Annabelle Speaks

I Am Afraid Of The Dumbest Things

Girl Talk Thursday this week is "What are you too chicken-shit to do?"  Of course I could go for the big things, like cliff diving.  If I can't see FOR SURE that there are no pointy rocks on which I may impale myself, I am NOT JUMPING IN.  It took me years to work up the courage to jump off the high-dive in the pool at the YMCA, cliff diving is so not happening.

 

But more entertaining are the more mundane things I'm afraid of doing.  Because I am a big scaredy cat.

 

1.  Drink Guinness.  Yes, really.  Beer in general makes me nervous, because it so often gives me rockin' hangovers.  Ten vodka cranberries?  NO PROBLEM.  Three beers?  I'M GOING TO DIE OMG.  But even worse than that, Guinness is DARK and I can't SEE THROUGH it and there could be sharp rocks hiding in there and I wouldn't know.  Okay, probably no sharp rocks.  But it is filtered through fish bladders, and EW EW EW.  And yet ModernMatriarch is going to try and get me to drink an Irish Car Bomb this weekend and how can I say no to her?  The woman is learning to box, she could totally kick my ass.

 

2.  Eat mussels, clams, lobster, or anything that comes in its own shell.  I'm not afraid of the taste of any of these things, but of not knowing how to properly open and eat them.  Can I just smash them with a hammer?  I have no idea.  I need someone to take me out to a seafood restaurant and teach me how to eat these things so I don't make a fool of myself.  Because if  tried on my own other diners would point and laugh at me trying to claw my way through the lobster shell. Obviously.

 

3.  Drive someone else's car.  I just won't do it.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've even driven my Mom's car after getting my own when I was 17.  I don't know how the headlights work and the break might be more or less sensitive and what if I get into an accident and break their car OMG?  Oddly I have no problem driving rental cars.

 

4.  Ask someone out on a friend date.  How in the world do people make friends as an adult?  If I was seven I could just ask someone if they wanted to come over and play.  Now there are children and spouses and jobs and I feel terribly awkward trying to ask someone to hang out.  It is harder than dating ever was.  I would rather go home and sit on the couch.  See also: email people I've exchanged blog comments/tweets with.

 

5.  Exercise in public.  I have an elliptical in my apartment, a Wii Fit, and exercise videos.  I cannot imagine going to a public exercise class of any sort or working out in a gym.  Besides the fact that I am not in "good enough" shape to feel confident exercising where other people can see me, there are quirks in my body and how I move that make me super-extra self conscious.  I recently figured out/was diagnosed as having femoral outward twisting with the added joy of bone spurs in my right hip, which changes how my hips and legs can bend and how I can and cannot stretch.  This is most obvious day-to-day in that my feet point outwards, particularly the right leg, which is the worst.  I remember being SO embarrassed about that as a kid that I hated walking in snow because people could see my footprints behind me and KNOW how much my feet pointed out.  I remember dragging my backpack behind me on the ground to wipe out my footprints because they embarrassed me so much.  While I can talk about that here, in everyday life it seems I'm still not over it.

 

6.  Go to a non-gas station car wash.  If the car wash is not 100% automated where I pay and then type in a code and pull in, I WILL NOT GO.  There is a huge car wash near my house where actual people take your car through the wash and clean the inside windows and dry it off and such, but I am too afraid to go there.  What if I pull in the wrong part of the lot/line?  I don't know how it works!  WILL NOT GO.  See also: my enormous dread every three months when I need to get my oil changed and have to actually interact with Car People.

 

7.  Eat sushi.  I know.  I KNOW.  I've actually eaten sushi several times, but it just stresses me the hell out.  And not because it is raw fish.  No, I'm stressed out and refuse to eat it because I have a small mouth (shut up, I DO TOO) and the sushi roll pieces are too much for one bite without gagging on it, but they can't really be cut apart to make smaller bites without messing everything up and having it fall to pieces.  So I just don't eat it.  Avoidance works!

 

So what strange things are you afraid to try? 

Six More Weeks Of Winter, Or: Thank You, Captain OBVIOUS

I have never understood Groundhog Day.  What a bizarre tradition that just keeps on going, energizer-bunny style.  Men in top hats messing with a large rodent in front of dozens of television cameras?  Every radio station and website and television show reporting that the groundhog saw his shadow like any of us care?  Who are we reporting this for?  Every news person involved seems to be rolling their eyes, everyone watching seems to be rolling their eyes, and yet we keep doing it.  NEWS FLASH:  With all of those television cameras?  I guarantee he sees his shadow, and also he hates us all.  I heard lately that PETA wants them to use a mechanical groundhog, since it is unhealthy to wake any animal during hibernation just to ask him if he sees his shadow or not.  That I might actually care about.  Especially if someone could make the robot groundhog flip us all off when they wake it up.

 

Okay, I have to interrupt this very important post about groundhogs (shut up) because I just burped a CLOUD of cinnamon dust out of my nose, and I just cannot let something like that happen without telling someone.  I take cinnamon capsule pills, among other vitamins, and this morning it seems it dissolved up in my throat somewhere so when I burped (fifteen minutes after taking the pill) a no-shit CLOUD of cinnamon came out of my nose.  Aren't you glad I have a blog so I can update you all on such interesting developments?

 

I don't know how I could possibly top that, so I will leave you with a picture of my new Jumbo Cat: Now With More Tubby.

Who you callin' tubby?  I ARE CUTE.

Don't Mess With My Football, Yo

Since I first heard that CBS is going to air an anti-abortioncommercial during the Superbowl, I've been trying to find a way to explain why this pisses me off.  On any normal day I don't particularly care if a network runs paid advertisements on political hot-button issues, whether I agree with the point of view in that commercial or not.  Heck, when I lived in Minnesota for the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, Minnesota was considered a "swing-state" and I saw more than my fair share of soap-box type commercials, from both sides.  I don't particularly enjoy them, but I deal.  If this commercial were running any other time, I likely wouldn't bat an eye, nor would anyone else.

Is it unfair that CBS is accepting this ad, while they turned away a more liberal-leaning ad in 2004 because of their policy "prohibiting advocacy ads, even ones that carry an 'implicit' endorsement for a side in a public debate"?  Yes, I think it is.  And that is the main reason, as I understand it, that my wife and others are choosing to not watch the Superbowl this year.  But that isn't what makes me grind my teeth over this.

Me?  I'm just mad they are throwing politics into something that in my mind should be politics free.  The biggest thing I want to debate that day is who should be the MVP, or which commercial was the funniest.

There is an awesome post about this on a (not safe for work) blog that I read that you can see here.  (Seriously, don't go there at work though, it is a sex/sex-toy related site.)  (Hi Mom!  Hi Dad!  Sorry about that link.)

For convenience, here are parts of that post that I find myself nodding at the most:

Hey Gary and CBS advertising execs – here are some thoughts to chew on:

1. On Super Bowl Sunday, I want to watch funny commercials and a fucking football game.

2. Correction: my boyfriend wants to watch funny commercials and a fucking football game while I cook up something delightful in the kitchen and run in when a funny commercial airs.

3. Some dudes spend the entire year planning their Super Bowl party – do you really think they want to hear about abortion between downs and dips in the chili con queso?

4. There is NO ONE who tunes into the Super Bowl to hear “a story about love between a mother and a son.” They tune in to watch football, for the ritual, hang with friends, drink a shitload of beer and fart in a room so full of people that no one notices.

I’m disappointed simply in the poor marketing decision made by FOTF and the equally polarizing decision made by CBS. At $2.5 million a pop for Super Bowl ad time, wouldn’t their ad met with less resistance, more acceptance and reach a more tractable audience had they chosen a prime time network show with an agreeable viewing demographic? If you’re looking to drive brand or message affinity, why do it in a way that you’re going to piss off the most people possible during an event meant to unite, not divide? And CBS – you’ve finally come out of your discretionary shell, pimping one side of the God ride on this one. If I were another advertiser on this year’s Super Bowl Sunday, I’d be pissed. No one’s even going to watch my ad. They’re going to be waiting for the God Bomb. If I were Anheuser Busch, I’d be digging through my advertising agreement and telling CBS to get fucked in a very out-of-wedlock way.

Do I care if Tim Tebow’s mom had an abortion or not? NO.

Do I care if he’s a kickass football player? NO.

Am I “offended” by the ad (seen or unseen)? A preemptive NO.

Does Tim Tebow’s presence in this world make my life better? NO.

Am I disappointed by the choice of a network to interrupt my upcoming Sunday filled with more junk food and camaraderie than you can shake a stick at by dropping the abortion elephant in the middle of my fucking living room? YES.

Gregg Doyel of CBSsports.com: “If you’re a sports fan, and I am, that’s the holiest day of the year. It’s not a day to discuss abortion. For it, or against it, I don’t care what you are. On Super Bowl Sunday, I don’t care what I am. Feb. 7 is simply not the day to have that discussion.”

Indeed, Gregg Doyel.  Indeed.

Stocking Up Food For The Alien Invasion

The last several weekends have been full of much cooking around these parts.  Being a CPA I spend most of late January through early April working a thousand hours per week with no real time for cooking anything resembling real food.  In the past I've subsisted primarily on adrenaline, Kit Kats, and chicken nuggets, which is clearly not in line with my recent attempt at eating line a reasonable adult.  So I've spent a few weekends cooking stock pots and crock pots full of food for the freezer.

This is how we always cooked when I was a kid.  Most of my family recipes start with instructions along the lines of "brown three pounds of hamburger".  As I'm an only child, you can imagine that such recipes were more for filling the freezer than anything.  Currently my freezer is full of pizza sauce, BBQ sauce, BBQ pulled pork, pulled chicken, chili, and pizza burgers.  YUM.

The key to successful freezing of food is to portion everything out in baggies and freeze them lying flat, like this.

Why is this important, you ask?  Because then you can have a nice, organized freezer, like this.

My anal-retentiveness knows no bounds.  I also have enough butter on hand for more baking than I'll do all winter.  IT WAS ON SALE.

I also cleaned the cupboards this weekend and had a little too much fun organizing my own little canned-good army.  (THEY WERE ON SALE.)

Now I'm ready just in case little gray men from outer space invade Chicago.  They'll be hungry after traveling that far, SOMEONE has to feed all of them.

This Is Why We Have Unlimited Texting

Actual text conversation I had with T yesterday afternoon:

 

Me:  Fuck, I just poked myself in the eye with baby spinach.  I think I'm going to die.

 

Me:  "Death By Spinach" is totally going to land me in some lame News Of The Weird book for all time, isn't it?  OR WORSE, The Darwin Awards!

 

T:  Only if you lose the eye, you dork.

 

Me:  Pretty sure I can still reproduce with one eye, natch.  Unless I die, in which case I can get a Darwin Award.

 

Me:  Unless I become an undead zombie that can reproduce.  Can zombies have babies?  That one woman in the Dawn of the Dead remake did.

 

T:  I'll ask Holly [anthropology professor friend].  Seems like the kind of thing she'd know.  If you reproduce when you have only one eye, would you have a cyclops baby?  Because I can't love a baby with only one eye.

 

Me:  You're going to hell.  Why are you racist against cyclops babies?  It's like I don't even KNOW you anymore.

 

Me:  Are cyclops babies a race, or a species?  Can one be "species-ist"?  That is hard to pronounce.

 

T:  Maybe a mixed-race cyclops baby would be cute though...

 

Me:  Cyclops and zombie?  BTW - I am going to put this on the Internet and the cyclops supporters will be sending you some serious hate-mail.  Just FYI.

 

T:  Fuck them.  They're too scared to admit they hate cyclops babies, too.

 

Me:  Whatever.  If I die and have a one-eyed zombie baby, you'll love it.  Because I'm thinking that is not the kind of baby you want to piss off.

 

What you don't believe me that we actually text like this?  Fine, be that way.  Proof!



And yes, before you ask, I am highly amused every time she pops up on my phone that she is "T Cell".

Organizational Overload

First, thank you all for the comments and emails and facebook messages after my last post.  I love you all bunches and bunches and if I could send cookies through the Internet I so would.  My insomnia seems to be leaving, as I'm sleeping a bit more each night.  Shockingly, this is also improving my mood.  I know, right?  WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?  Anyway, now we shall talk about something else, yes?

 

One of the most annoying things I've had to learn to live with since moving in with T is clutter.  STUFF.  My parents may be reading this and puzzling over their memories of the trash heap that was my bedroom from the time I was eight until I went off to college.  But really, as an adult I like things to have places and be put away.  If I'm in a cranky mood the best way to get out of it is to pick up the kitchen or fold the blankets in the living room.  I don't need things to be spotless by any stretch of the imagination, but I am a much more pleasant person if things are picked up and reasonably neat.  This is why I got rid of thirty or so garbage bags of STUFF earlier this month.  And I loved every trip up and down the three flights of stairs to the garbage/recycling/garage.

 

Since I'm running out of things to throw away, and sometimes I just have to learn to live with 8,345 of her crochet projects floating around the living room, I often channel my obsessive need for organization into other areas, like our TiVo.  I get a completely unreasonable pleasure from hard-deleting items from our "recently deleted' items folder and deleting shows I know we won't watch.  I don't know why a nice, short TiVo list on the screen pleases me so, but it really does.  I do the same thing with my email.  Both my personal email and my work email rarely have more than a couple of urgent emails sitting in my inbox; the rest are stowed away in folders or deleted as soon as possible.  T on the other hand probably has something like 400 emails in her inbox, 100 of which she continues to leave marked as "unread", which means I can never look at her computer for fear my head will explode.

 

Another outlet for my obsessive digital organization is our Netflix Queue.  We currently have 120 DVDs in our queue, and I am positively ITCHING to get home and force T to listen to me read them all off and see what I can delete.  I'm not opposed to having a queue of movies we want to watch, but she seems to be of the opinion that any movie we might want to watch again in the future someday should be stored in our queue, lest we forget it exists.  Which...no.  I see no reason why we have Marry Poppins in our queue.  Cute movie?  Sure!  But we've both seen it, we don't have kids, and as far as I can remember neither of us has expressed an interest in watching it again anytime soon.  And if we have the sudden urge for a spoonful of sugar sometime in the future we can always add it to the queue then, bump it to the top of the list, and voila!  Why does it need to sit there taking up space in the queue all the time?  Clearly she is trying to kill me.

 

I solved this problem by re-creating my own queue with only stuff I actually intend to watch.  At the moment that is composed entirely of Dawson's Creek (...shut up), which I intend to use as entertainment while I exercise.  Because nothing motivates me like reliving teenage angst through dated television shows.  Awesome.

 

Now I just have to resist the urge to create separate Netflix profiles for different types of movies, and different priorities...this organization thing could get out of control.  Maybe I should just go back to deleting stuff from the TiVo.

 

***************************

 

P.S.  Immediately after writing this, I signed into our Netflix account and set up a separate profile for the horror movies I want to watch.  The over-organization is starting!  I have the will-power of a...um...something without willpower.

Way Harder To Write Than I Thought, aka OMG HIT PUBLISH AND RUN!

So, it's four in the morning.  What are YOU doing?

Oh, me?  I'm just hanging out here, not sleeping.  I've been WIDE awake since three.  And I didn't fall asleep until almost midnight.  I'm predicting MASS CRANKYNESS in about twelve hours.  I got another cordisone shot in my left heel yesterday afternoon, so I'm hoping this is just short-term insomnia from the pain or from the steroid itself.  I know from experience that I get spectacular insomnia from oral steroids, and though steroid shots aren't supposed to cause the same side effects I do seem to remember a little bit of this from the shots I got in October and November.

Frustratingly, this shot means that I can't exercise for several days.  I have been SO GOOD with getting up and exercising over the past week and a half.  I haven't missed a single day, until today.  I haven't written about it here, but since January first I've been on this revolutionary new diet called Eat Less, Move More.  Awesome, right?  I hear it works really well.  It isn't so much a diet in that I want to lose weight, though that would be nice.  What I'm really trying to do is keep my blood pressure from getting so high it makes my head pop right off my body like a dandelion.  Did you ever do that with dandelions as a kid?  You were supposed to hold them in your fist and say "Momma had a baby and it's head popped off", then flick the head of the dandelion off with your thumb.  Gory and morbid, now that I think about it.  Where in the world did that come from, anyway?  Google just seems to reveal several other people asking the same question, but no one with the answer.  GOOGLE HAS FAILED ME, WHAT DO I DOOOOO?

Uh, what was I talking about?  Right, blood pressure.  Long story short, a combination of two unrelated medications that I'm taking, along with my deep love of salt, have my blood pressure hovering around the pre-hypertension area.  So it is low sodium and more exercise for the next three months before my next checkup.  Exciting, right?

This, in and of itself, is not such a big deal.  I'm not really in the danger zone, I'm not going to die RIGHT THIS MINUTE OMG, and this is all fixable.  What is a big deal, to me, is that I have exactly ZERO confidence that I can pull off any improvement goals that relate to my physical self.  I've never been at all athletic, as anyone who has ever met me will verify.  I mean, I once sprained my ankle playing miniature golf for goodness sake.  The fact that I've even survived into adulthood without being hit by a train is pretty impressive. 

Klutziness aside, physical activity has never been "my thing".  I never had a particular inclination for it, being more the bookish introverted sort who preferred to stay in my room reading or playing on the computer than doing anything that involved actually leaving the house.  But if I'm really honest, I just had a fear of trying anything I wasn't positive I would be good at.  Okay, I have a fear of trying anything I'm not positive I'll be good at.  At least if anyone else is looking.  I'd rather not try than try and fail.  Is that the right/healthy way to approach life?  Not at all.  I know that.  But it's hard to fight against something I've been doing for 29 years, you know?

So now, with this, I'm trying.  Even though I might (likely) fail.  Talking about it isn't easy, because then you all will know when I fail, and obviously that means you won't like me anymore, and I will die alone and friendless before I turn 30.  Obviously.

I don't mind talking about my klutziness or any of my "safer" faults - at least they are funny.  With those, people are laughing with me, not at me.  But cripplingly low self esteem?  Not so funny.  No one wants to read about that, or so I tell myself and four in the morning when I'm typing away at my laptop, trying not to wake T.  I'm too lazy, I'm not strong enough, I don't have the willpower, I'll give up because it is easier, I can't do it, I'm too weak, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, and gosh-darn-it, people don't actually like me.  I've lived with that internal monologue every day for as long as I can remember.  Almost two years into therapy and I still haven't managed to turn it off.  (Does that mean I fail at therapy, too?  Goddamnit.)  But I'm trying.  And now I'm telling you all about it.  I suppose that counts for something.

Family Lexicon

Every family has their own special lexicon.  Those words or phrases that make sense ONLY to you.  Inside jokes or television/movie quotes turned into everyday language.  Often I don't even know there is a reference to pop culture at all until I've been using a particular phrase for years.  I was well into my 20s before I learned that Bedtime For Bonzo was a movie and not just something you say to kids to let them know it is time to get ready for bed. 

 

A lot of my family lexicon comes from Monty Python.  We can blame my dad for that one.  My dad, along with most of his ten siblings, is very, very good at imitating voices and accents.  I am still occasionally startled when I hear my dad's voice come out of the TV if Monty Python is on.  Oh, but it is wafer thin!  We already got one!  I'm not dead yet!

 

I'm pretty sure we have a fair amount of Star Trek in there, too, though the only one that comes to mind at the moment is the ever-popular "Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a _____!"

 

Other sayings just come from family history.  I'm sure my dad will correct me on the particulars of this, but sometime during my dad's childhood there was a boy in the neighborhood who had a sister named Emma.  He was around on and off to play with some sibling or other (there are eleven in my dad's family spanning 20 years in age).  I believe the boy may have had a disability of some sort.  Emma was in charge of him at any rate, and when Emma said it was time to go home, it was time to go home.  His response to her was always the same.

 

"Oh-tay, Emma."

 

It sort of melted into a one-word response, ohtayemma.  I grew up hearing and saying this all the time in place of a simple "okay" or "got it" or "will do".  I didn't realize it until recently, but my wife has started to pick up on this saying, too.  I remember pointing it out to my dad.  T is really family now!  She can do Fisher-speak!

 

Yesterday I learned that my iPhone is a member of the family, too.  (What?  IT IS.  Shut up.)  iPhones, like most cell phones I suppose, have predictive-spelling built in that learns what words you type often as a sort of built-in spell check or shortcut.  Yesterday I was texting T and when I typed in "Oh", the predictive spelling filled in "Ohtayemma".  Aww.  It's like warm-fuzzy family memories wrapped up in my phone.

 

I probably shouldn't point out that the predictive spelling has also learned "crackwhore" and "strippers".  Awesome.

 

Do you have any good bits of family lexicon to share?

Perks Of Grownup-hood: Staying Up Late, Not Falling Down This Time, and FOOD

Last night T and I accidentally stayed up past our bedtime.  I mean, we were up REALLY late.  Like, 10:30!  Whoo!  The crazy life we lead.  The reason we were up So Late is that we got sucked into an episode of Hoarders.  I had seen one too many people commenting about this show online and I had to see it for myself.  Man, that show is like a train wreck in television form.  I couldn't look away!  After we finally peeled ourselves off the couch and headed for bed T proclaimed, "I love other peoples dysfunction."  My wife, ladies and gentlemen.  (I love her.)

 

I'm totally blaming my sleep deprived state for the fact that I nearly fell face-first down the escalator in my building this morning when I was rushing to my therapy appointment.  My knee locked up for no apparent reason and whoo boy did I come close to taking a header down the stairs.  When I got to therapy and was hurriedly explaining why I was so discombobulated Therapist said that she was having That Day, too, and not three minutes later she looked down at her sleeve and pointed out that her shirt was on inside-out.

 

Despite my discombobulation, my current attempt at Eating Like A Damn Adult is so far working out.  I managed to stay productive last night and cook real food (chicken, crash potatoes, broccoli) and packed lunches for both T and I (chili, bread, potatoes, a banana and a brownie for her; chicken, spinach, sunflower seeds, yogurt, and clementines for me).  I even ate oatmeal instead of kitkats for breakfast this morning.  GO ME!

 

T's friend Holly was invited for dinner last night, but opted to stay home and do some grading.  I was a bit bummed that she didn't come over - I love feeding other people.  I'm not really a fan of cooking for the sake of cooking, nor cooking just for myself, but I LOVE to cook and bake for other people.  There is just something soothing about feeding people.  I used to do that a lot in college, and in fact that is how I soothed myself and a bunch of my friends on 9/11/01 - I spent the entire day, and much of the next few days, turning out baked goods and casseroles and burgers and whatever else I could make for people.  Even now I bake treats for coworkers nearly every week during our busy season (late January to mid April), and have even been known to bring brownies in to my doctor's office upon request.  I'm a total suck-up like that.

 

So who wants to come over for dinner tonight?  I'm not completely sure what I'm making, though I will likely include crash potatoes again because MY LANDS those are good.  I've been eating them regularly for probably a year and still it is only through a great show of restraint that I do not have them for breakfast.  Have you had them?  If notgo make them right now.  I don't care if you're reading this at two in the morning.  GO.  Then come back and tell me how much you love them.

2010: The Year I Admit I'm A Boring Adult OMG

Four days off work and what did I do with all that extra time?  Cooked and cleaned.  I didn't play any video games, hardly spent any time on the computer, and I didn't read more than 100 pages of the book I'm reading.  Who am I?  When did I turn into *this kind* of grown-up?  I'll have to make up for it by slacking off for the rest of the week.  I EARNED IT.

 

I did enjoy the cleaning though (I KNOW).  I hauled, no exaggeration, probably around 30 garbage bags of STUFF out of our apartment.  A few bags of books were sold to a used book store ($70!!), a lot of it was donations, a bunch of it was recycling, and a bunch of it was just trash.  Four garbage bags were full of blankets that I put out in the alley on New Year's Eve for the homeless people who dig through the garbage back there - I was glad to see the blankets were gone by morning.  The apartment is still quite dirty (OMG THE DUST), but I have to say I feel a lot lighter, like I myself have lost a bunch of weight just by getting rid of a bunch of stuff we didn't need.  Our fire safe is organized, all the photographs in the house are scanned into the computer(s), our closets and under-bed-storage are cleaned out and organized, the Christmas decorations are put away in new plastic storage bins, and it feels So Good.  (My 19 year old self is sitting back in 2000 rolling her eyes at current-me, because I am just SO UNCOOL OMG.)

 

I also did a bunch of cooking.  I made (and froze) a giant crock pot of pulled chicken, another of chili, cheesecake swirled brownies, pork burgers, and a partridge in a pear tree Jacques Pepin potatoes.  (Thank you to Jonniker for recommending those potatoes.  YUM.  They are right up there with Pioneer Woman's crash potatoes in the list of potato-dishes-I-want-to-marry.  If only the legislature would get off their collective asses and make human-vegetable marriage legal!)

 

Which reminds me, have I ever mentioned that I meant to start a food/cooking blog once upon a time sometime last year?  The amusing part being I'm not actually a very good cook.  I mean, I'm not bad enough to end up on Worst Cooks In America or anything (is anyone else watching that show?).  I get along fine, but I'm not at all in the league of food bloggers.  The idea was to write the blog as I learned to cook, sort of showing how-to-learn-to-cook.  But I didn't really learn much in the kitchen last year, so I suppose it is a good thing I didn't actually write that blog.  I do have (poor quality) photographs of several things I do cook stored on my computer in case I ever change my mind.

 

All this food talk, and I'm totally planning on having popcorn for dinner.  So much for my grown-up self.