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OK, I’ve got nine minutes before this face mask dealie is dry, so let’s see if I can crank out anything of interest…

Some highlights from this past weekend:

* New Auggie words: cheese, good (used in conjunction with cheese) and, Tim’s personal favorite, booby

* Major crashes: only one, off the ottoman in the living room

* Amount spent on knitting supplies: $3.18

* Current length of scarf: 18 inches (will be 44 overall)

Tim and I rented In The Bedroom and watched it last night. Oy, what a depressing film. I guess the ending was unexpected at least. And is it just me, or did they just totally leave Marisa Tomei’s character hanging? I mean, I understand that the whole thing was left hanging, but I felt like her character just fell off the face of the earth.

The weird thing about watching it was how Tim and I reacted to the death of Frank (this isn’t ruining it for anyone, I hope. I’m pretty sure that everyone else on the planet has already seen this, right?). Having a son of our own, we could see ourselves in the parents’ shoes a little too easily. I even cried when the mom smacked the girl across the face.

It’s the first time I’ve cried for a long, long time. I can’t even remember the last time I cried.

Not that I’m a crybaby or anything. I just usually shed tears every so often, it seemed. Guess I’m just happy.

Time’s up.

Well sorry about that you faithful readers, I tried to remove some memory from the server, and it completely flipped out. Destroyed the ntokernal or some such thing. Thank god for system state backups! If you’re running windows 2000, you should set up a regular system state backup. That’s what got us back up and running. Beth will return shortly I’m sure.

Five years ago today, I looked like a princess. I felt like the queen of the world. And that was just in the hot tub.

Happy anniversary, baby.

Who knew two people could have so many arguments over the best way to drive somewhere?

Ha. Here’s something funny. Turns out our crown rack of lamb was actually crown rack of pork. Who knew such a thing even existed?

I was initially tipped off last week, when I ran across the receipt from Whole Foods and it said “crown pork roast.” I just thought, ‘Hm. That’s strange. Must be a typo.’

When I went to Whole Foods again last night, I noticed at the meat counter that the sale sign for $6.25 a pound was still up there for crown rack of pork. Guess how much the actual crown rack of lamb was, per pound. Just guess!

$13.25. Per pound.

So if you’re here looking for advice on how to prepare crown rack of lamb, go for the crown rack of pork. Having sampled both, there are several reasons for the pork’s superiority:

1. It tastes better.

2. It picks up the flavor of the seasonings better. We used this recipe for garlic and rosemary rack of lamb and it was amazing. The rosemary was perfectly absorbed into the roast. Delicious!

3. It’s way better for you. Lamb is an incredibly fatty meat. Check out the nutritional information for the recipe above! 800 calories. Per serving! Ouch!

4. It’s way cheaper.

5. Nobody likes lamb anyway.

6. Pigs are uglier than lambs.

This discovery, while rather embarrassing, is actually somewhat of a relief. Lambs are so cute. I felt like a lech every time I looked at one of Auggie’s little toy lambs (of which he has quite a few). And “baa-baa” is one of the few animal sounds he actually knows how to say.

“Oink-oink” just isn’t there yet.

Don’t even get me started on Wilbur. I read Charlotte’s Web, like, eleven times in the third grade. I freakin’ love Wilbur, OK? This pig was no Wilbur.

Challenging Day #401: Tim came home from work today to find me stony-faced with exhaustion after the longest day with Mr. No-Nappy Man. Like the amazing husband/father he is, he took the boy out of my tired arms and asked me if I’d like to lay down while he made dinner.

That, my friends, is why I am the luckiest woman in the world.

And this Thursday, I’ll have been the luckiest wife in the world for five years.

I just had to rip out my first six rows of Tim’s scarf again. It’s only 38 stitches wide, but yesterday, I kept picking up a stitch somewhere. Tonight, I miscounted my rows, so the pattern was off. It’s supposed to look like ribbing, but mine only looked like that for part of the piece. It does seem to be going faster now, at least. I mean, it only took me about 70 minutes to do six rows this evening. Yesterday, I picked it up and put it down probably six times over the course of the day.

Tim didn’t understand why I wanted to rip it all out and start over, since no one would ever notice it. I tried to explain that I would notice it and that it would always bother me. Besides, I feel like this is all great practice right now. It’s no big deal to have to start over when you’re only six rows in. I’d hate to be halfway finished and then not be able to stand that it looked so bad at the beginning. Better redo it now than later, yes?

I think it’s really funny that as I look around more and more on the Web, that a lot of people are talking about how “hip” it is to be knitting. How lots of young people are starting to get into it and all. This is fine with me, if it means that people are coming up with some original patterns and neat kinds of yarn and what have you. But it makes me smile, because both times I’ve been in the local yarn store, it seems like there are only snooty older ladies in there, pointedly ignoring me and my baby.

I shouldn’t sound too offended, I guess, because the endearingly-absent-minded older woman who helped me select a row counter last week was very nice. (I call her absent-minded because she took down my name in reference to a book, but forgot to include my phone number. I gently asked if she might want to write it down too.)

So, I can hear you asking yourself: Is she going to start talking only about knitting now? Because I have no idea what she’s talking about.

I’ll try to restrain myself, but I’m rather infamous for throwing myself into a hobby, becoming a bit obsessed with it for a couple of weeks, then rapidly losing interest once I’ve spent a lot of money on it. (See my past record on learning Spanish, crossword puzzles (at least they came with the paper), etc.)

And, lest you think Tim and I have given up our “lifestyle program,” (I have got to come up with a new phrase. It sounds like we’re in a cult or something) I just haven’t mentioned it lately. Tim has now lost 22 pounds, and I am down over 25! We’re talking college jeans here, my friends! (Not freshman year, mind you, but senior year.)

We are looking pretty svelte (compared to last September, that is.)

We got to see our friends Chris and Shelley and their three-month-old baby Cole today. A total highlight. Unfortunately, it was right smack in the middle of a baby shower for them at her brother’s house, so we didn’t get to spend as much time chatting with them as we had hoped.

But there were lots of other cute kids there, and we got to meet Shelley’s nice family. Plus, Cole is such a sweetie! He’s a big ‘un, weighing at least 15 pounds, I’d say.

Thanks, Chris and Shelley (and Cole), for letting us horn in on your family time!

Oh! And they got Auggie the hippest, freshest, whatever the kids are saying these days-est book ever! It’s called Turntable Timmy and it is just too awesome. It’s all about Timmy, who is 8 and wants to be the best DJ.

Tim read the book aloud on the way home from the shower, then we put in the CD that came with it. One of the songs was someone rapping the words to the book, and it was much different from Tim’s earlier reading. We apologized to Auggie that we would probably not be rapping Turntable Timmy to him, because we have nary an ounce of mic skilz. I do hope that it is one of his favorites, though, just so the grandmas are forced to read it at least once in their lifetimes. I can’t wait to hear my mom say, “Push the cross-fader from side to side.”

Tim’s mother also gave Tim an early anniversary present today. A hand-knitted sweater, custom-made for him by her. Wow. As a newbie knitter such as I am, I am especially in awe of her. It’s beautiful. I’ll have to take a picture and post it so you can feel the awe as well.

For goodness’ sake, I’ve started knitting again. I really need to pick a hobby and go with it, you know? One week, I’m all into learning Spanish in my spare time (which is practically nonexistent as it is). The next, I can’t find enough time to work on my self-education for my Leader accreditation. Then, I decide that I want to knit a scarf for Tim.

What’s going on?

Keep in mind, that my “free time” (read: times that Tim is home and in charge of the boy) is already divided up by exercise, going to the bathroom in peace, reading, working on actual paying work and the list goes on and on.

One of these days, I’ll quit being a hobby flake.

So, finally, the tale can be told about our Holiday Dinner on Monday night. As luck would have it, Tim was off of work on Monday, so I took full advantage of the situation and exercised, took a shower, then skipped off to the spa for a facial. Extravagant! When I finally meandered home, we set off again for lunch and shopping for last-minute dinner items.

Not only was this Christmas Eve Eve, the weather guys were calling for lots of snow overnight. So the grocery store was totally packed. Tim wanted to be home and cooking by 3, he said as we walked out the door at noon. No problem.

By some miracle of the Target gods, we were actually home by 3:15. The majority of the three hours we were out seemed to be sucked up by sitting in traffic. Living by a mall is not fun at Christmastime.

We started slicing vegetables for the sauce, glazed carrots and mashed potatoes. The shallots for the sauce (a lovely port-wine number) nearly did me in. I was literally slicing them with tears running down my face.

So the sauce was started and left to reduce for its required 40 minutes. At about 4:15, we got the crown rack of lamb out of the refrigerator.

When we took it out of the freezer the evening before, we let it sit on the counter all evening long, then put it in the refrigerator to finish thawing all night and the next day.

No good.

The thing was frozen. Solid.

Uh-oh.

I had gone from, ‘Oh, honey, wait until you see this beautiful piece of butcher craftsmanship!’ to ‘What the hell do we do now?!’ in less than 60 seconds.

I did what any sane woman would do: I got out the Miracle Thaw. For those of you not familiar with the Miracle Thaw, it’s one of those “as seen on TV” deals from a few years ago. I have no idea what it is made of, how it does its miraculous thawing or the like. I just know that it works great at defrosting frozen chicken breasts in less than an hour.

Tim freaks out after five minutes on the Miracle Thaw and puts it in the microwave on defrost. For the eight-and-a-half pound crown rack of lamb, this will take one hour and fifty minutes. By this time, I’m screaming at him about how he hasn’t even let the Miracle Thaw do its miracle thawing, and take it out of the microwave and back onto the Miracle Thaw.

It got even uglier from there, once the Miracle Thaw thawed the bottom, but no further, after 30 minutes.

I did what any woman would do: I called my mother. She wasn’t home. So I called my stepmother.

She said to put it back in the microwave on defrost. She reassured me that it wouldn’t dry it out. This was sticky, though. I was wrong. Tim was right. Damn.

I admitted defeat and we put it back in the microwave.

Now, it’s getting close to 5:30 and our guests will be arriving at 6, so we’re completely freaking out. The microwave still says that it needs an hour and fifty minutes to thaw this baby. We plead with the microwave, but it does not budge.

I do what any woman would do: I go to take a shower.

When I come out, the sauce is reduced, the potatoes are ready to be mashed, the carrots are ready to be glazed and the lamb is coming out of the microwave. It is 6 o’clock.

Then, a Christmas miracle: it is thawed! It seems that the bones and give the crown rack of lamb its name helped conduct the heat down into the lamb, speeding the thawing process. Yay, blessed microwave! The Miracle Thaw sobbed quietly in the sink.

So, into the 475-degree oven it goes. My mother- and father-in-law arrive. The recipe says to take it out when the meat registers 130 degrees. After 20 minutes, the thermometer reads 60 degrees. Uh-oh.

My brother- and sister-in-law arrive.

After 35 minutes, the thermometer reads 100 degrees. Getting closer.

Finally, after 45 minutes, the crown rack of lamb is done. And it’s beautiful!

Now, we’re just waiting for my other brother- and sister-in-law and their two kids to arrive.

At 7, we’re all seated at the table, enjoying Tim’s delicious rosemary and garlic crown rack of lamb with port-wine sauce, garlic mashed potatoes and glazed carrots. Everyone loved it.

Except the Miracle Thaw.

We’ve been snowed in for Christmas! We got eight inches of snow on Christmas Eve, so that meant that we had to scrap our plans for Christmas in my hometown. This is the first time that I have ever not been at my Grandmother’s house for Christmas. Ouch.

Anyway, since I still haven’t gotten around to typing up our misadventures from Monday night, I’ll leave you with the amazing recipe that we used for our crown rack of lamb. (And thanks to my ever-observant father-in-law for passing it along. Thanks, Luther!) If only because someone was referred here yesterday from AOL while searching for “crown rack of lamb.” Hello! The sauce is excellent too, just don’t pay any attention to the nutritional information at the bottom…

Merry Christmas, ya’ll.

It is done. And it was an unqualified success! Yay, Tim, meat-master of the crown rack of lamb!

I will have to tell you the whole story tomorrow (er, today, that is): about how the huge rack of lamb was still frozen at 5 p.m., how Auggie was completely sick of watching us cook and not paying attention to him, and how Tim and I nearly took each others’ heads off because we couldn’t agree on the quickest method of thawing…

But right now I’m totally exhausted. And Auggie will probably be up at 6:30 again tomorrow morning.

Yawn.

Hey, it’s supposed to snow tomorrow…