I was very excited all day today.  At 3pm this afternoon, my mom was coming in from PA!  It could not get here fast enough.

Since yesterday’s was so good, breakfast was a nutella sandwich again.

Work today was painful.  I was just waiting for it to be 2:30 so I could leave!  Lunch was a salad with a Hebrew National hot dog.

I took a quick shower and played with the cats before I left.  JB and Mendy are doing really well.  Although they don’t exactly play together much, they definitely don’t fight.  JB really likes Mendy and follows her all around.  Mendy pretty much acts like a princess and ignores him, unless he gets a little too close and then she gives him a warning growl!

They love sitting by the Christmas tree together.

She really is a beautiful cat.

At 2:30 on the dot, I was off to the airport!  I was driving pretty fast, I think, so was actually early   Soon, I saw here coming towards the car!

It seemed to take forever for her to get to my car!

After catching up and unloading her luggage at home, we made a trip to Whole Foods to pick up some groceries.  My mom eats a kind of restrictive diet – mostly gluten and dairy-free.  So we got some special bread and other items for her so she would have things that she liked during her stay here.

In the WF parking lot, they had some beautiful Christmas lights on the palm trees.  The sun was starting to set and it looked really nice.  Gotta love Christmastime in California!

As soon as we got home, I had a snack of avocado and ham.  I’m still working on finishing the ham but have about 1/4 of it left.  Tonight, it’s going in the freezer…

At WF, we picked up some sole dover fillets that were on sale and knew they would be a terrific dinner!  I topped it with a little EVOO, garlic salt and red pepper.

I also had some pasta with edamame, more avocado, and some goat cheese that we brought back from Switzerland.  Soooo good.  I have been saving it for when my Mom got here, since goat cheese is one of the few types of cheese she will eat.

For dessert, I ate three chocolate truffles that my Mom brought for me.  All the way from the east coast!

A bear (who lost its eye on the long flights over), a seal, and a bunny rabbit!

Aren’t they adorable?  And you know I had to bite their heads off first.  Look at that yummy dark chocolate truffle inside…

NOM, NOM, NOM!

After dinner, we dressed Mendy up in my new Terrible Towel (which my Mom also brought).  She truly has Steeler pride!

Even when we make it a babushka on her head.

Now it’s off to bed, because tomorrow is MY BIRTHDAY!

G’night, ya’ll!

My mom is coming to visit tomorrow!  I am so excited.

Due to a lack of time, this is mostly going to be a picture post.  This morning for breakfast I had a Nutella sandwich on toast.

Snacked on some ruby red grapefruit.

For lunch, I made my own Subway!  I bought new buns – I’m always trying to find a good  bun that compares to the wheat bread at Subway.

This bread was good, but not whole wheat.  So still not as good as Subway.  But good.

And dinner was pasta with ground beef, tomato sauce, and an italian cheese blend.

For dessert, I had Greek yogurt with Cinnamon Toast Crunch!

G’night, ya’ll!

Today is a sad day for Steelers fans.  We lost to the Oakland Raiders today, in the fourth quarter.  We lost to them at home, making this our fourth straight loss. We are definitely playing inconsistently and uncharacteristically.  I know I live close to Oakland now and I should be a CA fan for them and/or the 49ers, and in a way I am… but I will always and forever be a Steelers fan first.

I’ve been feeling inconsistent and uncharacteristic, too.  In less than three short days, I will be 27 years old.  But more on that later.

A quick weekend recap:  Friday night was pretty much a chill-at-home night. I had a yummy dinner of broiled brussel sprouts, eggs, pork tenderloin, and a persimmon.

A couple of baby carrots were in there, too.

I can’t decide whether I like persimmons or not.  I bought a few at the farmer’s market here last weekend and was very excited about them.  I never even had a persimmon before I moved to California, but now they are widely available each year.  And each year I get excited about them, and then I buy a lot, and then I eat a few and can’t decide whether or not I like them.

Weird, I know.  So that’s what I’m doing right now… trying to decide.  I’m going to dehydrate a few in the Excalibur this weekend to see how that works out!

Saturday was errands day.  We went to Barnes and Nobles, I mailed some Christmas packages, we went to Target, etc.  At Target, we finally bought some Duraflame logs so we can light the fireplace!!  We got these colored ones that are supposed to burn flames of various colors. I can’t wait to try them out!  That is one of my favorite things about my house, the fireplace.  Here is a picture from last year at about this time – the fireplace burning and the Christmas tree up!

I set up our tree last weekend in the same place.  So now I just need the lit fireplace to be complete

Saturday night, we watched the movie The Reader with Kate Winslet.  I really love Kate Winslet, and heard this was a great movie so have been looking forward to watching it.  I also really like Ralph Fiennes.  The movie was really good, although it is a bit of a downer so I don’t recommend it if you are looking for a happy, feel-good film.

And today I was up at 10 for the Steeler’s game.  I enjoyed my coffee and some banana bread oatmeal while watching it.

For lunch, which I wasn’t really that hungry for but ate out of stress because the game was frustrating me so much, I atesome Amy’s chili and a fuji apple.

I grumpily bit his head off before I took the picture.

To make my grumpy mood even grumpier, after the Steelers lost we had to get started cleaning the house.  In particular, we had to clean out the second bedroom.  My mom is coming to visit on Tuesday, and we are going to put together S’s old bed from his apartment (it is currently sitting in pieces in my garage) for her to sleep on in the second bedroom.

After a couple hours of balls-to-the-wall cleaning, we took a break and went to go play tennis.  We put a little wager on our game, and since I won, S had to take me to Subway for dinner!  I got my footlong turkey sub, which I took home to eat.

I also had this bag of chips.

And for dessert – two bowls of peppermint ice cream.

I have two and a half more containers of ice cream in my freezer.  And I am making a promise, here and now, that when I finish these I am not buying anymore for a long time.  I just simply cannot control myself.

Happily, my work meeting is canceled tonight.  So I’m going to bed to dream about my mom coming to visit, and have nightmares about turning 27 years old on Wednesday.

G’night, ya’ll.

I spoke to my dad on the phone today and told him about how we got another cat.  I believe his exact words were,

Why the hell would you do something like that?

My dad, the animal lover.  Love you, Daddy.

Sometimes you just gotta mix things up.  That’s why I had pizza for breakfast.

I got a coupon for California Pizza Kitchen’s new line of pizzas at Whole Foods, and so I picked up the Chicken Pesto pizza the other night.  It was delicious – I ate half of it right away, and the other half about midway through the morning as a snack.  I wish the crust was a little bit thinner, but the pesto sauce was really good for a frozen pizza.

For lunch, I used up the last of our Thanksgiving leftovers by putting the turkey on my lunch salad.  I am sad

Do you know that I have never cooked a turkey in my life?  I mean really cooked a turkey… bought the whole big, frozen bird, brought it home, and made it ready-to-eat.  The whole end-to-end process (can you tell I’m a project manager???)  I’m thinking about trying to do that sometime soon.  Gonna practice so my butt is ready to make next year’s Thanksgiving  bird!

Speaking of birds, I remember one time when I was younger my mom bought a smoked turkey for Thanksgiving.  Has anybody had one of those before?  Where do you buy them?  I loooooved it, but haven’t seen any in the stores around here.  I asked someone about it at our Thanksgiving dinner, and they said that the only smoked turkeys they had before were ones that they smoked themselves!  And that’s way out of my league…

Mendy is getting more and more comfortable in our house.  Today she slept a majority of the day.

Except for when I woke her up to take her picture,

And when she wanted to watch TV.

JB continued to follow Mendy around the house.

I think that he has determined that they are not enemies… but now he is sizing up the competition.

Trying to figure out what he is dealing with, here…

Oh yeah, and you knew it would happen sooner or later.  Mendy joins JB on top of the freezer.

Breaking out the ruby red grapefruit I got at the farmer’s market last weekend.

Breakfast – simple and sweet.

I had sort of a strange mid-morning snack.  Spiralized zucchini, cheddar cheese, and leftover ham and turkey from Thanksgiving.  It was pretty much a meal in and of itself!

For lunch, I made a salad with the leftover pork tenderloin from last night.

For a snack, I ate the last of my yogurts from Target.  I have actually really enjoyed these yogurts.

The flavors are delicious.  However, I noticed in the ingredients list that they have modified corn starch… so unfortunately I do not think I will be buying them again.  Why do they have to go and ruin a good thing???

I also had a persimmon and two clementines.

Dinner was a treat – lasagna and garlic bread!

I wish I could say it was made from scratch but… unfortunately not.  It was a Target meal, and I was kind of disappointed.  Not too disappointed to eat it… but disappointed nonetheless.

My dessert, however, was not a disappointment whatsoever.  I made an apple crisp ice cream treat with baked apples covered in vanilla ice cream with a kashi crunchy bar crumbled on top:

The apples are in there… I promise…

There they are!

And, for my (ahem) second dessert, I nibbled on some cookies we brought back from Switzerland.  Totally addictive.

But now on to the more interesting aspect of my day – my children.  Today, we tried a new approach.  Rather than trying to put them together, we let them find each other.  I opened the door to the bathroom and let Mendy out, and just let her and JB run into one another and sniff around.

This proved to be much more effective.  It started out like this.

Can you find both cats?  Here, let me help you…

He’s watching from afar.  Then… he slowly got closer:

And closer….

There was trepidation, but no noise.  No hissing, spitting, or growling.  That’s gotta be a good thing…

Now I’m off to bed.  Mendy is back in the bathroom for the night, and we will have some more introductory time tomorrow.

G’night, ya’ll!