Wonderful Weekend

I find it's much easier to be happy when I am wearing my jammies.  Hooray, hooray for vacation days!

My precious Birdie and I are headed to Texas tonight for Heather Ales Soldering Workshop.  Can't wait!

The Highs and Lows

Here's a blog post that I wrote a couple of weeks ago and never posted that explains why I haven't been posting lately:

Have you ever seen that TV show, “Hoarders”? That’s the way my mind feels—all cluttered and sad, with mouse droppings in the corners and evidence of insect infestation. It’s all musty and dusty and rusty up in here and I’d like to do something about it but I don’t know where to start. So I sit in the chaos and the clutter. I need some mental Drano, some psychic Ex-lax.  It’s days like this that it’s easy to forget my theme for this year is “HOPE.”

And here's a excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend who jokingly asked if I were going to make croissants from scratch:

I will never stuff a mushroom. I will never make a turducken. I will never make croissants or homemade puff pastry. I will never personally roast a pig on a spit or bury a goat in a hole in my yard. I will ever pickle eggs. I will never egg a pickle. I will however, on occasion, stuff a pickle with pimento cheese. (Don't knock it until you've tried it.)  I will never cook a rack of lamb. I will never make any form or flavor of aspic. (For the love of God, never ever EVER google the word “aspic”...the images are horrifying! I can never unsee them. I now suffer from Post Traumatic Aspic Disorder.)

I will never fry, saute’ or stuff a squash blossom. I will never make gelatin from scratch. I will never make chitlins, tripe, brains, kidney pie, tongue, blood pudding, or calf fries. Ditto re lamb fries. I will never make head cheese (see aspic, above). For that matter, I will most likely never make any form of cheese from scratch. Not that head cheese is actual cheese.

I very much know who I am and what I am about (and what I am not) in the kitchen.

So no, I will not be making homemade croissants. And you?

No Regrets

This weekend, some men came and cut down a lot of dead branches out of our sweet gum trees.  I was fascinated by the wood chipper they brought--they fired it up and it chomped up those giant branches and in no time at all, the branches were nothing but sawdust.  I thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be great if there was a wood chipper for life?" 

Then I remembered that I don't believe in regrets.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I don't regret the big things, like my disasterous first marriage.  It hurt like hell going through it and I dang sure wouldn't want to do it again.  But I don't regret it.  I learned a lot.  A LOT.  It toughened me up, which I sorely needed.  It wore off some rough edges.  And it opened my eyes, which helped me recognize Mr. Sweetie as my Mr. Right.  I think I would have passed right by him if not for the lessons learned in my first marriage.

Same thing with infertility...it wasn't fun, I have no desire to go through it again, but I have no regrets.  Infertility was the road I had to take to end up here, as Lil Sweetie's mom, my personal pot of gold at the end of the infertility rainbow.

The things I do regret are the little things...the times when I was impatient and snappish and hurtful to others.  Those are my regrets, and the things I would put through the wood chipper if I could. 

Peaceful

(Original artwork by Lil Sweetie)

Ordinarily, I'm all for going to church.  I think it is important on so many different levels.  But today, with a cold rain falling and everyone feeling slightly under-the-weather, we opted not to go. 

Instead, we puttered around the house in our jammies, doing chores, playing board games, and enjoying each other's company.  I had some soup going in the slow cooker, making the whole house smell wonderful and homey, the way my great-grandmother's house used to smell.  Lil Sweetie and I made cornbread.  It was a lovely, peaceful day.

Remodeling Update

The remodeling project from hell is dang near done.  It quite possibly would have been completed yesterday had we not had a pipe burst (completely unrelated to the remodel).  Thank God Uncle Dave, our friend and contractor was here.  He knew how to get the water to stop spewing and then he did a temporary fix on the thing.  Do you know how much it would have cost us to have a plumber come out on Sunday evening?  I shudder to think.  All Uncle Dave charged us was a couple of cookies!  Anyway, a closet was flooded so my decluttering goal got a jump start--I threw out a bunch of crap that I might have been tempted to hold on to otherwise...things aren't nearly so tempting when they are drippy.

Speaking of drippy, here's how we paid Uncle Dave for emergency plumbing services:

Our Valentine's cookies, like love itself, are imperfect and messy. 

The closet part of the remodel is done so I thought I would give you a peek-a-boo.  (This is not the closet that flooded, just so ya know.)  Here is a pic of the closet before the remodel:

Here is a pic taken during the remodel, looking from Lil Sweetie's room, through the closet, into the bathroom:

And here are some "after" pics of the closet:

That top shelf in the very top of the photo goes all the way around the closet.  You can't really tell, but the paint is a very light gray, called "Subtle Touch."  (I so want a job naming colors of things.  Wouldn't that be fun?  But I digress.)  Here's another view of the closet:

It's rather difficult to take exciting photos of a closet.  But it is a big improvement.  The closet went from a poorly designed regular ol' closet to a walk-in.  I lost the coin toss for the closet, but did win the consolation prize of one regular ol' closet for my clothes and another regular ol' closet for my crafts.  Everybody wins!

Here's another view of the closet:

But wait!  What can that be in the corner?  Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Well I'll be!  It's a sparkly-eyed brown-bellied munchkin!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cookies and Baseball

Lil Sweetie likes to play with my iphone sometimes.  The other day, I found this series of text messages on it:

Lil Sweetie:  Mr Sweetie hi

Mr. Sweetie:  Hi baby!

LS:  What

MS:  How are u?

LS:  Good

MS:  Aren't the jonas brothers dumb?

LS:  No.

MS:  We should turn to baseball

LS:  What

MS:  Baseball!

LS:  I hate baseball

MS:  No, you love baseball

LS:  No

MS:  Yes, you love baseball

LS:  No

MS:  Yes, you love baseball

LS:  Yes

MS:  Yes

LS:  Cookies

MS:  Cookies and baseball