J-O-B

Hey!  Remember that one time when I blogged about feeling blah and uninspired to write?  Or not HAVING anything to write about?  Well...I guess God had other things in mind and I'm finally able to take a breather and write about them.  And boy do I have some big news!

No, I'm not pregnant.

The Solomons came on Wednesday, February 13.  (Which I'll blog about later!)  Woohoo!  That was also the same day I had an actual interview at a job I randomly applied for about a week and a half before.  We took a day trip two days later on Friday, the same day I got an OFFER!  And then I started MY NEW JOB the following Monday!  Holy smokes.

So....I randomly applied for this random job I randomly saw on a random website that I haven't looked at in months.  I don't know what made me do it but the description was for a Part-Time Office Manager at an American tech start-up company based in San Fran (started by some Irish guys) who were now opening a Dublin office.  It sounded interesting and it was a long shot but I applied anyway.  I had a Skype interview with San Fran a week later, then the aforementioned in-person interview, then the job offer!  It all happened so fast and I'm still not even sure what just happened but...I have a job.  Something I never thought I'd find over here.  And...surprisingly, it feels good.

I was really worried at first.  I have a life here!  Yes, sometimes it's boring, but...I've attempted to fill it with cool and interesting things.  Spanish classes.  History classes.  Volunteering.  Friends.  Running.  Cooking.  Leisure.  I enjoyed that.  So sue me.  I was concerned about my trips, my visitors, and other things I've already planned that I can't/won't get out of.  Besides that, I haven't worked in 8 months.  My career self-esteem is less than zero and my brain doesn't function anymore.  I just feel like this came out of nowehere and while I've been praying for change and/or big things in whatever form that came in, I just...wasn't expecting this and don't know what...I'm doing with my life.

But besides the panic, I'm also...excited.  The more I talked to the peeps in San Fran the more I began to see that this could be a really cool opportunity.  I'm excited about using my brain again.  A functioning brain that used to be good for something.  I'm excited about working for a tech start-up company in Dublin, which I'll never have the opportunity to do ever again.  Excited about making extra money!  Getting a bigger apartment!  Providing financially for my family, albeit in an extremely small way!  Getting new clothes for work!  Having an excuse to leave the apartment again!  Meeting new people!  Doing new things!  Etc!

An absolutely terrible picture of me Drew insisted on taking on my first day of work.

I have a lot more to talk about and blog about, but I just wanted to explain my hiatus for the past 3 weeks.  Visitors and more visitors + new job where I'm super busy building a new office from the ground up (literally, I've been overseeing construction of the office the past 2 days) = a crazy frazzled kook who needs to get her shit together and start writing again.  Forgive me.

Ok, more to come in the next few days.  I've missed you all.  Goodnight!

Babysitting & Babies

Drew and I babysat this weekend for the first time together since high school for our friends' 5-month old baby.  I was nervous but Drew continued to remind me that we would AOK and that we were fully capable.  Whew.

I had babies on the brain all weekend (not my own) because my Nell had her little cutie nugget on Friday night.  I shed several tears over the past few days to Lindsay because I was so sad to be missing out on such a momentous occasion, but...it's just part of it I guess.  Our friends John and Nat in Amsterdam had their baby on Wednesday.  Cait had her baby in December and Steph had hers in November and several more are having their's this summer.  I'm sad to miss all that.  Blah.

Anyways, babysitting was a pretty good time, though the baby stressed us out a bit.  She was perfect and cute and wonderful about 60% of the time, and screamed bloody murder the remainder of the evening.  She appeared to be tired but every time we'd try to put her down she'd scream and cry, and you can't just let someone else's kid cry it out/cry themselves to sleep, can you?  We didn't, anyway.  Initially Drew was the perfect model of a baby-whisperer and calmed her down and calmed ME down and made her laugh, but then when the screaming continued, the calmness wore off and panic ensued.  SHE WOULDN'T STOP!  So when that started, so did the tempers and snapping at each other.  Whoops.  We clearly have a lot of work to do on our patience with each other before we have kids.

Calm Drew and the cutie culprit.

I've also realized I have several other things I need to take care of before I have children.  Things dealing with like...anxiety and fear and what not.  For example, my fear of flying.  Imagine: we're 35,000 feet in the air and the plane starts bumping its way over some very unpleasant turbulence.  My 5 year old looks at me fearful and wide-eyed.
Kid: Mommy, why is the plane doing that?  I'm scared!
Me: Well sweetie......it's because there's wind and turbulence and it means THE PLANE'S GOING DOWN AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE GOD HELP US!!!!
(And then I proceed to run around the plane a la Kristen Wiig in 'Bridesmaids'.) 

Another scenario: Drew's working late and my child runs into my bedroom late at night, scared because they heard a noise outside their window.
Kid: Mommy, I heard something outside!  I'm scared!
Me:  Wait, seriously?
Kid: YES!  What if it's a bad guy or a monster or something?
Me:  My God.  You could be right.  Quick!!  Get in the closet and hide with me NOW!!
(And we proceed to hide in the closet together under a blanket until Drew gets home.  At which point I'll have a great deal of explaining to do.)  

I cannot project that fear shit onto my kids.  I won't do it.  So therefore I must take care of it now before I even entertain the idea.  Sigh.  I've got a long road ahead.

I need to can all this baby talk because my in-laws get here today and one in particular is alllll about the babies.  So that talk stops now and the fun BEGINS!

I'll get back to posting more pics of their trip and about my life in general.  Sorry for my absence.  Seee ya!

Strawberry Nutella Poptarts

Valentine's Day came early to the Solomon household in the form of these Strawberry Nutella Poptarts (or Sweetie Pies, I've heard them called) that I made for Drew's coworkers!  I've seen several variations of these cuties on Pinterest and thought I'd give it a whirl.  Drew's parents come next week (woohoo!) and his team at work is about to be disbanding so I thought I'd start a week early.

I believed these would be very simple to make, since they only contain 6 ingredients, but they turned out to be a little labor intensive.  No matter.  I have all the time in the world!  And they probably would be a tiny bit easier in a standard sized kitchen and not a closet sized one, but thats ok too.

I looked at several recipes and kinda made up my own.  Here we go!

The cast of characters: 2 boxes of pie dough (or Shortcrust Sheets if you're in Europe), nutella, strawberry jam/jelly/preserves, a heart cookie cutter, and maybe an egg and some coarse sugar (which I forgot here).

So...begin by taking out your pie dough and rolling it out even thinner than it is.  If you don't have a rolling pin like me, use a wine bottle!

Sorry not sorry.

It works just as well AND you're recycling!

So here we have it.

Begin cutting heart shapes out of the dough in the most space-saving way possible.

Et voila.  

Remove the excess dough (to fold up and reroll in a bit) and place your pretty dough hearts on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Now for the fun stuff: dunk your tiny spoon/knife into the nutella (while trying not to eat it) and spread a generous teaspoon or so onto the center of each dough heart.

Yummm!

Then take your strawberry jam/jelly/preserves and spread another teaspoon or so on top of the nutella.

Oh baby.

Before, during, or after this filling process, you'll want to be rolling out more dough and cutting more hearts.  For the hearts that you'll be using for the topping, you'll want to simply add a poke of the fork to the center of each one.  I guess to let it breath while baking.  Or something.

Take some water....

And moisten the edge of each heart with water all the way around.

Take your poked dough heart topper and softly lay it over the filling, and press gently to seal it all in.

Then you can press the sealed edges with the fork tines all around the border.

Prettttty!

I decided to give each heart a little egg wash (an egg yolk and some water) before popping them into the oven.  (And I naturally had to use my finger to do it again cause I don't have a pastry brush.  Whoops.)

Sprinkle them lightly with some coarse sugar if you have it!  Fine granulated sugar works just as well though.

This is my disheveled mess of a kitchen.  Just for fun.

They're ready to go!

Now from the three recipes I combined, each one had a different cooking temperature (varying from 350° to 425°) and time (between 12 and 26 minutes).  I became stressed immediately and my mother was nowhere to be found on Viber - so I experimented.  I turned the oven to 375° and tried different cooking lengths.  I finally settled on 375° for 15 minutes, with a potential minute or two extra.

This is a bit of a messy batch.  I'll just have to keep them at home and eat them I guess.

Now you can sprinkle powdered sugar over the tops of them (I used this pretty plastic strainer) to make them look extra beautiful.

And then put them in your favorite tupperware container for your husband to take to work!

My general consenesus/opinion: they're festive, fun, and cute, but not the best things I've ever made.  They're good ENOUGH but...I think I should have added more filling (even though I'm not sure they could have held more) and I ate them the next day and I think they taste better heated.  Maybe a little too doughy?  Maybe I overcooked them?  Not sure.  I mean they're really good, don't me wrong, and Drew's people are loving them, but...they need some work.  But I decided to post them anyway because they're too adorable and fun not to!

This is the recipe I mostly used, but here's another one that I thought was lovely too.  And this one, using real strawberries.  Anyway, try them and let me know if yours come out delicious!

Happy early Valentine's Day!

Sllooowww

Guys,  I need to be real with you about something: I'm losing steam.  Mostly with this blogging stuff.  I love blogging and I love writing but some days/weeks I just don't feel like I have great stuff to write about.  And I hate feeling like I HAVE to write, because I know I gotta keep it up to keep the very few readers happy, and...I just feel like it's a lost cause at this point.

Drew keeps telling me that I don't just have to write about "events" and things we do, I can just write about my thoughts.  "I don't know, just...write about your thoughts!  Think some thoughts and write about them!" he says.  Good advice.  But if I'm being real with you again, my readers might not wanna hear my thoueghts right now.  The weather is funny and Drew works a lot.  January and February are just hard.  Some days/weeks are fun.  Some days are not.  Some days I sleep in.  Some days I do laundry.  Some days I get up early and go run along the coast and really appreciate my life and where I am.  Some days I'm in a funk because it rains all day and the wind blows so hard and you can hardly go outside without getting raped by the elements.  Some days I go to lunch with friends.  Some days I volunteer.  Some days I go hang out at my wealthy friend's houses and feel happy I have friends but inadequate with my tiny ass apartment.  Some days I'm incredibly sad that one of my best friends is about to go into labor and I'm not there.  Some days I feel grateful and know that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.  Some days I refuse to brave the weather and don't go to the gym.  Some days I totally surprise myself and run 4 miles!  Some days I have panic attacks about jobs and the fact that I'm still not working or providing and I have no clue what I'm doing with my life.  Some days I cook.  Some days I don't.  Some days I go to my Spanish classes and history classes and feel great about myself and feel great about life.

Most days I don't see Drew.  Even on the weekends he's been working all day.  And then we have stuff to do at night so we're with people and then when we get home he's so exhausted he goes straight to sleep.  And then we repeat it all over again.  So...right now I don't feel like I have a husband but I know it's temporary and I'm incredibly thankful that he's less stressed than he usually is in Dallas.  That's a relief.  And I know this is temporary.

See?  These thoughts are fun or good and they're probably scaring my parents right now, who are incredibly fearful of me falling into some sort of deep seasonal depression.  But I'm not!  I swear!  I just...don't have a ton to write about or a ton to say right now.

The good news is that starting next week, we've got a month of visitors!  Drew's parents come next week, then his friends from PWC Dallas, then his aunt and uncle, and then two weeks later my b-fries come!  Woohoo!  We have a lot of other fun activities coming up and some travel plans so we're excited about that...but for now, it's just a little slow.  That's ok though.  Such is life sometimes.

Alright, I'm gonna get off my backside and go walk to my spin class in the rain.  Lovely.  Bye for now!