My six days have been pretty meh. I woke up Tuesday with a sore throat and have been sick ever since, but I’m starting to get better so there’s hope. I’m spending my Friday night reading blogs, watching Dateline (seriously I don’t think I’m ever going to get married because every Dateline is about someone’s spouse dying or better yet, someone killing their spouse. color me single please!), drinking a delicious and somewhat healthy banana shake, and taking pictures of my cat:

My handsome man

And he's a cuddler

Can you blame me?

I would like to pretend that I’m only spending my evening this way because I’m sick, but it’s a pretty normal Friday night for me!

I wish I had some sage advice for the New Year, but I’m all out of ideas. This year my goal is to pay off my credit card debt, which is the same goal I had last year. I made some progress on it in 2011, but not as much as I had planned. If I buckle down and barring unexpected expenses (because that NEVER happens), I could potentially pay it all off, which is kind of crazy to think about it – in a good way of course! I’ve felt so enslaved by it for so long, it would be nice to get that monkey off my back. I already have a cat on my back.

I mean … come on … kittens!

KITTENS!

Since it’s a new month, we have a new selection of $5 albums. And since it’s now the holiday season, they have a selection of $5 holiday albums. Or you can buy individual holiday songs for 69 cents.

P.S. I’m really excited Christmas is coming, you guys! I don’t really care about Christmas music that much, but I care about my family Christmas traditions, and more importantly, I care about seeing my family. Living across the county from them kind of sucks sometimes, so I’m really looking forward to seeing them.

For the love of all that is holy, do not buy:

• Trader Joe’s baked blue corn tortilla chips. Since they’re baked, I didn’t expect a flavor fiesta in my mouth – which is good because those “chips” tasted like straight up cardboard (el cardboardo). Barely salted cardboardo at that. Avoid it. Also, while we’re on the topic of TJs, if you buy their avocados, carefully inspect them and if they seem too soft, do not use – I got food poisoning several years ago from it. It was unpleasant and turned me off guacamole for a while – and that is a travesty.
• Lipton Cup A Soup (chicken noodle). I am no snob when it comes to this type of stuff, but this soup, which I just made 5 minutes ago, is really not good. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this cheap as hell instant soup isn’t very good, but let me tell you that Lipton Soup Secrets chicken noodle soup is the bomb. It has been my food staple when I’m sick ever since I was a kid. It is delicious and salty and wonderful. I don’t know what Lipton did to the Cup A Soup. Maybe it was the decision to use “A” instead of “of” that sent bad grammar vibes into the broth? Avoid it.

What say you? What’s your food regret? What should we not buy?

I wouldn’t say that I’m a big pumpkin fan, but this time of year it always sounds good. It’s cold, it’s rainy, there was Halloween and now Thanksgiving approaching, I want comfort food – the reasons go on and on for wanting pumpkin.

Fortunately 1 can can go a long way. Here are three recipes I made with just 1 can of pumpkin.

First, we have pumpkin and ricotta pasta casserole. I had high hopes for this, but it was kind of a letdown. I think that you have to really love pumpkin to like it. The first couple times I ate it, it was pretty OK but then I just got sick of it. And I even halved the recipe so there wouldn’t be as much leftover. I wound up throwing out the last serving as it sat in the fridge for waaaay too long. So if you just adore pumpkin, I’d say this give a try. Otherwise, save the (not cheap) pecans for something tastier ….

Pumpkin pecan granola. This I would definitely recommend. It was my first time making granola, and I plan on doing it more often! It was super easy but still felt rewarding because I got to pull a big sheet chock full of granola out of the oven, and now I have a ton of breakfasts (yogurt & granola at my desk every day) already covered. I think I took it out of the oven a little soon though – it’s more chewy than crunchy, so there’s a lesson for next time. The recipe makes quite a bit of granola, so if you’re making it for just yourself, as I was, you may want to consider making half a batch.

Finally, I made chocolate chip oatmeal pumpkin cookies. They turned out OK. They’re kind of a healthier cookie as there’s no butter (though I wouldn’t actually call them healthy). The chocolate chips are definitely key here; without them, I don’t think the cookies would be very good. Shocking, huh? Who knew chocolate was good?

If you’re in the mood for chocolate chip cookies, but want something a tad healthier, I think these are worth a shot. The great thing about this recipe is that even if you wind up not liking the final product, the recipe is for a small batch, so it’s not the end of the world if you don’t like the cookie.

So there you go – 1 can and 3 recipes. I even had a tiny bit left over but I threw it out. I am pumpkined out.*

* OK, not quite – I really want to try these.

I thought maybe this picture of the cutest kitty ever would be my apology for not posting in a super long time.

I’m not really sure where to pick up again, but since my last post introduced my then-new cat, Caleb, here’s a little update.

He’s still adorable (obviously). Summer was interesting. After his first few weeks, he started vomiting every day, and let’s just say I dropped a lot of cash at the vet as we tried to figure out what the heck was going on. I also have some probably long-lasting scars on my arm from one of those vet trips, but that’s another story. The good news is that my sweet little big guy is doing much better. His limited diet and medication have been very helpful (even though I hate giving him a pill as much as he hates getting it). Let’s hope the healthy trend continues. I could write a lot more about Caleb, but since this isn’t a cat blog (YET), I’ll stop.

I plan on blogging more frequently these days (just had to get past this first post after all that silence), so do stay tuned.

This is Caleb. He is 3. He’s pretty cute. And he was initially quite cheap – I got him from a local shelter and they waived the adoption fees because June was National Pet Adoption Month. Hooray!

Since then, he has been pretty expensive. Unlike my last cat, Caleb is really active and playful. So I’ve spent a lot of money at Petco and Petsmart on various toys to try to keep him entertained so that he won’t bother me all night. Let’s just say I’m a little tired. But he is very sweet. Just curious is all …. very very curious with random ginormous bursts of energy. Lately he has been literally bouncing off the walls.

He’s lying beside me right now and kneading my arm and being waaaaay too cute. So he’s doing his job.

(This was the photo from the shelter website that stole my heart and made me drove over an hour to get this guy.)

I’m especially excited about the inclusion of Death Cab for Cutie’s new album, “Codes and Keys.” Five dollars!

On the day I moved in, I walked inside and immediately noticed a picture left behind by the previous tenant. It was hanging on the wall, but I took it out of the frame before taking the photo:

It’s really really really not my style. And even if I did like the way it looked, I don’t like wine, so why would I hang ugly pictures of it?

I took the picture off the wall and stashed it in a corner, with the intentions of trashing it later.

A few days went by and I realized that maybe I could do something with it after all. The frame was really flimsy plastic, but it was the right size for that narrow wall between the kitchen and the living room, and the nail was already in place, soooo…..

Since the frame was cheap and I wasn’t sure how it would wind up looking, I decided to frame something inexpensive: wrapping paper! I went to a few card stores, but none of the wrapping paper I found called out to me. Then I went to Target, and lo and behold, would you believe I found something (along with about 10 other things I didn’t intend to buy – you kill me, Target)?

It’s very springy (I can’t even think about summer yet – it feels like it’s never going to happen), and so bright. And did I mention cheap?

I removed the offensive wine picture and used it to trace a shape to cut out of the wrapping paper, and voila!

Close up:

Sorry for the poor photo quality, but hopefully you can get an idea of how it turned out. It’s definitely not perfect. The thin plastic kind of buckles, so it looks like the paper is a little puffy in one spot, but my craft and art projects are never perfect, so it fits right in!

In unrelated news, as I was organizing my CDs, I found a very special album that is near and dear to my heart:

I realized that I never imported it into my iTunes Library because my old Powerbook didn’t recognize it because the CD was so old (the nerve!). My MacBook Pro, however, accepted it like an old friend.

I’ve been listening to this album a lot lately, and reminiscing and cringing at my music tastes as a 10-year-old. Man, I loved Paula Abdul back in the day. She really was my (American) idol. I used to sing along (and dance!) to this album for hours. Now some of the songs just make me laugh, but I still sing along.

My unpacking and organizing music has consisted mostly of Glee songs, the Paula Abdul album, and Justin Bieber. So really I’m still a 10-year-old at heart. A really cool 10-year-old.

But in May, they’re offering 1,500 albums.

You have been warned!

Happy Friday!

A while back, her song “The House You’re Building” was a free download and I really really liked it. And then recently I discovered that her album is only $5 on Amazon. Check it out!

This month is a trial period to see if some of the pain in my abdomen I’ve been having is related to gall bladder stones. This one-month diet is to see if my pain improves and to try to see if gallstones are really to blame. If it is, then I might be able to control it with diet or I might have to get surgery, which is very scary to me. But that’s something that’s out of my hands at the moment, and this next month is just about eating non-fat and watching what happens.

The upside to all of this is that I’ll probably lose weight. For the most part, I eat fairly healthy, but my weakness – my BIG weakness – is sugar, specifically anything that comes from a bakery. Some people crave cheeseburgers; I crave chocolate cake.

My doctor said I should be eating mostly vegetables and fruit, very lean meat, and some carbs. I can have all the calories I want, but I just have to keep it as low fat as possible. I know I’m going to get very sick of chicken and rice and vegetables after a couple days, so if you have any suggestions for healthy non-fat or very low-fat recipes, pass ‘em on to me!

I find happiness in food – probably too much. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying what you eat, but for me, I know that I rely heavily on food to make me happy. So when my doctor said “non-fat diet,” my first reaction was: Yay! No surgery right away! But then my next thought was: Well, there goes my joy in life. And it makes me sad that I thought that. I know that most people’s reactions to a non-fat diet probably aren’t positive either, but I’m still trying to rack my brain about happiness-inducing things and activities I can do to replace eating cupcakes.

As a Christian, I also feel this extra guilt about looking to food for satisfaction. But to be honest, God often feels far away, and that piece of pie is right in front of me and it makes me feel good. I was brought up this way – food is used as a comfort and as a celebration in my family, and I haven’t shaken that. I don’t want to completely shake that either because I don’t think it’s bad that food tastes good, and I don’t think it’s bad that we enjoy food, but there has to be moderation.

I don’t want to be obsessed over food – whether that’s obsessed about eating what I want or obsessed about avoiding unhealthy food. I just want food to be in my life and just be food – to be sustenance and not the only thing I rely on to make me happy. I don’t want to eat food that I don’t think tastes good, but I want life to taste better than what’s on my plate.

So there’s a lot of uncertainty in my life right now regarding my health. My doctor is a bit baffled about what’s going on with me, but I guess we’ll just see what happens. It could be a blessing in disguise though with this change in eating. It’s just a scary blessing.

I wonder what the person who put that up was thinking. Who or what were they missing? I have some theories, but we’ll never really know.

I also wonder why am I so drawn to this. Sure, there’s the fact that someone put up an honest (at least I hope), direct statement of feelings out for the world to see; it’s like PostSecret. It’s attention-grabbing. But beyond that, when I saw this photo, my heart just went YES. I don’t even know exactly what I miss. But I miss something. I miss people. I miss places. I miss some hopes and dreams that got squashed as life happened.

I don’t want to be all “woe is me” as I have much in life to be grateful for, but it’s given me some food for thought. I’m realizing that on the hope-o-meter (picture one of those giant posters for a fundraiser with the thermometer thing showing how many donations have come in), I’m pretty low. I miss those squashed hopes and dreams, and it’s probably time to come up with some new, or least modified, ones.

Now that I’ve bummed everyone out, here’s a song about missing someone. And yes, I own the “Time, Love & Tenderness” album and I quite enjoy it. Ain’t no shame. I will say that it’s probably the only song featuring Kenny G that doesn’t make me throw up a little.

(hey, it’s Teri Hatcher! one of my favorite celebrities with my name!)

And confidential to early ’90s Michael Bolton: Here’s something else you’re missing – a deep conditioner. (You know I still love you.)

Thank you, Internet.