I claim zero credit for this recipe though, let’s be clear. This is a lightly modified version of the classic Bisquick coffeecake that used to be on the box. Though it’s no longer on there, I was able to track it down online and boy am I ever glad I did. It’s easy to put together and even easier to eat.

Note: you can halve the recipe and make it in an 8×8 or pie pan, this recipe makes a 9×13 inch coffeecake, but I can’t estimate servings since I would eat half of it in one sitting and I’m pretty sure it serves more than 2.

Easy Streusel Coffeecake
Original recipe from: Bisquick

Ingredients
Batter:
4 cups Bisquick
1 1/3 cup milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Topping:
1 1/3 cup Bisquick
1 1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
8 tablespoons butter

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, grease a 9×13 inch pan.

2. Mix all the batter ingredients together, pour into greased pan (and there will be some small lumps, that’s okay!)

3. Mix the Bisquick, brown sugar and cinnamon together.

Cut the butter into small pieces and mix in with a fork or your fingers until it’s all well blended together. I recommend fingers over forks, but that’s just me.

4. Pour streusel over the top, then use a butter knife and cut lines up and down and across to get a little of the streusel into the cake. You can skip this step, but I wouldn’t.

5. Bake at 400 for approximately 30-45 minutes, depending upon your oven. Mine cooks insanely hot, so just cook until a toothpick comes out clean, checking regularly.

6. Enjoy!

This morning, I got ready and stumbled downstairs at 6:45 to heat up 2 small cinnamon rolls as I have done every morning for the past several weeks. Don’t judge me. Cinnamon rolls are as close to a craving as I’ve ever had and I cannot get enough of them. I’m sure the results of Tuesday’s glucose test will make that come to a screeching halt soon enough.

Anyways, I realized as I was descending the stairs that I had never covered the cinnamon rolls I baked last night. Under normal circumstances I would not be all that worried. Maybe they’d be a little stale. But no, I live with the cat who has no self control. So all the tops of the cinnamon rolls were gone. He ate THE BEST PART OF ALL MY CINNAMON ROLLS. I may have come close to shedding a tear over this.

My favorite part of this story was that my husband didn’t even notice and ate two of them for breakfast. His only comment when I pointed out what happened was that he wondered why I had only put frosting on the sides of the rolls.

From there, I got in the car and found way more traffic than I expected and as the traffic came to a sudden stop, I watched in abject terror as the car behind me continued to speed along, unaware that I was not moving. Finally he saw and slammed on his breaks. There was NO chance he would stop in time and my only saving grace was that the car in front of me moved like 10 feet, so instead of a big accident, I moved forward as much as I could and got a friendly little love tap from the guy behind me. There are 2 very tiny circular scratches on my bumper from his license plate and I’m not pursuing it. I’m going to put way bigger scratches in my car than that, and I do not want the hassle.

Then I finally got to work, where I opened my locker door and then bent over to grab the water bottle I set on the ground. And then I stood up right into the locker door. There are almost no words to describe how surprising and painful that was.

And just when I thought the ugly part of the day was complete, I ruined my Easy Mac at lunch. Well, the water machine did it. It didn’t stop dispensing water when it was supposed to and so for lunch I had macaroni and cheese soup. It was really kind of awful.

And the worst part of the day was that though I saw my life flash before my eyes (what, I’m not dramatic at all) in my car and have a huge bruised egg sized knot on my head, I realized that I was far more upset about my cinnamon rolls and Easy Mac. The universe and my cat should both know better than to mess with a pregnant woman’s food.

Anyway, back to Mitt Romney and the outrage. I am not one of the outraged. Yes, Mitt has off shore accounts, yes he only paid 14% of his yearly income in taxes, but the fact is that it was totally legal. And I can’t blame Mitt for that.

I blame Congress.

There have been many, many attempts to change tax policies. The people have spoken, repeatedly, and they want the wealthy to be taxed more to help manage the deficit. And yet, the Republican caucus continues to block all attempts to, you know, raise revenue for our badly indebted country because they are protecting the extremely wealthy. Like Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney simply did what was legal. He paid what he was supposed to pay and he has legal bank accounts. Sure, keeping bank accounts in the Cayman Islands is totally smarmy, but we’re talking politicians here. If you’re not expecting them to do seriously smarmy things you’re kidding yourself.

Should Mitt pay more? Ethically and in terms of what’s best for the country he wants to lead, yes, absolutely. He should pay the same tax rate as his constituents. He should not be able to hide money away overseas, but this is the legal hole we dug, now we need to lie in it without blaming him.

We need to lie in it or we need to get outraged at the people who made this possible. Don’t yell at Mitt, I am an absolute believer in giving taxes to the government pay for social welfare programs, but just like anyone else, I wouldn’t pay a dollar more than asked. And I don’t expect Mitt to be any different.

Write to your congressman, tell him or her that you want fair taxes, that the wealthy should never pay a smaller percentage of their income that low and middle class families. If you can’t see how wrong that is, then I can never understand you.

We absolutely need to do something different in this country. We need to get rid of these Bush era tax cuts. They don’t spur the economy, they allow millionaires to keep more of their money that the middle class and they are preventing us from pulling in valuable revenue.

I’m not asking you to agree but for the love of all that is good, don’t vote for Newt Gingrinch because of Mitt Romney’s taxes (I mean, really don’t vote for Newt at all, but definitely not for this). Being rich and smart is unfortunately not a crime, no matter how frustrating it may be to those of us who don’t fulfill the former attribute.

Blame Congress. And in November, elect officials who are going to represent the will of the people, not the will of the elite.

This weekend we drove to Heather’s house to celebrate Annie’s 2nd birthday. It was a lovely party, more well decorated and kept to theme than any event I have ever attended (it was Yo Gabba Gabba!) and the cake was amazing. Plus, it was really nice to see several of my friends again. We live just far enough away that we need an occasion to visit and this was a great one.

I have eaten the same thing for breakfast for two weeks and essentially the same thing for dinner 3 nights in a row. And each time it is the most delicious meal ever. Pregnancy is weird.

On the one hand, being 25 weeks pregnant doesn’t sound that far along, on the other hand, only having 15 weeks to go sounds like not very much time at all. I think things are about to get real here very soon. The nursery still isn’t finished and I still haven’t had any legitimate cravings or any desire to do anything that remotely resembles nesting (nesting is way too close to cleaning for me). My husband continues to have severe nesting issues that amuse me.

My mom is finally coming home tomorrow. She’s been on a cruise from Florida to South America since nearly 2 weeks ago. You know what’s fun? Having your mom on a cruise while there is a major cruise related accident in the news. Not stressful at all. She’s off the boat now and just has a flight between her and being home safely.

A branch of my family had to go through something truly lousy last week. I can’t/won’t elaborate for their privacy, but any good thoughts you have are most appreciated. They are such lovely people and deserve only good things, I’ve been so sad to see them go through this. Hopefully this is the end of the rough stuff for them and the start of calm.

Trader Joe’s Pfeffernusse. That is all.

On Wednesday my CI called in sick because her 2 year old son was on day 3 of a stomach virus. She came in on Friday and reported that she felt nauseous all day long, but worked through it. I avoided physical contact with her, washed my hands obsessively and am sure I’m fine. But she also brought in banana bread she baked at home the night her son puked 11 times and offered it to people. And to my surprise ALL of my other coworkers ate it. I came up with a polite excuse. I do not eat stomach flu bread, even if it looks totally delicious.

I have recently learned that many women puke during labor. This fact may keep me up at night.

I have to do my glucose tolerance test this week. I am…concerned. If there was any justice in the world, I would totally end up diabetic because I eat so much sugar it’s absurd, but I am really hoping for a world free from justice and where I only have to drink that orange crap once because I pass. Either way, I will survive and do what I need to for this baby, but seriously, I’d like to pass.

I desperately want to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but I have no one to see it with and I’m unsure if seeing it alone is a wise idea. We need to move closer to people I know and like.

This weekend has gone by way too quickly, but it’s now 8pm and I need to spend the next hour getting ready for the week ahead. Here’s to hoping for another week without passing out, without anyone in my house puking and with lots of sleep-filled nights. I mean for you guys too, obviously.

I feel malnourished in a figurative sense. And I think I’ve finally figured out what’s missing.

I’m not an overly religious person. I have previously been a frequent church/temple goer, but the times I have missed a service here or there have never been the end of the world. Last year at New Year’s I told my husband that I wanted to resolve to go to temple more often because after moving back to California we just never settled back into the routine we had been so fond of in New Orleans. Since that day we have gone to temple exactly 1 time and it was to our old temple in New Orleans.

We haven’t gone for a number of reasons. Laziness, busy schedules, not having a temple we like and being afraid to try a new one. Regardless of cause, we just haven’t gone. And I think it is what I am missing in my life right now.

I have faith. I am sure of what I believe, I am confident, but I miss many parts of being active in my religion. I miss walking out each week with a message to guide me. I miss a sense of community that is involved in Temple. I miss the prayers, I miss the way that I feel like I can breathe there because I am where my soul needs to be.

I miss that. That is the void.

We have found a new temple to try. It’s about 30 minutes away, which is the same distance as the one we’ve gone to in the past. It promises to be as open minded as we like our religion, but also savoring the traditions that are important to us. I have no way of knowing if we’re going to like it. But we’re going to try.

I will not promise that we’re going to make it tomorrow night. Thankfully the service is late (8pm) so we should both be out of work, but there are a lot of unknowns in life right now, so it may not be this week or next. But we will find our way back soon. I want to be active in my faith again. To feel less small and more supported. To feel like I have purpose back in my life.

I know many of you don’t understand this and that’s okay, I sometimes find religion exhausting myself. But when I’m in the right place, I find it nourishing in ways I cannot describe. And I am looking forward to that fulfillment in my life again. It’s been too long.

I woke up at 3am to pee. Nothing about that is unusual. I wake up around that time every day. I pee, I take a Zofran so that when I wake up 3 hours later, I am able to get out of bed without dry heaving. Pregnancy, it is glamorous. This morning I had a bit of a stomach ache, again, not terribly abnormal. But instead of just taking my Zofran and going back to sleep, I suddenly felt anxious.

So, I did what I do whenever I’m anxious at night (which again, is not a totally foreign thing) I put on an episode of Friends and drifted off to sleep. I fell into a dream that we had the baby but kept forgetting to feed him. I woke up an hour later, again, in panic. I fell back to sleep and had another baby dream and again woke panicked. This happened several times and finally at 5:30 when my husband’s alarm went off, I decided I had done enough of the fitful sleeping for the day. And if you know how much I hate mornings, you know that the anxiety must have really sucked for me to make that decision.

It took a solid 30 minutes of distraction (Facebook, twitter, emails, etc) to get myself calmed down and from there, I was able to get up and move on with my day. There was nothing in particular that seemed to be driving the anxiety, but I could feel it upon me all day. I wasn’t anxious about work, in fact I was excited to get there because I knew once I got going, I would be okay. And as I assumed, I was fine as long as I was occupied, but as soon as there was a down moment, the anxiety crept back in.

I have struggled with anxiety for a long time, but I have been able to manage it well for the past several years. And the few times I couldn’t manage it well, I had medication. And it wasn’t that I didn’t manage it well today, it was just that it wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t a panic attack that lasted 30 minutes or an hour and then left, it was this full day low lying anxiety. Even as I drove home for the day, I still felt like my skin was crawling, like I was buzzing with anxiety that I couldn’t shake.

I am home now and I decided to forego the couch and just move right into bed since my husband is on call tonight. I’m not going to sleep, but I just decided that comfort was key, and finally, I am feeling a little more like myself. I have some concerns about tomorrow, but I know that I can’t tackle those yet and that I need to cut myself some slack and relax. Coping with this kind of stress on little sleep is exhausting.

Today was a difficult and weird day, but if anything, I proved to myself that I can handle it, on my own. It doesn’t mean it’s going to feel good or that I’m going to love every minute of it, but I can tackle this. I can choose control and while it’s not the same floaty feeling as the medication, it is powerful.

I can handle this. I may just need to be reminded of that from time to time.

Until I went to a local restaurant that proudly offers an egg-free Caesar. It isn’t the traditional creamy Caesar dressing, it’s a little more on the vinaigrette side, but it is still similar and delicious. And from there my mission to replicate this salad was born. A few google searches later and I found a recipe that I made that night. And since then it has had a frequent place in our dinner rotation.

It’s best made a little in advance so the dressing can really develop it’s flavor and the lettuce can wilt down a little bit, but you can make it right before eating too. And while it’s not necessary, I also make my croutons from scratch. They absolutely taste better than the box ones and they are really easy too. I promise.

Homemade Egg-Free Chicken Caesar Salad
Adapted from: Cooking Light
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients
2 bags of romaine lettuce
1/2 small loaf of bakery bread (I used rosemary, it was awesome)
6 tbsp olive oil
juice from 2 lemons
4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
4 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced
Parmesan cheese (I prefer to shred my own so it’s a little thicker)
Chicken

(not pictured: olive oil, because I forgot and was WAY too lazy to take another picture)

Directions
1. In a food processor or a bowl with a whisk combine olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire, Dijon, sugar, salt, black pepper and garlic.

Pulse or whisk until well combined. I use my mini chopper because it helps emulsify the dressing and because I am lazy. Taste the dressing and adjust as needed. I had very juicy lemons today, so I added an extra tsp of Dijon and Worcestershire to balance it out. Just play around, the recipe is very forgiving.

2. Put lettuce and parmesan cheese in a very large bowl, pour dressing over, mix and refrigerate for as long as you can.

3. To prepare croutons, cut up bread into crouton sized pieces, place on cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat the pieces and the pan.

My oven bakes really hot, so I baked mine at (allegedly) 350 for 16 minutes and they came out like this.

I checked them at 10 minutes, don’t go far because it doesn’t take long to go from golden to burnt. Make sure that they are completely cool before you store them in an airtight container or the heat will soften them up again. And soft croutons are just not great.

4. Just before you’re ready to eat, prepare your chicken as you normally do. I season mine with garlic salt and pepper and cook on the stove, nothing fancy. To assemble, put a serving of salad, sprinkle with croutons and top with chicken. If you put the croutons in the salad too early, they’ll get mushy, so keep them out until you’re ready to eat.

5. Enjoy!

Seriously, if you like Caesar, you’ll love this. Don’t be put off by the ingredients (I haaaaate Dijon), the combination is great and the salad is even better the next day.

So, my cat hates me now. I think he knows about the baby and I think he’s mad. He ADORES my husband. Like, literally as soon as my husband’s ass hits any surface, my cat is on his lap. And he will sleep there for hours. The only time I get any cat love is when my husband is gone for a very long time and my cat is desperate. And even then, it’s not usually for very long. Conversely, my husband’s cat adores me now, which is weird since she’s normally a wretched bitch.

Most of today was spent cleaning, sorting, moving and building things around the house. Though we have 2 bedrooms, we definitely didn’t plan on making the office to nursery transition so soon, so trying to find somewhere to put all the furniture that used to be in the office has been a challenge. Most of it is now in the garage because we just really need the space.

We downsized our bookcase from a HUGE one to a very small one, that I built tonight. And when I was 1 step from finishing, I realized that I put the bottom shelf on upside down, so the unfinished side was looking up. And while it totally never would’ve bothered me, my husband was clearly not on board. So I had to take out like 8 little nails and several screws to fix it. There may have been some serious swearing involved.

My husband today swept the garage (which we never go into) and the patio (which we never go out onto). I literally cannot tell you the last time he swept the bathroom with the cat litter in it. But I’m so glad our garage is now clean. Sometimes his OCD makes zero sense to me.

We did our baby registry today. It took several hours and then several more making about 30 changes to it at home via the internet, but it seems to be mostly done. We did have to make a separate wish list on Amazon because the stroller we chose is not available at Babies R Us. We may end up buying it for ourselves, but that’s a risk we’re willing to take. It’s a really great stroller.

Related: baby stuff is really, really expensive.

After writing last week about waiting for the other shoe to drop, like 3 hours later it kind of did. I was awakened at 1am to the sound of my husband puking, which by the way, is the worst thing I’ve ever woken up to. He appears to have had food poisoning and is now fully recovered, but it was not a pleasant night for either of us. He hadn’t puked in 15 years, I am terrified of puke. We were both pretty miserable.

I really haven’t had any true cravings so far in pregnancy, but I have gotten into food ruts. My current ones are cinnamon and citrus. I bought orange cinnamon rolls last week and almost died from happiness.

Alright, I am tired and have nothing left for you guys. Except a picture of the Shmo in his new bed.

But there is a downside to all the good. It’s all the worry.

It’s gotten so hard for me to sit back and just enjoy the happiness because I’m constantly trying to figure out what is going to cause it to go away. Lately my obsession has been counting the days until the baby is viable. It’s 2 more days, just in case you wondered. Not that I want my child to be born anytime soon, but I am finding such an awkward comfort in knowing that doctors would work to save him if something happened now.

Every time I feel him kick I am comforted (and giddy kinds of happy), but I constantly worry that I’ll go into labor early and instead of the happy image in my mind of coming home from the hospital with my brand new baby, I envision weeks and months in the NICU with my child. And this started well before my clinical, just for the record.

I worry that something is going to happen to my family. About half of my crazy pregnancy dreams are about my husband leaving me, or someone I love dying. I had a dream last week that my dad died and I can barely even tell you how horrible it was. Just thinking about the horror of that dream nearly brings me to tears.

I am so immeasurably happy, but in the back of my head I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It’s been so long since I’ve not had something sucky going on in my life. I have headaches I can manage right now, I am not drowning in school. I am happy. Everything is about as wonderful as it could possibly be. Today started and seems to be ending with a perfectly healthy and active baby kicking the crap out of my insides. I literally cannot keep a smile off my face. There are moments where I feel like I could explode from sheer joy. And it’s so foreign that it scares me.

I know that some worry is normal, especially in totally uncharted territory and truly, it’s not holding me back from my happiness. It’s just there, lingering, threatening to tell me that it told me so when or if something bad happens. And I so desperately don’t want it to be right. I want to hold onto this happiness forever because I cannot imagine life without it anymore.

I understand that it is cold and flu season, I understand that half of the world is covered in snot. I understand you don’t feel well.

But you probably don’t need antibiotics.

Here’s the thing, your cold is supposed to make you feel miserable. You’re supposed to be congested, you’re supposed to have a sore throat. You’re supposed to have a cough, and that cough is normal for up to 6 weeks, as miserable as that sounds. And antibiotics don’t do anything to help colds. And unfortunately, they also don’t do anything to treat the flu (I’m talking about influenza) or a stomach virus because we’re talking about viruses, not bacterial infections. Even your child’s fever most likely doesn’t need an antibiotic since fevers don’t automatically mean a bacterial infections.

And I know what you’re going to say- I take antibiotics and my cold/stomach virus/flu gets better! But I would ask, how do you know your cold/stomach virus/flu wasn’t getting better on its own? That it wasn’t just running its course? Because antibiotics do not treat viruses, no matter how much you want them to. It’s a coincidence and it’s one with consequences.

New research shows that if you’re older than 6 months old ear infections, sinus infections and bronchitis are almost always viral, which means that antibiotics are not necessary. You may feel crappy, but time will be the best treatment for most of these. There are some exceptions and you should definitely talk to your doctor, but if you find out you have bronchitis, don’t get upset when your doctor tells you to go home and rest it off. He’s not being an idiot, he’s practicing evidence based medicine, which is a really good thing.

And I know that some people don’t understand why we wouldn’t take antibiotics when available to us and here’s why. When you take antibiotics, you expose your body and all the bugs in it to that antibiotic, which in turn offers it the change to adapt to that drug. The reason we have antibiotic resistant infections is because we have overused antibiotics so much that all the bacteria in our lives has been exposed to antibiotics and have mutated to no longer respond to them. If we took antibiotics less often, we would not expose as many bugs to them and that would mean fewer mutated bugs, which would be a very, very good thing.

It is because of this antibiotic overuse that we have MRSA and antibiotic resistant TB. It is because of this antibiotic overuse that we have infections that we cannot treat, that kill people who shouldn’t be dying.

There is some mutual blame because doctors absolutely overprescribe antibiotics to patients, but at the same time, I think we can all admit to pressuring our doctors on occasion. We don’t feel well and it feels awful to leave empty handed when you’re sure something is really wrong. But I implore you to stop asking for antibiotics if your physician doesn’t think you need them, and if they hand out antibiotics like candy, I implore you to get a new doctor. And not getting antibiotics doesn’t mean you’re not sick, it just means you don’t have a bacterial infection.

I know that this doesn’t apply to everyone and that some of you probably don’t care at all, but we all need to make an effort to do better, to decrease the chances of new superbugs emerging that we can’t treat.

I’ll step off my soap box now, but I’m going to continue to really hope you’ll all give this some thought.