taken a few days to visit my mom in Ohio, which reminds me that i never posted a fun post that i teased months ago.

So let's re-tease this picture:

Hopefully i will actually get to that post before something else crazy happens.

Yesterday i had brunch with my mom and sister.

It was relaxed and wonderful

There are no pictures because there were mimosas instead.

I have seen my sister and brother both in the last two months and they both made me sausage and biscuits.

Their recipes were very different, but both were incredible.

I don't remember really having that for breakfast growing up so i find it funny that all three of  us love it.

Speaking of my brother, here is a picture of me at the shooting range we went to when i was visiting:

Why?

Why not.

I have updated the 101 List and added a day counter to the sidebar. 

We are 8 months into the 43 and i am mostly pleased with myself. 

There has been progress on 31 of the goals. Considering that i took the last few months off from, well, everything that is pretty good.

I think there is only one goal that i might not be able to make up in the remaining time: #64, give blood 16 times. 

The Red Cross has really strict rules about how often you can donate and my original goal was really ambitious.

To see the list you can click on the page below my header or click here.

Miss Miriam came over for dinner and i tried a new crockpot recipe, which helped 2 goals at once.

I made crockpot eggplant lasagna, adapted from here.

Next time i will add about 30 more minutes to the cooking time, but overall i would call dish a success. Plus it went really well with the watermelon daiquiris. 

This is the most cheerful pair of foo dogs i have ever seen.

I am not sure i would trust them to protect much.

Pikachu, i choose you! made of Peeps:

HI HI HI

HELLOOOOOOOO NIKIVERSE!
Oh my gosh, how much i have missed being here.
The last week has been all about NikCo: a card set update on Etsy, first show of the season, May/June class list.
Busy with work is ALWAYS good, but it doesn't leave much time for hanging out at the library to share completely random things,

like this tortoise yard art 

that for a moment, 

from a distance,

 i thought was real. 

Until i remembered i wasn't in the Galapagos. 

BTW, since i mentioned it, be sure to have a gander at the new card sets on Etsy here; they are an eclectic mish-mosh of useful, but interesting, much like me.

Happy May to you all! 

It is indeed my birthday month so every day is a reason to celebrate here in the Nikiverse.

Yesterday was Star Wars Day, today is Cinqo de Mayo and tomorrow is International No Diet Day. [no, i did not make that up] 

Enjoy every day of May, people.

And now for a random beauty break:

April tulips, with Great Gma Weber looking on

One wee bad thing about May is that it marks the end of National Grilled Cheese Month.

We all know that i love grilled cheese.

And that i love the Grilled Cheese & Co.

At the end of last year i was able to introduce my friend Suzanne to the wonders of the GCC:

capturing her first bite; can i tell you how PLEASED Suzanne is that this is her first photo in The Nikiverse?

Her first experience was my go-to fave, the Blue Ox, while i tried the holiday special, The Gobbler:

mmmmmmmm... roasted turkey, gouda, apple butter, potato pancakes, and arugula on pumpernickle...

Thanksgiving dinner in a sandwich, except hold the arugula because yuck.

Speaking of specials, the most recent special at GCC was the Mac Daddy.

I will give you a moment to just behold its majesty.

Yes friends, that is a grilled cheese filled with mac-n-cheese and pot roast.

A MONI CHEESE GRILLED CHEESE, PEOPLE.

Words can not capture even a portion of its awesomeness.

Unfortunately, the Mac Daddy's time has passed, but we are at least back to one of my favorites, the Santorini.

Last week i walked into the living room to the sight of my salt shaker on the floor, balanced perfectly on its top.

When did it fall?

How did it land exactly on its top?

What is it even doing in the living room?

Most importantly, how am i gonna pick it up without salt pouring out all over the floor?

Not only is it bad luck to knock over salt, it is impossible to sweep up.

After much strategizing, i went with flipping it over as fast as possible with the hope that centrifugal force [yes, i know it isn't really a force so much as an effect of inertia, but force is the common word used, so...] would push the salt against the walls of the shaker.

Nope.

Nope, it sure didn't work that way. 

Yes, salt went flying everywhere in a lovely arc.

So much for strategy.

Finally, a popNikiquiz:

What is Niki's favorite string instrument?

Go ahead and call it out!

Did someone just say dobro?

Wow,  that is a wild-a** guess; though points for originality.

Most of you, of course, said the cello.

Enjoy some cello.

feeling the age

This month has been very nostalgic for me as i started college 25 years ago, which seems strange since i remember with absolute clarity going to St Pete Beach on the first night and watching the Perseid meteor shower hip deep in the Gulf of Mexico. There are two friends of mine that i met that day; i have now known Skip and Greg for over 25 years. It boggles my mind.
Even weirder is that today is a double birthday in my family: one of my nephews is 30 and one of my great-nieces is 9. I remember that boy being born; he was my first babysitting job. How am i even old enough to HAVE multiple great-nieces, much less one that is almost in double digits?
It seems crazy  to me today.

A very, merry Mother's Day Birthday.

Every few years the High Holy Day of the Nikiverse -my birthday- falls on Mother's Day. I LOVE when it does because it seems appropriate that the celebration of my birth should coincide with the day honoring the woman who did all of the work on that day.
The last time it happened i spent the day with fTM Erin and her wonderful mother. This year i drove to Ohio to be with my mommy.
To make the day even sweeter, Mom and I had brunch with my sister. This was Kris' first Mother's Day without any of her sons as the youngest -Matt- moved to Florida less than 2 weeks ago, but she at least got to spend it with her mom.
There were heart-shaped sweet rolls and flowers and cards and presents and lots of laughter. The whole day was so relaxed, however, there weren't lots of pictures. In fact, there's only one, but it's a goody:

besties since the beginning

I know i am given to hyperbole, but when i say that my BFF and i have known each other our whole lives:

Nicole and Rickki Marie - July 1971

I enjoy the look of complete confusion on my face and that Rea is obviously looking at some adult who is probably saying Sit right there. Don't move. Don't lean on the baby.
Also, i think it is hilarious that she was born brunette and i was born blonde since that is opposite of how we ended up. In case you are wondering, yes, she always been a full head taller than me. No matter what age, in pictures i come up to her shoulder or chin. We have grown at exactly the same rate our whole lives.
For 25 years i have been searching for the earliest picture of us together.
The best i could find was when we were toddlers, but i found it hard to believe knowing our family that no one took a picture of us meeting.
I don't know where she found this or why it suddenly appeared, but this picture of us at 2 and 5 months, respectively, showed up in my email three days ago fulfilling my quest and making me smile for hours.

goodbye sunshine

teal for TN (warning: not a happy post) (though it is at least clown-free)

Trigeminal neuralgia [also prosopalgia or Fothergill's disease] is a disorder in which the largest cranial nerve -responsible for the motor function of chewing and facial sensations- is damaged, often but not exclusively from swollen blood vessels scraping the protective sheath of the nerve.

Because the trigeminal nerve runs from the temple to the jaw and across the cheek in three branches the pain associated with TN can strike almost anywhere in the face leading to frequent misdiagnoses. Some patients experience symptoms for years, often undergoing unnecessary dental work before receiving the proper diagnosis.

Symptoms include sharp, intense pain described as "stabbing electric shocks, burning, pressing, crushing, exploding or shooting pain that becomes intractable" and has been called one of the worst pains known to medicine.
Sometimes attacks are triggered by talking, eating, brushing your teeth, wind, loud noises, touch or high pitched sounds; however, sometimes there is no apparent cause.
Episodes can last anywhere from a few seconds to hours and sometimes occur in clusters of up to a hundred attacks in a day.
All of this cheerfulness has led to TN being nicknamed the suicide disease because, well, okay, that's self-explanatory.

If you've made it this far in the post you're wondering what in the world this has to do with The Nikiverse.
In January of 2012 my beloved BFF was finally diagnosed with TN after having pain so bad that it would incapacitate her and she'd fall down repeatedly at work for several months. Of course first she was treated for sinus infections, ear infections, some other stuff that has all blurred together and checked for seizure disorders and brain tumors.

My soul's twin, the one I have loved since we were toddlers, has the suicide disease.
That isn't the kind of thing that could keep a girl up at night; nope, not at all.

Treatment is a combo of anticonvulsants and pain management. In some patients with  specific blood vessel swelling there is a medical procedure that can be up to 70% successful. There is also current research being done on using healthy nerve cells to repair the damaged ones.
However, in many patients it is a chronic condition that often worsens over time as the nerve degenerates.

I haven't shared Rea's condition until now because it is her story and her decision about who knows.
Today is finally the right time to share the information with all of you because Monday, October 7, 2013 is the first internationally recognized Trigeminal Neuralgia Awareness Day.
Here is an article about how awareness is being raised around the world, as well as a PSA.
I'm not gonna ask for contributions or anything like that; I know we all have limited resources and causes that are already dear to our hearts.
I just wanted to do my part to spread the word that this disease exists and strikes 1 in 15-20,000 people (hard to pinpoint the exact # as it is so often misdiagnosed).

On Monday I will wear teal -the designated TN ribbon color- for my Rickki; that and prayer are the only things I can do to help her.
        It would make my heart happy if you would too.
You could also drop by her blog on Monday to let her know that she isn't alone.

[I will share her email privately, if you ask]

Zachary's button

My nephew heard me talking to his mom -my BFF- about getting a pretty NikCo button for the blog's sidebar to link to my Etsy store instead of the icky, boring link that is there now.
 I knew that there are sites where you can make them pretty easily.
Z piped up that he'd been working on his HTML and would like to make a button for me.
Well okey-dokey then.
Right before he left for camp this week he emailed that he was pretty sure he had it done, but needed the pic that I wanted as my button; even at 12 he knows that branding is everything.
Here ya go, Z:

Thanks for all of your hard work.
Look for my new button in the sidebar sometime soon.

my BFF gets me into the worst trouble

I don't know how it happened.
Rea and i were talking on the phone last night.
She was waiting at a medical clinic to get treated for the poison ivy she's had since the last week of April (shudder...yeesh...) and to kill time she was going through her huge 101 things to do in 1001days list.
There are 150 days left (well, 149 now, obviously) so we were making mini-goals and figuring out how to get as much completed as possible.
 I am going to have to blog every day in July, she mused.
I'll blog every day, too, to help keep you inspired.
Do you want to shake on it right now?, came out of my mouth.
Wha...?
Did i just say that?
Where did that come from?
Have i lost my freaking mind?
It was out there in the air before i even had a chance to think about it.
And we shook on it: me shaking her imaginary hand in the air and her apparently shaking like a wet puppy (one can only imagine what the other patients in the waiting room thought - fever dreams, maybe).
Sooooooooo, long story still long, i guess i am posting every day in July.
Good luck with that, Niki.
Be sure to check back daily to see how long i make it.
No, i am not offended if you start an office pool on it; put me down for $10 on any random day in the third week.
Check out Rea's blog during this next month, please, and leave her a little love and encouragement.

Niki and Rickki at Cackleberry Hollow, with Bess; May 2013

my doctor doesn't mind

Note: been a bit of a tough week as my grandpa died and then i was too sick to drive to Ohio for the funeral. At 95 he was my last grandparent and the one i shared with Rea so we've been talking on the phone even more than normal for the last few days. One night when we were working the land -she was weeding potatoes by the light of the moon and i was encouraging her from my comfy apartment- we got laughing so hard that i was sure one of us was gonna pop a blood vessel. You know the laughing i mean. So i apologize that the following haiku is even less comprehensible than normal, but it has to be done.

Amid the thimbles -

staring, orange pentapus.

Self-medicating?

roast beef and noodles

On my mother's side of the family the most requested "special meal" was roast beef and noodles.
No one knows if it is an Ohio thing or what, but the recipe came from my great-grandma Craig (mom's dad's mom). My grandma learned it after she married my grandpa, taught it to her daughters who taught it their daughters.
It is labor intensive and the most delicious food on the planet.
Roast beef and noodles is legend in my family: my sister made it the night before she had my first nephew and to this day swears that rolling out the noodles started her labor.
Growing up i watched every time it was made, eventually helping out. But since the meal only happens once or twice a year it took a while for me to finally be ready to try it myself.
The first time i did the whole meal on my own was Father's Day 1998. Yes, there is a scrapbook page about it. Since then i have made it... let's see... carry the 2... zero times.
So imagine my surprise and delight when i was told that we were having roast beef and noodles for Christmas dinner. And that i was cooking it.
You have to start with a nice piece of beef.

I know nothing about roasts.
I feel like we have used bottom rounds or chucks or something in the past, but i could be making that up in my head. Mom and her sister, Aunt CC, discussed the issue for a good, long while and decided that we needed an English roast.
Never even heard of it, but this lovely 9 pounder that the butcher cut for us looks pretty good.
It also looks pretty large.
Traditionally the roast is seared and then cooked in a dutch oven, but this meat was not going to fit into any dutch oven. Mom had foreseen this problem and had a ginormous crockpot in which to cook it.
After freaking out about the crockpot (listen, i only know one way to cook this splendid meal and was already feeling the pressure -self imposed, of course- to get it right so i feel justified in my teeny tiny meltdown about breaking tradition) and coming to peace about it, the next obstacle was how to brown it.
The meat has to be seared in a good amount of shortening to get the right flavor. No pot is big enough to hold, you can't really get a crock pot hot enough to sear, and i was afraid of setting the kitchen -or my skin- on fire with splattering grease if we tried a frying pan.
In the end we went with a frying pan/splatter shield combo that i felt somewhat confident about, though i did make my mommy leave the kitchen when i first introduced the meat to the hot pan just in case. I had to hold the roast in place with forks to brown the four short sides, but it was an unqualified success.

Transferring it across the kitchen to the crockpot was nerve-wracking,

 but i didn't drop it on the floor. Even the super big oval crockpot barely held the roast, but with some maneuvering and shoving i was able to cover it with water and get the lid in place.

Two hours on high, flip the meat and one more hour on low brought to medium rare. I took out the meat, let it rest, sliced it up and put the slices back into the crockpot with some broth on high to speed it to a juicy medium finish.

While the roast was cooking, i turned these three humble ingredients into homemade noodles.
Normally we use three room temperature eggs for a family, but with 10 people coming mom thought it best to use five.
 Basically, you beat the eggs in a bowl with a fork, salt them a little and add flour a little at a time until it is the correct consistency.

that rolling pin belonged to my grandma;
i want it

This is a lot harder than it sounds, so i did a full batch with 3 eggs, another with 2 eggs and then combined them when it was time to roll.

You roll and roll and roll and roll

and roll and roll until you have a thin layer roughly the size and shape of Australia. There is no width measurement that i can give you; again, it is done by feel.

Mixing with just a fork is tiring, but the rolling is the killer. I am not exaggerating when i say that you have to be careful not to sweat on the noodles when you roll.

 Our female ancestors were TOUGH, people; weaker sex, my a**.

Make sure the surface of the the noodles is liberally floured because then it gets cut into strips that are about this big (let's call it anywhere from three-quarters of an inch to one and a quarter inches; this is the final length of your noodles) and the strips get stacked on top of one another in piles of about six.

Personally, i cut the long strips in half (momma doesn't) because now we are at the part that is both hard and tedious: noodle cutting!

With a paring knife slice tiny, little, wee, itty-bitty pieces off of your stacks. This is the final width of the noodles. To get them thin enough i could only have three noodle strips in my pile, but mom was doing piles of four and piles of six (she does have like 50 years of experience on me).

After they are all cut, spread them out on a tea towel to dry.

You can make them the night ahead of time, but i wouldn't do it any sooner than that.
It took about 45 minutes, with both of us cutting at the same time, to finish cutting this five egg batch.
Complete prep time was probably about 2 hours
They may not look like much now, but wowza after they are cooked they are heaven.

All of the broth from the crockpot went into a dutch oven and i added beef broth and water to bring the level up to three-quarters full. At this point, it is much easier if two people are involved. Several handfuls of noodles go into a colander, the majority of the excess flour is shaken off over the sink and then carefully sprinkled into the boiling broth while constantly stirring. There is some debate about at what level of boiling you add the noodles, but i like it to be at a rolling boil.
Cooking the noodles is the next to last thing you do before serving the meal (potato mashing is done while they cook) so my sister had arrived by the time the noodles went in. I looked at her and said, I don't remember; how long do these take to cook? and she replied, Until they are done.
I rolled my eyes and looked to our mother who nodded, shrugged her shoulders and said Thirty minutes give or take; you just cook them till they are done.
And this is why old family recipes never make it into cookbooks.

Traditionally you are supposed to eat them with your meat and over mashed potatoes like gravy.
Yes, a starch on top of a starch; remember this is an old, country recipe from when food had to sustain the level of work people did every day. Personally, i think putting them on mashed potatoes just diminishes their flavor and takes up precious stomach space.
 If i could get away with it, i would eat noodles by themselves out of a bowl.
Or straight out of the pot.
With a ladle.
They are the yummiest food ever.
I love them more than steak.
 More than moni cheese.
More than the color pink.
More than glitter.
It had been at least six years since i had noodles and they were delicious.
In fact, they were so good that mom and i decided on New Year's Eve we had enough meat left to make another, smaller batch.
So, so, so, good.
As we were putting things away and straightening up to go to bed around 2am i joked that she should put the leftover noodles in separate containers because i was gonna eat mine for breakfast and didn't want to take more than my share (which i would because they are like crack to me and i can not resist the noodle). This is what i found in the fridge the next morning.

 

ahhhhhhh... family...



Christmas pics

This year Momma and I got a new-to-us Christmas tree when my sister bought a bigger one for her house. There were so many colored mini-lights on this puppy that we only had to add some ribbon and a few ornaments for it to look really pretty in front of the sliding glass doors. The ribbon angel managed to make it through another year after some trimming and dress alterations.

Christmas morning was very laid back with traditional hot rolls, stockings and squeals of delight opening gifts.

Most of the day was spent preparing dinner -which will get its own post because it was kind of a big deal- and the evening belonged to eating and hanging out with Kris and her family.
My nephew and his girlfriend drove up from Florida so there were 8 of us in Mom's little apartment.
It was crowded, loud and wonderful. Just look at how many takes it took to get a picture of Kris and her boys:

Here is the family with Larry,
the boys with their girlfriends Krissy and Ari,
Kris and Larry,

and the girls.

we don't need no stinkin' baskets

I spent the long holiday weekend at my mom's in Ohio.
It was long periods of doing nothing interspersed with hours of reading followed by stretches of sudoku; so basically, heaven.
I watched TV, caught up on my sleep and vegetated.
It was lovely.
There was a potluck dinner in my mom's building on Thursday with a fashion show afterwards; the first half was straight up fashion and the second half was comedy.

Of course, my mom was a model.

It was nice to meet some of her new friends and the fashion show was hilarious, but the best part was spending time with Mom and my sister, Kris:

One afternoon was dedicated to hanging out with my BFF; we did some shopping, looked at all of the baby animals on the farm and she made her famous Rickki Chimis for lunch.

It is the first time i've had her version of her favorite food- chicken chimichangas - and they were delish.

She crockpotted the chicken for dinner the day before, shredded the leftovers to mix with chilies and spices for the filling and then baked them with some chicken broth and cooking spray so that they crisped up like they'd been fried.





Saturday, Mom and I dyed eggs {she said, we're going to boil two dozen because i always want to decorate more then we have} and then on Sunday we set up our Easter bowls.

No baskets made the move and i suggested that instead of buying baskets, we'd just use matching glass bowls. With some easter grass, they were perfect.
As in years past, the goal was to only spend $10.
You can see that we both rose to the challenge - Mom's bowl for me is on the left and hers from me is on the right - managing to stuff as much as possible in and around the bowls.

It was a super fun, relaxing weekend.
And in case you ever wonder how well my mom and I know each other,
this year we managed to buy each other matching chocolate bunnies.

Zhu-tastic

Mayhaps you've been subjected to my current agonizing over getting a pet.
I miss having an animal, but am never home.
I am going back and forth between a hamster and a corn snake.
The debate has been going on for months and thanks to my mom it can continue to rage for a bit longer as she got me

a ZhuZhu pet.
A ZhuZh pet with a pink mohawk.
Her name is Roxie.






Now, you need to understand that my mom did not know that i have been considering getting a hamster. Also, she had no idea what ZhuZhu pets were. She walks the aisles of the Walgreen's or CVS the way that i do and one day she saw these little toys on sale. Apparently when my mom sees a mechanical hamster with a pink mohawk, she thinks of me.
Really.
I was delighted, of course, but getting Roxie was only half of the fun.

Mom admitted that she had gotten another mohawked ZhuZhu named Pax for one of my nephews, but then decided to keep it for herself.
So at 11:30 one night me and my 76 year old mommy are on the floor of her apartment playing with mechanical hamsters,

which is a perfect illustration of why i am the way i am.

Casa Momma

My Virginia siblings haven't had a chance to visit our mom's new apartment yet, so let's take a quick tour together, shall we?
The four-floor apartment building is set back into the woods at the top of a hill. Deer come to visit every day between 3:00 and 5:00pm. Past the hanging swings at the front door, there is a lovely lobby with couches and chairs where residents tend to hang out, as well as a common room, kitchen, piano room/library and game/fitness room all on the first floor. Everything was decorated to the teeth for Christmas, yet somehow it didn't occur to me to take pictures.
Mom's second floor apartment has an entrance hall with a huge coat/storage closet on the left and the kitchen on the right (even she has a bigger kitchen then me!)

with an awesome pass-through
to a small dining area.
Kris and Mom found this great little table and chairs that matches the china hutch at a thrift store.
The open living room is a nice size

with a sliding glass door to the world's tiniest balcony overlooking the courtyard.

All of the furniture has been taken in for the winter, but normally there are picnic tables and a covered glider and a big grill out for the residents to use.






The bedroom is in the back and is large enough not only for the bed (Kris also found the headboard at the furniture thrift place) and mom's tall shelves, but for a sitting area as well with her favorite chair and a television. (not pictured)

The bathroom is huge (i think the linen closet is as big as my whole bathroom) and Mom decorated it in a beachy theme to bring some of Florida with her.



Thanks for visiting; drive safe.