Death, destruction, madness, mayhem!

Just kidding. The most exciting thing I have going on right now is waiting for the UPS man to bring me my new toy.

For those of you who don't live close enough to listen to me prattle on incessantly about the pros and cons of 1001 digital cameras as I struggle to make a decision, I envy you. For those of you who do (or who don't but who do deal with 100001 IMs on the subject) and answer my fifty jillion "yeah but, what about...?" questions, you'll be relieved to know that I finally just pulled the trigger and did it. Le Sigh. According to amazon, my shit should be arriving shortly- like today, which is why I find myself glued to the front door every time I hear a truck. What if it's them!? I couldn't bear it if I got up to shower, or you know, do something productive and they came while I was gone and then I had to wait another day for my camera*.

I was really hoping to get some pictures of the great storm of o'10 while the proof still exists. I am for truth GUTTED that I wasn't able to capture the whiteout conditions or the 45 mph winds we had yesterday. They were absolutely unreal, as was HN's motivation to strap on his snowshoes and go bounding around the woods in the 7 degree temps just to "see what it's like out there"- not once but 3 times, for about an hour each go. Fortunately or un-, I was in fact trapped by the phone ringing for work and the dueling with this virus thing on my computer and wasn't able to join him, which ended up being ok because I remembered that I don't like 7 degrees that much when the 0 is in front of it and not after. Dog and I did make one attempt to check it out but were both blown back into the house pretty quickly, really only reinforcing my belief that we are meant to be together. I LOVE a dog who would rather hang out under a blanket than be out in that crud. There's a woman 2 doors up with a big fat lab and that dude loves a snowstorm. She has to take him out for hours every blizzard elsewise he freaks out and bes all sad and whining at the door. Star doesn't mind snow but with the wind as it was yesterday she immediately began pulling to go back in the house. I dragged her up the block to be sure, and it was confirmed. HN didn't believe me and even tried to take her snowshoeing with him and she ditched his broke ass and hightailed it home. What's up now? Clearly, he needs to find his own soul-dog because this is not the droid he's looking for.

Eventually my epic battles with the computer virus I picked up somewhere in the nether regions of the internet came to fruition, and as of this morning I seem to have gotten the last pesky registry entry out. Fingers crossed, but I'm not betting anything valuable on it. And thank god too, because that really was a bit of work. I can't believe people even choose just to do security for a living: it was *exhausting!* Hours and hours of work, that pretty much precludes doing anything except sitting there ready to push the "yeah, go ahead and delete that" button whenever the scan found something, or being ready to reboot into safe mode for the thousandth time a day. Not having internet and being all snowed in and crap, I really would have imagined I'd have a pile of knitting or sewing (which I guess I could have except I didn't have the zippers I needed, so I couldn't) or something to show for it but I got nothing. Mildly embarrassing, but I'm moving on.


Anyhow,by today we're thawing out and not that 4 feet of snow goes anywhere fast, but it is melting little by little as the temps rise. I estimate the Saturn should be visible again inside of a week.

More to come.


* Since we were on the subject I just popped over to UPS (again) to check the status and now it's delayed due to adverse weather conditions. Pussies. Who's even afraid of a little snow on the ground? And is there even any IN kentucky? UPS needs to put on it's big boy pants and get a move on. (let us steer away from discussions about the fault being mine for waiting so long to order it in the first place. Seriously, don't be like that.)

Summer "vacation"

I've just been told of our tentative plans for our next summer's vacation by HN. According to him, I need to begin training soon.

My next boyfriend is totally going to be lazy.

My old st after the blizzard of 10

Je m'appelle AWESOME

You know what that is? Well, other than the poor choice in thread color?

FRENCH SEAMS. Because I like, totally know how to sew, so I did that so the inside of the box bag doesnt look like my arts and craft project.

Just saying

Snow

View from bed this morning.

Its that time again...

Time to get all up on those things in cabinets and freezer. This pot tastes like summer!

And it tastes like summer because it holds tomatoes we canned in Sept, some basil pesto I put up in August and some summer squash from god knows when, though it was def last summer. I can blog about this because I have to stay close by to stir the sauce, and it sort of precludes going very far or doing anything very involved. I often wonder if HN finds it disturbing how many nights he comes home and I have my wooden stirrer thing (essentially the cooking equivalent of a security blanket) in one hand and a computer mouse in the other (and a beer in the 3rd?). Probably not, as he's also pretty weird. I think we're actually pretty even on that one.

Anyhow, I was rooting through the cabinets today trying to make some sense of the rubble from a recent HN camping trip (I ended up with 30 packets of hot chocolate, a pound of craisins, your mother's weight in oatmeal, and a HUGE bag of spicy lo mein noodles; I know not why and it is not mine to question) and put together a grocery list when I realized I was pushing aside tons of food so I could see what I food needed. and I said to my self, "Self. WTF?! How has this happened again? Before the move you were doing so good eating and using whatever you had in house and home and now this whole f*cking place is a mess again. WTF are you doing thinking of shopping while you're knee deep in food? You're a dirty HOARDER!" And then I opened the freezer to confirm this, and the language got much stronger. By the time I looked in the special shelves where all my canned stuff lives, my self esteem was in the gutter.

That shit never lasts for long though and so I picked myself up and laid down some serious f*cking laws. I'm going back on the 1 ingredient challenge, which means I can buy one ingredient to cook a meal and everything else has to come from the cabinets, freezer or my special canning place.

I'm on a mission to eat myself out of house and home. I know where the battle rations ready behavior comes from (Hi Mom!), but I'm super tired of feeling like I have to have 1000 cabinets full of shit at the ready at all times just in case Apocalypse comes and I need white bread and canned food. Not only do I not have the space for it but every month at the same time, I just about break down about it. I know it's largely hormone induced but just because I'm unbalanced doesn't mean I'm not right. Anyhow, garden time is almost here which means more veggies imminent and I can't justify an absurd garden for canning purposes if the canning section is already full so off I go. Titillating, no ?

I'm also instituting a part time vegetarian thing. At least one and hopefully 2 days a week I will go veggie. This is an old idea, ripped off mostly from Mike C but then reminded to me by all this Omnivore dilemmish stuff going around, and all around I just think it's a good idea. Since I have no meat canned and sitting on shelves, I think the one goal will promote the other and if there's anything I'm about, it's cooperation. Unless there's another party involved and then I get a bit tight, but I digress.

So anyhow, expect crazy amounts of boring pictures about me cooking old food I have kicking around the house. Expect also the sewing and knitting equivalent of the same thing, because while putting K-Town (MY room) in order this weekend as last minute party preparations, I stumbled onto the full extent of my fabric and yarn stash and had the same mini freakout as in the cabinets today, so I'm determined that some shit will get done, and done with making do with what I have. That last sentence is almost complete nonsense, and I totally stand by it.

ETA: someone asked what I'm cooking so I guess I'll include the ingredients in case you also neurotically collect food and want to get rid of it and need advice?

Tonight I'm making spaghetti sauce which consists of:

2 16 Oz Jars of tomatoes (one cherry, one lahge) that I found in the canning section
5 (really) small onions off of the onion braid HN made last summer (no more food as decoration!)
Garlic
2 Ice cream scoops of pesto, because i keep it in the freezer and the ice cream scoop is the Official Measuring Unit of Things I Keep in the Freezer
1 ziploc bag of diced summer squash
Oregano
Salt
Olive Oil

Saute the onion in oil until translucent. Add the garlic for a minute or 2. Add everything else but the squash, cook for a long time on lowish heat- you want some bubbles but not crazy bubbles. Cook for an hour or more, stirring a lot so it thickens up and doesn't burn brown all over your pot.
Add the squash, cook a while longer.
Salt to taste. If your tomatoes were too acidic, add some sugar.

Serve over pasta you found way in the back of the cupboard that you don't remember buying but that stuff doesn't go bad right?

Oh, Hai! I am not begging, I thought I heard a cry for help!

Bonus shot of camouflaged dog sneaking around to beg/mad dash for anything that might fall. She does this back and forth thing. Backs up, sits close by- around the corner just out of sight/trouble and occasionally sticks head round corner to check progress and look surprised that I'm here at all. She's quite wily!

Crafty sunday project(s)

So as you may have all figured out, I have figured out how to use and abuse the "photo right from phone to blog" feature on my camera...it's only been 2 years, but get ready for a whole new level of inconsequential blather.

This weekend I was a domestic whirling dirvish. Saturday was HN's birthday, and beknownst to me but not to him, his dad was coming down for a surprise dinner Saturday. All week long his sister and I had been planning on having an old person double date on Sunday, and HN had been saying he would just love a quiet night in with beef fondue for his actual birthday- mostly because he had so much to do on Saturday that he knew he would be tired. This statement would come back to haunt me. A few times.

Anyhow, once I got the word that his dad was coming into town, I had to tell him that his sister and her family were coming over for dinner on Sat, which of course would be cool in it's own right but see above about overwhelmed with work and tired, which led to a lot of "oh. ok. I thought it would be a quiet night in. Hmm. ok.", with me all feeling bad but trying to be positive because I knew his dad's visit would make him happy. Saturday itself consisted of us leaving the house by 9am to get started on errands (seriously, he had that many to do!) and, expecting our dinner guests around 4, at about 2 I started prodding to go home, because I knew he would want the house clean to show his dad (who was coming around for the first time since we've really settled in, and HN does love to show off his home). HN dug in his heels. He did not want to stop what he was doing and go home, and he did not really want to clean (which would have been fine actually, I would have done the cleaning but I was stuck out of the house with him). So basically the early part of his special day consisted of me nagging him to stop doing what he wanted/felt like he needed to be doing and let's go home and clean. I'm pretty sure at this point, the girlfriend of the year award I got for my awesome presents went into the trash.

Anyhow, we got home, got the house mostly cleaned and at some point HN went on strike. Angry strike. "It's my special day and I wanted to do my own thing and have a quiet dinner and you dragged me home to make me clean when I didn't really even want to have company for dinner and have I mentioned it's my special day and I'm going to go upstairs and read because when I look at you I'm a little annoyed and I don't know if I ever noticed before how pushy you can be" strike, which was pretty awesome because he's just never like that. I was at this point super psyched that his dad was coming because otherwise dinner would have been mad awkward.

His dad's showing up had the intentioned effect and he was all super and grateful and happy and we fondid dinner, which was awesome and made me wonder (as I do every time) why we don't fondue more. I also learned that 90% alcohol and 71% alcohol do very different things in fuel canisters, but all's well that ends well. The night ended with an ever so slightly tipsy HN (2 glasses of wine- woah!) passed out on the couch- mouth open and hand in pants- and me just looking around at the mess that had been our sparkling home just hours before. Satisfactory indeed.

Sunday I woke up and began to clean the party shrapnel of the night before: 1001 dirty dishes, empty wine bottles, chocolate cake crumbs and a random box of cheerios thrown into the mix at some point. Then HN departed to visit with his dad and go to Home Depot for even more birthday tools and I stayed home and decided that because I have roughly 1000 knitting projects going on, I should start sewing again.

First up, to get back in the loop of sewing I made a kitty mat. I got a new shelf from Ikea last weekend and Kitty seems to enjoy hanging out in a particular box so I thought I would welcome him officially with a little felt bad stuffed with some leftover quilt batting. Naturally he hasn't been back since, but I spiked it with catnip this morning and I expect results. You can't really see it, it's the lower left square. Mostly this picture is just about showing you how organized I am (for) now.

Also, I was right about this shelf changing my life. It is as awesome as I knew it would be!

Projects 2 and 3 were to finish up some little zipper bags that I had started way back when, for the wedding I went to where I decided to bring goody bags. I still have a few more to make, but I was psyched to get these 2 done, mostly because the material had been cut and pinned like a year ago and it was just a disgrace that they were still sitting there undone.

The pink one rules. I think I've finalized my plan for bags, other than interfacing. The other one is pretty but made from a fancy placemat so it bends a lot. Once I fill it with crap I'm sure it will work itself out.

Then it was onto the finale, which was the whole point of the exercise: Dog Jacket! I've been toying with the idea for a while, because her other jacket fits ok but is a little weird in the chest, because she is also a little weird in the chest and it wasn't made for her breed. We get by, but it's awkward at times. Also, it's not that pretty- it's blue checkered fleece and I'm tired to people calling her him, and me having to backtrack to explain that she's a girl as evidenced by the fact that she's pretty, der. That is my issue and I own it and I am not ashamed. So for dog jacket part deux I pulled out the fleece and outdoor canvas I had bought way back when I first conceived this gem and got to it. I googled, I blog surfed, I found a pattern. I discarded it and decided to freestyle.

Old Dog in Old Jacket. Not bad, but could be better.

The pic way up top is the almost end result. It needs more work in 2 ways: 1)must tailor bum a bit so it's not so "my mom made this" looking (which it hardly even is because I made straps AND they face the right way AND have velcro so they're adjustable!) and 2) I'm going to add another strap closer to her armpits. Somehow in my logic, the strap ended up around her lower belly and while I don't hate it, it's not the best place. Or at least it's not the best place if you're only doing one strap. Plus it leaves lots of her underbelly exposed, so I thought I would just add another, thicker strap around the chest which would serve to add some warmth and also to keep unsightly wrinkles from forming around her armpits. for not having a pattern and being a bit spatially challenged though I'm pretty happy with it. It's also not as warm as I thought it would be, but it's a good midweight coat and is in fact windproof which, along with being pretty, was the majorest of the goals. It's also not a coat in the traditional sense. It's more in the horse blanket/jacket style which I like because sometimes it can be a struggle to get her to stand still and get into the sleeves of a regular jacket. In my head, velcroing her in seems easier, and it's definitely more adjustable I can say that.

What I'm SUPER psyched about though is that I was so patient and undeterred throughout the whole day of sewing. I used pins, I thought about how stuff would work (and it worked like I thought it would!) and I even ripped back seams like 5 times, which is mega progress for me, because I am just not good with turning back and re-doing.