I don’t even know where to start and I’m hesitant to even begin but, as I’m typing this, I fully realize I’ve already begun so I might as well keep going. Right?

This is where you’re wondering what the hell I’m not wanting to start but have already started.

Let’s just get to it, shall we?

I bought Sophie the day she was born. Actually, I had told my cousin I wanted a puppy if he ever decided to breed his dog and, when I saw Sophie being born, I decided she was the dog for me. She was this little red, striped thing with a white nose, white feet and a cute, white patch at the very end of her tail. She was the runt and she was mine.

Sophie was the first “kid” I ever had and, before you get all crazy on me, I don’t think pets are actual KIDS that should be treated as such. Dogs are pets. They’re, legally, a step up from farm animals–in most states. Does that make me love Sophie any less? Nope. Sophie was the first “thing” I ever had to care for other than myself.

Even though Sophie was supposed to be my dog, Sophie chose Tucker. Sophie chose Tucker’s head to sleep on, Tucker’s clothes to pee on and Tucker’s nerves to annoy. She annoyed and continues to annoy my nerves, as well.

Sophie will be nine this April Fool’s Day. I consider that a brilliant joke. At least, I laugh at it…but I’m used to being the only one to laugh at my jokes.

Sophie moved with us from Arkansas to Florida.

I’m not sure exactly when the “bumps” started showing up but I know for certain that she had the one at the base of her tail when we were in Florida so we’re talking several years ago. Our vet rocked and he just said to “watch it” and if it got bigger then we’d worry about it.

The bump never changed.

Sophie moved with us from Florida to Arkansas and Ollie was born and Tucker finished his degree and we moved to Alabama.

Since we’ve been here, Sophie has grown/developed/spawned several more bumps. So many, in fact, that we were worried she had cancer.

We had a vet, when we first moved here, who said she’d aspirate the “tumors” and that it would cost us $500 PER “tumor” to have them looked at under a microscope. Needless to say, we declined.

We’ve been living with a Sophie-Tumor timebomb since then.

And, then, Sophie decided to get her first ear infection.

I took her to a new, new vet–I hated the one I had been taking her to since we moved into the house–to get Sophie’s ear checked out and mentioned the bumps in a “what do you think these might be” kind of way.

“Well, I’ll just aspirate them and we’ll find out, right?”

I was JUST ABOUT to ask him how much that would cost–and risk “the look”–but the doc had already gotten the cap off of the syringe and was going at Sophie. He aspirated three bumps. Dollar signs were ringing up in front of my eyes.

The doc looked at the slides under his microscope, came back with meds for Sophie’s ear and pronounced Sophie cancer free. To make a long story less long, she has sebaceous cysts–think zits…kinda.

Wanna know how much I was charged for this procedure?

$20.

If this isn’t a case for getting a second opinion, I don’t know what is.

SO! Sophie doesn’t have cancer and I get to treat her gross ear with ear cleaning and medicine.

YAY and bleck.

When my doctor told me to take 60mg of iron, I searched five different stores before I was finally able to find what I needed.

At each store, I asked either a store associate or someone behind the pharmacy counter for help. About half the time the person was able to at least find where the iron lived but there were times when my help looked even more lost than me.

If they can’t find the iron then how the heck am I supposed to find it?

Example from Walmart:

There's iron in there somewhere, right?

Once I started taking the iron, I figured I might as well start taking a standard multivitamin, too, but I haven’t been on a multivitamin since I was nursing Ollie and that was a cinch to buy since all I needed to find was the section for pregnant ladies and put out my hand until I hit a bottle. Sure, there were about a million different brands but I had a toddler and a newborn with me; I was already overwhelmed enough without paying attention to the vitamins.

I signed up for an account on Nutrition Possible–Centrum’s personalized assessment tool–and gave the thing a whirl. The whole thing took less than five minutes.

My results:

The coolest part of the tool was it listed the recommended supplements on the right side of the screen and then gave me a list of retailers. I click “buy” and was taken to my store’s website. Easiest vitamin buying trip ever! There’s also an offer for a $10 off ProNutrients coupon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you’d like to share this giveaway widget on your site–because you think I’m super fabulous–here’s the link:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/OGFiNWQ0N2QzNjdmN2UxNzc0OTUxMzFiN2I4YTQzOjE=/

just chilled.

By “chilled” I mean I let my dough chill. Now you’re officially confused. That’s what I do. Not necessarily the bringer of awesome but definitely the bringer of confusion.

I’ve been saying for quite a while now that I was going to make “chicken pizza” and the kids love both chicken and pizza and, therefore, the idea of having chicken AND pizza TOGETHER just about blew their small, baby brains.

The problem was I wanted a yeast crust and I wanted it cold fermented. Don’t question the genius, folks. Just roll with it.

The other problem–problem 1B–is that cold fermentation takes time and I don’t like to wait. There’s the reason why I’ve been failing at motherhood with regards to “chicken pizza” and other stuff.

I chose Sunday as the day to create my pizza dough.

Since I don’t own a stand mixer, I had to “knead” the dough, by hand, for 15 minutes. That’s how I broke one of my favorite spatulas. Dude was a silicone monster I’ve had for years; I thought he was immortal. Apparently not.

Broke it in half!

Once I removed the broken spatula, disposed of it, and settled the dough in for long, refrigerated sleep, I started on my braided, egg bread. Each time I make it, I mess with it some and work to improve on a family favorite.

I made challah a couple of days ago and decided to grab some inspiration from that since this egg bread is close to challah but not as sweet and without as many eggs or oil.

The challah:

The crust was so slick it would slide out of your hand.

I upped the eggs in the “egg bread” from two to four and added cold fermentation–I’m obsessed, folks!–and an extra round of egg wash for the varnish of the challah. I wanted the texture of both breads, the varnish of the challah but not the sweetness.

Rethought egg bread:

This picture correctly illustrates just how badly I need a larger cookie sheet.

This is where the finished bread picture should live. Finished bread that’s fresh from the oven. Oops.

We ate some of it and it was good.

The extra eggs didn’t add anything to the bread and the extra coat of egg wash didn’t yield anything amazing so more messing is required.

Naked chicken!

My chicken says, "Bite me!" but I wouldn't because of the risk of Salmonella.

Word of wisdom here, folks: if you’re using a seasoning salt on your chicken, make sure you season the bird before you put it in your roasting contraption. BECAUSE, when you roast the sucker at 450° for an hour, you’re going to have a LOT of smoke. Just a warning.

And, baby lettuce!

It's like lettuce but a lot cuter!

One of the things I was most excited about when I planned on starting a garden was getting the kids involved.

Caroline and Oliver will eat vegetables but both kids would much rather the vegetables be covered in cheese and, while cheese IS quite yummy, the cheese tends to cancel out the healthful benefits of the vegetables.

In an effort to foster this excitement for gardening and the growing process, I made each of the kids their own “gardens.”

I’m not sure how big the pots ended up being but they both contain the same thing: the mixed flower free pack that came with our seed collection, the rainbow swiss chard and some dahlias.

It’s official. The kids’ plants are the first to sprout.

It's a sprout. A mystery sprout.

Rainbow Swiss Chard in Ollie's Garden

My peppers and tomatoes take a bit longer to “pop out” than the rainbow swiss chard and I had an issue with too much water and some mold.

Pretty sure I fixed that with some awesome Amy ingenuity:

I don't use those cooling racks that much anyway.

Tucker came up with the chopstick idea...

With a little luck, we might just have the start of a garden.

Image | julochka

I was talking with Heather earlier and she mentioned she had #HomeChat coming up tonight on Twitter and I inquired as to what these homechatters would be discussing.

Raw foods.

Hold on, here. Raw? People aren’t supposed to eat raw bacon. Doesn’t Heather Solos know this?!

Now this is funny to me but Heather will be rolling her eyes about right now because that’s pretty much EXACTLY what I said during our phone conversation and she didn’t laugh then, either. She suggested I look up a couple of salad recipes.

OH! That’s right! Salad=raw. Sweet! I can do salad.

I am the chick who has decided to plant a million plants for her first garden; I like veggies.

The vegetable in my soon-to-be garden that’s causing me much consternation is the rainbow swiss chard. It looks beautiful on the seed pack and the kids are excited so I consider the chard a win. But here’s the thing: I’ve never eaten swiss chard. Or chard. See? I don’t even know what to call the stuff.

Because of the #HomeChat topic, I tasked myself with finding a recipe that’s RAW and involves swiss chard.

Avocado and Rainbow Swiss Chard Salad

Greens:

• 1 bunch of Swiss Chard, stems removed
• Other salad greens, if desired

Dressing:

• 1 avocado (mash half for dressing and reserve other half for salad topping)
• 1 Tb olive oil
• 2 Tb balsamic vinegar
• Juice from 1 lime
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

Salad Toppings:

• 1 carrot, shredded–I’m going to use my Cosmic Purple carrots!
• 10-12 grape/cherry tomatoes, halved or whole…depending on the size–I think the black cherry tomatoes will look awesome in this.
• 1/2 c pistachios
• Reserved half of avocado, diced

Wash chard and whatever greens you’re using.

In a salad bowl, mash 1/2 of the avocado, olive oil, vinegar and lime juice. Add the greens and toss to coat.

Add your salad toppings and toss again to make sure everything is coated.

Let the salad “rest” for about twenty minutes in the fridge. Right before you serve, test for seasoning and add kosher salt and pepper.

Come on! Raw doesn’t look half bad now, right?!

I’ve been following I Am Alive since I saw the initial announce trailer back in ’08. I’ve written about this on Kmart Gamer but I didn’t get into what I really wanted to get into which is the art direction.

This is BY FAR my favorite quote from my Kmart Gamer post:

I didn’t hear anything about the game for a long time and since I have the attention span of a lobotomized chimpanzee on meth, I completely forgot about the game. And then, there’s the announcement that the I Am Alive’s coming to PSN and XBLA.

Here’s the E3 ’08 announce:

I get that the ’08 trailer was concept. It’s job was to get folks excited and stir up the dust a bit; it totally worked for me. Unless your plan is to blow smoke up people’s asses and create distrust toward not only the game but also the company, the general art direction, mechanics and story should be set by the time that announce is released.

Read that last sentence again because there was a whole lot of blowing going on from Ubisoft.

Since there had been little to no information about I Am Alive in two years, I can only assume this E3 ’10 video from Ubisoft was them wanting to assure people that the game wasn’t actually dead. The look is similar to the original E3 video but with, what looks like, a bit of actual gameplay tossed in for good measure. And it looks like a PS2 game.

This is when I noticed the art direction changing and I wasn’t happy. Darkworks had the project until 2010 at which time, Ubisoft moved the project in-house and shifted it to Ubisoft Shanghai. The protagonist has been made older. The environment made darker and grittier. Silent Hill, anyone?

More PS2 looking graphics…maybe even Playstation graphics? It’s like they took grainy to a level it should never been taken and then “sharpened” it to the point of no return. What sucks is the story has gotten more interesting but the look of it has gotten worse.

From CES 12:

What do you think? Was the direction Darkworks was going just not working for the game? It was a PC game, originally…maybe Ubisoft wanted to cut some corners? What’s with the ridiculous lag on release? Like the newer stuff or the original direction?

I guess the main question is: will you buy this game?

And by “might” I mean “most likely and probably closer to definitely.”

I’ve been waiting on my seeds to get here for a few days now and as each day passed, I got more and more excited about the PURPLE bell peppers–Who knew there even was such a thing?!–and the green and yellow striped tomatoes and the fire engine red runner beans. The purple carrots Tucker requested, the candy apple sweet little peppers I bought at Cara’s request and the tiny, sour cucumbers the size of quarters I bought on a whim.

Basically I was having a mental makeout session with this imagined garden of the future.

The reality:

I think I'm in over my head...and I need to take clearer pictures...minus my toes...

We are now the proud owners of 21 packs of seed–the rainbow swiss chard, peas and nasturtium aren’t pictured. The onions aren’t pictured either; I don’t have them yet. I bought one “bunch” of those dudes. Apparently a “bunch” is really A BUNCH since a “bunch” is five dozen plants. You just sit and think on that one. And I LOVE ME SOME ONIONS! But that’s a butt ton of onions.

I might puke. No. Really. I might be sick. It’s not the work that freaks me out..it’s the SHEER MAGNITUDE of what I’m undertaking. This is my first garden; I should have purchased a tomato plant, some lettuce and maybe something exotic like kale…you get the idea.

Instead, I have:

• Black Cherry Tomato
• Vorlon Tomato
• Dr. Wyche’s Yellow Tomato
• Green Zebra Tomato
• Quadrato D’asti Rosso Pepper
• Scarlet Runner Bean
• Unwin’s Mix – Dhalia
• Some sort of free flower pack thank you for buying so many seeds you have a panic attack pack
• Cosmic Purple Carrot
• Thyme
• Sage – Broad Leaf
• Basil – Dark Purple Opal
• Quadrato D’ Asti Giallo Pepper
• Melrose Pepper
• Purple Beauty Pepper
• Mexican Sour Gherkin Cucumber
• Burgundy Okra
• Rocky Top Lettuce Mix

That list took me a very, very, very long time. Like you don’t even know.

I started this before I started dinner, did some of it whilst cooking, stopped to eat, worked on it while I sat on the bathroom floor while the kids played in the bath, put it on hold to talk to Tucker, took the kids out of the bath and put clothes on them and put them to bed somewhere in there and then watched My Drunk Kitchen with Tucker and I just got done! Hopefully, you’re just as tired from reading that sentence as I am from making that list.

You’re welcome.

So. Many. Seeds.

I was sitting at the dining room table with the seed packets all over the table and Cara was “helping” me “sort” the packets which really means she kept picking them up while I was trying to figure out just how soon I needed to get some of these guys started.

Answer? YESTERDAY! ACK!!!

Specifically my peppers–something I never thought I’d type or say–need to be in the “ground” eight to ten weeks before being transferred. I have four varieties of peppers. I really only want maybe two pepper plants per variety. Oh, shit. This is starting to sound like math. Word problems. Math. Someone help me!

So I’m sitting there and staring at the seed packs since I have faith in their ability to TELL MEEEEE how exactly I’m supposed to ONLY end up with two plants per pack when I was sent a bajillion seeds in each pack. Am I just supposed to flip those other seeds the bird? Do I start a bunch extra in case the “chosen” happen to be duds?

An heir and a spare, if you will.

Too much math. Writing brain wants to stick its fingers–if brains had fingers–in its ears–if brains had ears in which to stick said fingers of the brain–and scream, “LALALLALALALLALAL!!!” Again, assuming said brain with said fingers and said brain ears has said brain mouth…and a vocabulary.

I just want some dirt. And I want a seed. And I want it to grow up and be amazing. And then I want to eat what comes from that amazing science stuff.

It’s the little things, people!

I went into Ollie’s room to tuck him in last night and found someone had shivved Curious George.

With a princess scepter, no less.

“What happened to George?”

“He had a rip.”

“You found him with a rip in his neck or you created one with Cara’s wand?”

“He had a rip.”

Can’t blame a boy for sticking to his story.

Tucker took a picture of George for me so I could post it–he’s supportive like that.

In the body of Tucker’s email with the aforementioned stuffed George: “Oh the george-manity!!!”

I hate it when Tucker’s funnier than me.

Image | Jenny Lee Silver

So Blissdom is like a month or so away and I’m finally writing my post. Don’t judge. It’s been a hard week…or month…it’s been HARD!

ANYWAY!

I started my Blissdom Twitter list last night.

It took some doin’.

I may be TOO proud of myself but I feel I deserve the pride. This was my first list! Be proud of me!

So I’m one of the Blissdom Community Leaders and my “niche” is as a New Person person. I know there’s a technical/official term for the folks who should look me up but that’s eluding me at this present moment.

Basically, find me if you’ve never been to Blissdom and/or you’ve never been to a conference. I’ve been the “new girl” at a conference before. I know how it feels to think no one wants to talk with you. To feel like everyone’s giving you that look; you know the one I’m talking about.

I also know what it’s like to go to an ENORMOUS conference and be completely overwhelmed. The only difference between the little conferences and the big ones is you have more people to meet at the big ones. More people to get to interact with..more people to really get to know.

Cause that’s what conferences are about.

Here’s my video at E3 this year. I say “hands-on” way too many times but I was THERE and I met so many awesome folks.

E3 had +47k people. I managed to make it through without a mental breakdown. If I can do something like that, believe me when I say you can too!

Blissdom, for me, is a place I can go where I know folks and can feel “safe.” I know that sounds dumb, but it’s true. There are so many folks there who are right where you are. Chicks who are just starting out. Chicks who have been doing this blog thing for as long as I have. Chicks who you can learn from. Chicks who you can prop up when they need it.

Remember, even if you’re “new” you can make someone’s day just by saying, “Hi!” The little things are what really matter at a conference where everyone else is just as scared as you are. Promise.

So you’re wondering it you should follow me on Twitter and tag along at Blissdom?

A few things you should probably know about me:

• I have ADD. Like really. Shiny? That’s me. Don’t be surprised if I start a sentence and then come back to it 15 minutes later when you’ve completely forgotten the conversation. Just ask Heather Solos. She’ll vouch for me. Poor Heather.
• I’m bouncy. Think Tigger. “The wonderful thing about Amys, is Amys are wonderful things.”
• I drink. Alcohol. If that’s not cool with you, there are TONS of other awesome chicks to pair yourself with. I’m not saying that’s the only thing I do cause that’s just not true but I’m going to be imbibing at the social functions and I know that will turn some of you off.
• My eyebrow is pierced. While this may seem like a minor detail, again, I get some of you aren’t cool with that.
• I curse. Not all the time. Maybe not even part of the time but there are times when it just feels right and I do and you should know that.
• I’m not cool with the cold shoulder and/or the “holier than thou” act. You get me with all my honesty and brashness. I DO possess the art of tact but there are times when things just get to me. I don’t like confrontation so it’s not like I’m going to go all “after school” on someone but that kind of behavior just gets my goat. I hope you’ll understand.
• I’m a gamer and love just about everything pertaining to video games. If you have questions, I’m more than happy to answer them.
• I also know quite a bit about web design and the geek side of things. Again, you have questions? I have answers. “Grabbing the code” might sound scary but it’s easy as pie.

If I haven’t scared you off by now, feel free to follow me on Twitter: TheAmyTucker. Twitter is how I keep up with most people and probably how I’ll keep up with you. Maybe I’ll even start my own hashtag? #NoobAmyTucker, anyone? heh I crack myself up.

I look forward to helping you navigate the many halls of the Opryland Hotel [Hint: It's all about the carpet patterns.] and the many awesome sessions.

I can’t wait to meet y’all!

Image | Thomas Hawk

Just call me Amy the Ironless.

And I need to pick that damn book-in-progress back up and get to work but I’ve put it off for a coon’s age cause I have to start at the beginning and fix what I broke but didn’t realize was broken and it’s not something I can just hold off on and start right now and THEN go back and fix it because it would bug me. And that all made complete since to me. What? You can’t keep up? Old school roller skates are the way to go.

But when I get right down to it, I just don’t feel like writing. So I’m just going to ramble since that’s what I excel at doing.

So maybe instead of calling me Amy the Ironless you should call me Amy the Rambler?

Rambeler?

Rambleer?

Just pick one of those and go with it.

To complete this post of random proportion, watch this video. My favorite line?

“Don’t knead your dough too much cause that leads to co-dependency.”

And we all slept until almost 10.

Hasta Velveeta, y’all.