Evil bitch

My brother's new house is a pile! They bought his wife's grandparents' house and it is a disaster. To start with, the house is ugly, but it gets much worse. Her grandfather did a lot of the work himself and when they had the inspection the man said the wiring was done wrong and he can't believe it hasn't caused major problems yet. The house is a split level and it wasn't supposed to be, the kitchen is about 36 inches lower than the rest of the house and it was a mistake. The kitchen floor is also kinda wavy.
Friday night, shortly after we arrived, they ran the dishwasher and the septic tank backed up and flooded the basement. The plumber that came that night discovered some of the plumbing wasn't done correctly. The guys that came Saturday found the pipe from the house to the tank had collapsed and had to be replaced and more work needs to be done to fix all of the issues to the tune of $5000+. His wife said the grandparents hadn't used the dishwasher or washing machine in a long time. I think they knew there were major plumbing problems and didn't tell them before they bought the house.
Then there is the decorating. The kitchen has fake wood paneling, counters, floor and cabinets and none of the woods match. The breakfast room has an ugly stained glass window of a sun built into the wall, but it isn't really a window, it's a light. And my brother's wife loves it. She also loves the red shag carpet in the basement. She has stuffed animals displayed on a bookshelf in the living room and her collection of toy frogs filling the guest bath. This chick needs to realize she is 31 and stuffed animals are no longer appropriate decorations. Another decorating highlight are the cheap, craft fair style paintings hung 6 inches from the ceiling all over the house.
And my brother won't say anything to her about any of it. He won't even stand up to her about being a total bitch to us. She doesn't like him to be alone with our family or even talk to us on the phone, so he calls from the car on his way home from work. She was so rude all weekend that my mother told my brother she won't visit again for a very long time and he didn't say anything back. It's horrible, she is destroying our family and it's all about controlling him. She talks to him like a child and belittles him. I think she just wanted to be married and it didn't matter to who, so she went after him and he fell for it. And I don't know what to do about any of it.

4th of July

I am so excited for the 4th because I get a 4 day weekend and get paid for the two extra days without using vacation. We're one of those 24/7/365 kind of companies so the different offices alternate which holidays they work, since the market is closed we don't need a full staff. This year my office gets Friday the 3rd off and then some people get the 4th off. I lucked out and was able to exchange working Saturday the 4th for working Monday June 29th. (I work Tues to Saturday.) Unfortunately, the 4 days will be spent in Atlanta helping my brother and his wife move into their new house, which is actually her grandparents' house.
I'm not such of a fan of his wife, I won't call her my sister-in-law. She is controlling and inflexible and doesn't consider anyone else's needs or wants. But then she puts on this act like she is so nice for people. Ugh! Example: last fall they drove down with two friends for the Georgia-Florida game and she decided that they needed to leave Sunday morning at 6:00am to drive back to Atlanta (a 6 hr drive usually) because she wanted to exchange something at Target. My brother and their friends said they wanted to leave at 9 and they would get back plenty early for her to go to Target. After 20-30 mins of arguing, she said she would compromise and leave at 6:30 and that since it was her car she could leave whenever she wanted. Her mother is even worse and is so mean to her father that he barely speaks in front of her. My fear is that my brother is headed that way. He doesn't stand up to her, he claims he is "picking his battles", but he lets her walk all over him.
And it gets worse, she didn't send wedding invitations to a bunch of people from our side who were on the guest list! We didn't find out until my mother asked her friend if she was going to the wedding and she said she hadn't gotten an invitation, so my mom called and Angela told her she hadn't invited her. She even took family that lives in Atlanta off the list. But all of her mother's friends and their families were at the wedding. She also wouldn't let my cousins be ushers because my being a bridesmaid was "enough of our family being in the wedding" and wouldn't let my brother have his best friend from college in the wedding because she didn't want an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen and only had two friends she wanted in it. I thought it was weird her bridesmaids were a woman from work and a girl she was friends with in middle school who she says she isn't very good friends with now. Her bachelorette party was all people from work and only one of them was at the wedding. I feel like her having no friends is a big red flag.

4 stitches & a tetanus shot

My brother and his wife are buying her grandparents' house and my parents said they would give them some furniture. So last Friday afternoon my Dad and I were loading my parents' dining room table (that my mom promised me) into a trailer upside down, as I leaned over and stepped into the trailer I lost my balance. I was still carrying the table and was afraid to drop it, so I held onto the table as I fell face first into the bottom of the table, which of course had by this point hit the floor. Since my hands were full, I didn't break my fall in the least bit and ended up hitting a piece of wood under the table hard enough to split my forehead open. I ended up spending 3 hours at the ER being "fast tracked" to get 4 stitches and a tetanus shot. My forehead was very swollen Saturday and then Sunday I woke up to find the swelling had gone down but I had a black eye in its place. And not a regular black eye, just my upper eyelid is swollen and purple, the swelling is better now and I just look like I am trying to do a purple smoky eye on the right only.
I went this afternoon and had my stitches out and I am trying to figure out what to use to reduce the scarring because I have a tendency to get really bad scars to the point of cortisone injections and even surgery to reopen the wound and close it again. I really don't want a large red scar sticking out of my forehead. I'm wondering about Mederma, they say it works, but then I read that a study found it was no better than petroleum jelly for treating scars. What to do?

A family recipe rediscovered

My mom & aunts used to talk about this bread that my great-grandmother made and how they have never seen it anywhere else. And of course no one had the recipe. Until recently.
Southern Living published a recipe for Southern Soda Bread with a picture and my mom insisted the picture looked just like what Granny made. So I tried it out and everyone agrees this is it. I'm obsessed with it because it is has a texture more like a dense cake, but it isn't really sweet. So far I've served it with butter & jam for breakfast and vanilla ice cream & strawberries for a summery desert, but I even like it plain. So here it is:

4 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cups sugar
4 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 cups buttermilk
3 large eggs, beaten
4 1/2 tbs melted butter

Preheat oven to 350. Whisk together first 5 ingredients, make well in center. Add buttermilk, eggs, and butter, whisking just until thoroughly blended. (It should be almost smooth.) Pour the batter into 2 lightly greased 8 1/2 x 4 1/2in loaf pans. Bake for 45 mins, rotate pans in oven and shield with aluminum foil. Bake another 30-35 mins or until wooden pick comes out clean. Cool for 10 min, loosen from pan with knife, remove and cool completely.

There's nothing healthy about it, but as a special treat it's one of my new favorites.

I'm back!!

I am just a week short of going 12 months without posting. Unfortunately you haven't missed much. I'm still living at home, have the same job, and the same boring life. The only new thing in my life is my desire to go to veterinary school. I've decided to make a career out of my love for animals and desire to help those in need. All of my science classes from college were too long ago to count as prereqs for any schools so I just started Biology I and Physics I at the community college. I have at least 2 years of classes to get through before I can even apply, but at least I've started. My plan is to keep working at my current job while I can take classes at the community college and then try to get a job at a veterinarian's office while I take the rest of the classes I need. And to finish, we all pray that I get in UF because it's about $25k less per year than going out of state, even if being a Gator is the last thing I ever want to be.

**My new dream job is working here.