Yeah, it’s really long, right? If you’re wondering what to buy me for Christmas, I think you can still buy these maps. However, please coordinate your efforts, as I would hate to end up with, say, two of them.

Plants, plants, plants, plants
You yearn for spring, but not for ants.

Donuts, donuts, donuts, donuts,
You can’t eat them, hence you go nuts.

Friends, friends, friends, friends,
We’ll write some poems ’til day ends.

We got dumped on by a fair amount of snow. The official record says it was 12 inches but it was a heavy, wet snow that packed down. It made for a nice, peaceful weekend, except for not having any television signal due to the satellite dish being covered with snow. Lloyd told his parents about it and his dad was very concerned that we wouldn’t be able to watch the Superbowl. He recommended a big stick to knock it off. While we didn’t care so much about the football game, who doesn’t want to smack at their satellite dish with a big pole? No one, that’s who.

Oh, here’s a piece of winter advice regarding that adorable ‘hat’ of snow on top of your car that you might be too lazy to remove. Lloyd and I went to shovel at my school, and on the way back a little bit of the ‘hat’ slid down over the windshield. We were approaching a stop sign and I said, “Slam on the brakes”, thinking that it would slide off and down the hood.

Um……. It did, but …….

Before Christmas break I told my access class (think homeroom) that we’d have to go outside and play 8-square when the weather got warmer. They did not know what 8-square was, and asked if it was like 4-square. I said only in-so-much-as a blizzard is like an ice-cube. Intrigued –more with the possibility of going outside than in playing 8-square– they have been incessently asking me (a) “What is 8-square and?” (b) “Could they go outside and play it, please?”

As Lauren mentioned, we’ve had some really warm weather lately, so yesterday I took them out. There was much rejoicing. Earlier in the day I had grabbed some seniors (we keep a full supply on hand) who remembered playing 8-square to come out and chalk out a “court”. Traditionally an 8-square court is laid out in a 2×4 grid, but we drew out a 3×3 grid this time. It seemed to work well.

The rules are exceedingly simple:

1. The ball must bounce in your square before you hit it.
2. You must hit* it with your hand(s).
3. You must hit the ball into someone else’s square.

None of the screwy rules you see with 4-square. This is a real man’s game (the girls tend to be as good as the guys). Acceptable exclamations include, “good show”, “bad form”, “nice hit”, “tough one” and “quit your whinin’”. It’s a good game for teaching kids to just take their lumps, because everyone “gets out” all the time.

They are playing with the huge “training ball” right now. Later on I’ll bring out the Tournament Play ball. It’s smaller and bouncier.

*You do have to explain that “hit” is a single momentary contact with the ball. Otherwise you get shoves and holds, which break rule 2 and get you out.

I saw two neighbor girls gleefully biking in shorts on Monday and giggling, “It’s supposed to be winter!”

‘It’s supposed to be winter’, winter. Get with the program.

Ok, so here’s where the guilt will rip at my stomach. I love that the Cuppow people thought up such a smart thing and then had the gumption to create it and market it! Kudos to them!! Bravo!!

With that being said…. er, Cheap Girl tried to prototype her own version.

(Hangs head in shame for not financially contributing to entrepreneurs’ success.)

(Lifts head in small amount of pride for spelling ‘entrepreneurs’ correctly on the first try.)

Honestly, I’m never going to take this jar out of my house – I have plenty of thermal travel mugs for that. If I bought a Cuppow it would be one more thing that sat around here for years and eventually would go to Goodwill. I’m trying to be resourceful here, so I tried some homemade options.

Warning: Do not try my homemade options. Buy the Cuppow instead.

Option One: I just need a top with a hole. Hello, Beer Lizard! Let’s damage some lids.

Good in theory, and it did work, but while the top had a smooth surface for drinking, the underside is skin-slicingly dangerous. Not good for washing and re-using.

Option Two: Find a lid. I don’t have pictures of the various lids I tried to see if they’d fit without modifications. As it turns out, the wide-lid jar size is almost universal. Almost. I had a few things I could have tried, but they all would have leaked.

Eventually I found that the lids from the set of ‘disposable’ sippy cups that I kept on hand for when little kids would come over fit pretty darn well. I sliced off the outer edge, cut out the inside of the sippy part, smoothed the cut edge with the magic of fire and – viola’! Something I could clamp down, leak-free!

I took it to the Gebhardts on Sunday where there were some stares and the phrase, “Is that a sippy cup?” was uttered several times (from both adults and children). My ego took some blows, especially since no one noticed the sock. *sniff*

I have since lowered the profile, as you can see in the banner photo. I balanced the cut part on top for the photo below so you can see how much I cut off, but it still has sippy-cup-like proportions.

Oh, well. At least it was an afternoon of puttering fun. I do so love to putter.

Somebody tell a joke. Or something that you’re doing right now.

I was glad I went. They have many paintable things to choose from, and of course I went for something practical. I chose a container with a cool silicone lid, and when I saw that you could paint your item black and add colors on top, that seemed pretty spiffy.

The actual painting process was a little painful for me since I get some serious heebie-jeebies from touching unglazed pottery. It was vitally important that no-one bump me while I was painting, lest my holding hand slide a millimeter on the rough surface and cause me to scream like a doomed B-movie actress.

I like how it turned out, but I regret that I painted the whole inside black, then tried to paint over the inside bottom with colors. I should have just made the very bottom bright and surprise-y. Lloyd has a solution, though: “Just keep it filled with jellybeans. No one will know.”

It is food-safe and deep, though. Maybe I’ll just drink tea from it!

By the way, Melanie (birthday girl) gave me the funniest present for my birthday and I never got around to posting about it. She clipped funny sayings from catlogs and made a Keychain of Funny.

I leave it hanging by my computer with my favorite one always in sight:

There is a tea store in the mall called Teavana that is PRO-TEA. They have dozens of different kinds of teas to choose from, carafes of brewed tea you can sample from little plastic cups (which kind of negates the whole eco-friendly angle I was aiming for) and a wide variety of teapots and brewing accessories in case you like spending your money on such things.

Lloyd doesn’t really like going there, but he’ll suffer through a visit because the guys that work there have crazier hair than he does – a very ‘tea drinkers are hipsters, not old fogies!’ kind of vibe.

When I stopped by on Saturday, I knew just what I wanted: Two ounces of English Breakfast. It’s the least amount you can buy and it has a high caffeine content (though just 20% of coffee). Apparently it is one of their ‘lesser teas’. When I ordered, the hipster girl behind the counter discovered that I was not a disciple of their tea religion.

Hipster Checkout Girl: “Welcome to Teavana! What can I get for you?”
Lauren: “English Breakfast, please.”
HCG (repressed shudder and trying not to act as if I had just ordered warm goat spit): “English…. Breakfast?”
Lauren: “Yep. I need the caffeine.”
HCG (Trying to upsell me): “Have you tried Monkey Picked Oolong*? It’s really great!”
Lauren: “No, that’s ok.
HCG (Sighing at my lack of taste and picking up her big scoop): “How much can I get for you?”
Lauren: “Two ounces.”
HCG (with a tight-lipped smile): “You’re really going all out, aren’t you?”
Lauren: “It’ll last me forever.”
HCG: “Do you have an airtight container to store it in?” (Here she gestures at the Teavana-approved , beautifully decorated, highly overpriced metal canisters on the counter.”
Lauren: “Yep.”

I told Lloyd as we left the store what I wanted to say to her, and he was mad because it would have been a much funnier encounter.

How it went in my head:
Hipster Checkout Girl: “Welcome to Teavana! What can I get for you?”
Lauren: “English Breakfast, please.”
HCG (Goat spit shudder): “English…. Breakfast?”
Lauren: “Yep. I need the caffeine.”
HCG (Trying to upsell me): “Have you tried Monkey Picked Oolong? It’s really great!”
Lauren: “It doesn’t matter. Any tea I buy is going to taste like honey and lemon by the time it hits my lips.”
HCG: “How much can I get for you?”
Lauren: “Two ounces.”
HCG (tight-lipped smile): “You’re really going all out, aren’t you?”
Lauren: “Are you really going to give me a hard time for buying the minimum amount of the cheapest tea you have in this expensive store? I know where the Lipton aisle is a SunMart, kiddo.”
HCG: “Do you have a airtight container to store this paltry amount of tea?”
Lauren: “Yep, that baggie you’re loading it in.”

I think next time I’ll just ask for some Nestea and watch them faint.

* I did not make that up. See?

The Little Smokies were sub-par. We weren’t exactly sure how long they needed to cook, so we started them too late and ran out of time before they were fully done. (Note – it is going to take longer to cook them than 45 minutes.) You win this time, Matt Haden, but Lloyd believes we should test this recipe again and again until we get it right.

The trivia questions were mostly as expected – there were several categories that made me feel like an idiot, a few questions where I felt confident of the answer and got it wrong, but one category where I knew 9 out of 10! Thanks, “Textiles”!

Then we were nominated as a Spirit Award finalist, and each table nominated had 30 seconds to showcase their spirity selves. The Fortune Cookies table sang songs from “The Christmas Story”; Gilligan’s Island table sang the iconic song; the Concordia table played the fight song and cheered; the Magic 8 ball table shook their magic selves; the Star Wars table just stood around to the theme music (which was lame, but still made me jealous because their costumes were amazing); the Cheeses of Nazareth did something, but I don’t know what because they were after our table (4th of July), and we had An Event.

Once we realized we had to have 30 seconds of awesomeness, I was excited because I wanted us to SING, for cryin’ out loud! We decided on the tail end of the Star Spangled Banner, followed by chanting “U*S*A! U*S*A!”

Our moment came, we stood up and started to sing. I was finding some harmony and looking for something on the table I could wave around, then looked up and saw Charles standing on a chair – peeling down to his USA t-shirt and biking shorts. There was a small, small wardrobe malfunction (some tidy-whitey waistband showed – at least from my angle before my eyes shut down), but I was too stunned to do anything but sit down and laugh. I don’t even know if we finished the song. He had told Deborah his plan ahead of time, but the rest of us were just as surprised as the rest of the room. Our guts hurt from laughing.

Sooooooo. There’s that.

Oh, and we didn’t win, but we placed solidly in the slighty-above-dead-center range.

At Lloyd’s faculty party Matt Haden and his wife, Lindsey, brought Little Smokies Wrapped In Bacon And Baked With Brown Sugar, which were promptly inhaled by everyone. Lloyd was intrigued and immediately subscribed to their newsletter.

Lloyd asked Matt for the recipe, and at the risk of blabbing like the Bush’s Baked Beans dog, here it is:

Ingredients:
1 package of Little Smokies
1 package of bacon (we usually get center cut)
Brown Sugar…
Toothpicks
9×13 pan
Tin Foil

Instructions:
Line the 9×13 pan with tin foil. (This will accelerate the cleaning process. Part of the tin foil might get stuck to the pan but it’s a lot easier to clean up than the mess without the tin foil.)

Take one smoky and one piece of bacon, wrap the circumference of the smoky once, stab with a toothpick all the way through, cut off excess for the next smoky [here, Lloyd wondered aloud if it was the excess bacon or the excess toothpick], repeat until all smokies are fully wrapped. (I had about two inches of bacon left so I just stabbed it with a toothpick and put it in the pan with the rest.)

Shower the smokies with brown sugar. Your preference on how much you want to put on them. (We did add a little more brown sugar halfway through the cooking process.)

Bake until the bacon is fully cooked as I believe most smokies are pre-cooked…

Enjoy!

P.S. Let me know what they think.

There is an alternate version of this recipe where you wrap the smokies in canned croissant strips and then put crushed walnuts in with the brown sugar. Our Kansas City friends called them Crack Weenies.

Lloyd and I made a little assembly line and got the little drops of heaven ready to pop in the oven tomorrow. As Lloyd wrapped them up he sang, “Anything Matt can do, I can do better…..”

Are you going to stand for that, Matt Haden? Are you?

I rarely walk home from work anymore since I mostly drive the truck. On the rare occasions that I do and I know Lloyd won’t be coming home anytime soon, I walk down Seward Street to 7th Street. There are store windows to peek in, and Dollar General is open late and I can stop in to browse and warm up. It’s enjoyable.

Here’s the route. Notice the straight lines of this journey?

If I know Lloyd is home, I might call him for a ride to pick me up, then convince him that as long as we’re in the car, we should swing by Subway for a sandwich. (It’s an easy sell.) I tell him where I’ll be: On Seward Street or on 1st Street.

See, when I walk home in the summertime, occasionally I’ll call him at home and ask him to meet me. He grumbles, but he’ll do it. He walks 7th street to Lincoln Street, and I walk 1st street to Lincoln Street. See how we’re just following straight lines?

(Now the mocking begins.) On Tuesday morning my truck wouldn’t start, so I caught a ride to school with Lloyd. We had a staff meeting until 8 p.m., and afterwards I walked out to my truck…. that wasn’t there.

No problem!

I started walking and called Lloyd for a ride. “I’ll be on First Street,” I said.

Now I ask you, dear readers who are not even married to me, by what I’ve just said, if you were at Point B and needed to drive to get me, wouldn’t you drive down Lincoln and turn on 1st?   So would I, because we are reasonable people. That’s why I like you.

Back to my long, stupid story: A few blocks into my walk I was creeped out by a male fellow pedestrian. I called Lloyd again so I’d be on the phone in case MFP tried to talk to me or ninja-chop me. I could sense by the echo-y sound of Lloyd’s voice that he had not yet left the house. “I’m putting on my shoes,” he said.

Really?

I kept walking and kept walking, and as I rounded to Lincoln I wondered where he was. I kept walking a couple more blocks and called again.

Lauren: “Where are you??”
Lloyd: “On First Street. You don’t seem to be here.”
Lauren: “I’m on Lincoln now.”
Lloyd: “You said you’d be on First.”
Lauren: “Not forever.”
Lloyd: “I drove around. You weren’t here.”
Lauren: “Grrrrr. I’m almost home.”
Lloyd: “Oh.   Do you still want a ride?”
Lauren: Facepalm

Turns out he was fine with the onion, he just wanted me to notice what he was doing with the ham.

Ha! – that’s cute!

The second part of the dough has just been made into a little loaf of bread, but this Sunday I wanted to see if smooshing out the dough and then criss-cross cutting it would yield dinner rolls.

Cut cut cut.

Bake bake bake.

I put it in the oven on the pizza stone that long ago cracked into two pieces. I still use it – I just shove the pieces together and it’s all good. I also poured some water in the discolored cookie sheet that lives in the bottom of the oven (right under the pizza stone). The steam is supposed to bring out some magical quality in the bread.

I plopped myself down on the couch by Lloyd to read until the bread was done.

After a couple of minutes, I heard a quiet ‘boom’. Not as loud as a neighbor slamming a trash can lid, but something…. ominous.

Lauren: “What was that? I bet that’s the pizza stone cracking again. Dang it!! Soon I’m going to be baking on a jigsaw puzzle!”
Lloyd: “Well, there’s your post.”

Stupid stone.

Well, back in December Lloyd received a present in the mail from his Aunt Margie – a box full of tea towels that she had embroidered with different barns! It was accompanied by a lovely hand-written letter, a rarity these days. Lloyd admired them and then said, “They’re too pretty to use.”

I disagree. As tea towels, yes. As new curtains, no!

When I was done I went back to Lloyd’s school to see if he was ready to go.

Lloyd: “It’s going to be a while.”
Lauren: “Like ‘regular’ awhile or ‘many hours’ awhile?”
Lloyd: “Many hours.”

Grrrrrr. I had a cake I wanted to try baking, dang it! I had all the ingredients waiting in the car! Now I was stuck hanging around this stupid school with its stupid classrooms – gym, computer room, library, home ec., shop, music room…..

Wait.

Back up.

I asked Lloyd if it would be a problem if I used the home ec. room if I was very, very tidy, and he mumbled something about the computers not working. I took that as a ‘yes’.

It is a ridiculously easy recipe with only six ingredients, and it is low-fat and jam-packed full of apples, so it’s practically health food. The real recipe is here, complete with gorgeous photos and witty writing. My version is here, with only ‘after’ photos taken with Lloyd’s phone:

Snoop through the cupboards to find a little 6-inch pan like you used for the clerical collar cake, because you’re going to halve the original recipe. Line it with foil for two reasons: 1) you don’t have a springform pan and 2) you don’t want to have to wash the cake pan later. Smooth out the wrinkles and spray with cooking spray.

Get out a cutting board (one dirty dish) and a peeler (two dirty dishes) and a knife (three dirty dishes). Peel, core and cut up three apples into chunks. Pile them in the foil-lined pan and then wash, dry and put away your evidence.

In a mixing bowl (four dirty dishes) whisk (five dirty dishes) two eggs, but dump out about 1/2 an egg’s worth. Add 1/2 cup (six dirty dishes) of sugar that you brought, and whisk like there’s no tomorrow. Add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (no dirty dish, I just poured from my bottle) and a little sprinkle of cinnamon, borrowed from the cupboard. (My apologies to Susan, the family sciences teacher. I repaid it by pouring all the rest of my sugar in the canisters.) You need air in this, and you’re not going to dirty up the hand mixer, by golly.

When it’s light and ribbony (whatever that means), add 1/2 cup of flour and mix until it’s just pulled together. Pour it over the apples and bang the pan around a little to get the batter down in the spaces. You’re supposed to spread it with a knife or spoon but you don’t want to dirty another utensil.

Put the cake in a pre-heated 350-degree oven for 55-60 minutes. Clean up all your evidence and do a little extra tidying so you feel less like a sneak. I loved that kitchen. It was crazy fun using it! Susan, if you are reading this, I think that it is delightfully well-organized and beautiful, and I’m also sorry I didn’t ask permission first.

When done, sprinkle with a little powdered sugar, make sure everything is back where it belongs, and take the cake up to the computer lab to eat with Lloyd.

It is so full of apples!!! I think I might like this better than pie! My favorite was the crunchy cake-y part at the top, and eating two slices of this was like eating a whole apple. See? Healthy.

UPDATE: I made it again tonight, this time ‘thirding’ it – two apples, one egg, 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup of flour, splash of vanilla and shake of cinnamon. I baked it in a greased cereal bowl for just under an hour and the whole thing was more cake-y – still a crispy top. I gave Lloyd a tiny bit and ate the rest all by myself. My gut hurts.

Your assignment is not quite so long. Watch this one, then watch the rest of them if you have the time/inclination…

I’m sure at some point I’m going to try a small prototype of the white area/colored dots – probably at school – but tonight I wanted to do something now.

What’s white?

My kitchen is white.

Hello, favorite striped contact paper!

Meh. It’s great up close, but from far away it reads a little ‘fast food restaurant’. I’ll take it down right after I get the rest of the Christmas stuff put away.

It did save me from drawing on the counter with permanent markers, though, which was a close second.

The downside is that my internal clock was confused and within an hour after getting home I was completely ravenous, and it was still early in the day. Lloyd heated up some t.v. dinners, but that wasn’t enough food for my angry belly. I wanted some dessert. I’ve had a box of puff pastry sitting in my freezer for the longest time – I don’t even know why (or when) I bought it. Now seemed like as good a time as any to try something with it.

I hacked off a frozen end, broke the folded pieces apart and let them thaw on my disgustingly discolored cookie sheet while the oven heated.

Baked ‘em up, then slathered them with lemon curd (which I also can’t remember buying) and added some sliced strawberries for a flaky, sweet & sour sandwich. Worrying about the top not feeling pretty enough, I used up some of Brad’s gross skim milk and made a glaze. Brad – new rule: Drink up that gallon before you leave Nebraska.

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Tomorrow I won’t mess around with the t.v. dinner. Straight to dessert for me!

Then a week or so later, Lynne Rosetto Kasper (of The Splendid Table) answered a caller’s question about spaghetti squash, and she made cooking it sound so easy! “Bake it up, then treat it like an Asian noodle and marinate it in some delicious dressing…. doesn’t that sound fabulous?” Yeah, you’ve played that trick on me before, Lynne.

So I decided I should try to cook some squash. I am not a squash fan whatsoever, but Lloyd and I very rarely eat fresh vegetables, and a squash can sit out on my counter for weeks until I get around to experimenting with it – which this one did.

I tried cooking it on the first day that I felt ultra sick. That was my first mistake. I cut into it and the smell almost made me throw up. Bleh – so pumpkin-y.

Scooping the seeds was arduous, what with the smell, and then I put it in the pan wrong. I read that some people have trouble with it taking too long to cook, so put in in a baking dish with water so it will steam. I did that, but it should have been cut-side-down. Oops. After I put the pan in the oven I went to go lie down – for a long, long time. Subsequently, I don’t really know how long this cooked.

Then I pulled it out of the oven and went to go lie down again – for a long, long time. Cooked squash can’t go bad sitting out on the counter, right?

After tons of napping I went to pull it apart, and was duly surprised at the direction of the ‘noodles’ inside – they string horizontally!

Pulling it apart was very, very fun, but then I was out of energy and had no appetite for this. Not wanting to waste the squash I put a little in two bowls, adding Italian dressing to one and rice wine vinegar/sugar/salt/pepper to the other.

The Italian dressing version was horrible, the vinegar one less so. I tasted each one then went to lie down.

Does anyone have suggestions? I like the idea of trying spaghetti squash again, but it’s just so exhausting to make.