I have a history of making big-ish decisions while The Mistah is away on Army duties….new cars, new pets. I did also sell his Jetta back to VW after he left last year but that deal had been in the works for a while so I’m not going to take a hit on that one.
My point is that by now it should come as no surprise to The Mistah if (when) I drop some bombshell of a decision while he’s deployed.
You may be asking yourself what could possibly top buying or selling our cars and bringing an alley cat into our house and hoping like hell it worked out with the existing people and pets? How about deciding to sell our house while we owed more than we could possibly hope to get in a sale?
We had planned to sell. Once we had paid down more of the principal. Once prices bounced back a bit in our neighborhood. Once we could be thoughtful about the decision and have a plan on where to go next.
Not while I was two thirds of the way through a year of solo parenting a five year old and The Mistah was largely unavailable for consultation.
But our old neighborhood took a pretty direct hit from the explosion of cheap heroin and as many people looking to buy it as there were people selling it up on the Boulevard. Maybe because I was alone with Libby, and definitely because I subscribed to the neighborhood Facebook group, I was hyper aware of what was happening around us. And things got to a point where I was not willing to tolerate being vulnerable every time we drove in or out of our neighborhood.
So I talked to a realtor and then I talked to The Mistah. Sure, it makes for a great story NOW but I can only imagine the look on his face when I told him my plan. And by “plan” I meant throw as much cash as we could against the mortgage and hope like hell that we could find a buyer to meet us where we were. My plan was only to get the house sold. I had absolutely zero provision for where we would move to, partly because I didn’t actually believe that my plan could work.
Thanks to a great team working with my realtor, and a little pixie dust from The Universe, we found a buyer. At full asking price. And the very same day The Mistah boarded a plane to come home from Deployment, the movers loaded all of our belongings onto a truck and moved us about 10 miles closer into the city. After resigning myself to having to rent an apartment out in the County, I stumbled across a rental in the city close to restaurants, the library, a pool, a corner snowball stand, and Miss Libby’s school.
And although it wasn’t a part of my original “plan”, six months later we put in an offer on a new house in this very same neighborhood. So, fingers crossed, in a few weeks we will move again….for what I sincerely hope is the last time for a very long while.
About that alley cat that I brought in….it was rough for a few months (thank gawd The Mistah was away for that) but now Olaf is one of the family.
Instant Pot Meatballs
Adapted from Pressure Luck
BAH Note: Moving sends me into a tizzy. I go through closets. I go through the pantry. And I go through the freezer. These meatballs got me through closing down one kitchen and ramping up the next. They freeze beautifully and thanks to the pressure cooker, take up nearly none of my attention…which is in short supply on a good day let alone on moving day.
A word about sauce…use what you like. I happen to like Victoria White Linen Marinara. But that’s me. You do you.
- 1 ½ pounds ground beef or mixture of ground beef and ground pork
- ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
- 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons mixed Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon black pepper (I’m a fan of Penzey’s finely milled black pepper)
- 40 ounces marinara sauce
- ½ cup water
Empty the jar of sauce and water into your pressure cooker.
Place the remaining ingredients in a mixing bowl and use your hands to gently combine. Using a spoon or small ice cream scoop, form individual meatballs about the size of a golf ball.
Put the meatballs into the sauce.
Secure the lid and cook on high pressure for 10 minutes followed by a quick release of the pressure.
Bon Appetit Hon 