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 …….

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.

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!

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 thing I like best about my job is that the bar for art is set pretty low. Where else can you work with some kids to make a tree out of masking tape and all who see it ooh and ahh?

Or construction paper trees? Ho ho ho – Merry Christmas!

I do recall a craft from elementary school that caused me some shame. We glued dried beads all around an eggshell then dipped it in wax. I remember just hating how it turned out, and how each Christmas afterwards there was a special sort of agony I went through, begging my parents to throw it away.

My kids like to play with the old, real phones in the housekeeping area and also at our writing table (‘the office’, as they call it). The problem is that they holler at each other from across the room when they ‘talk’ and I just can’t afford to lose any more tooth enamel from the grinding.

I started thinking about the toy wired telephones from my youth that were both magical and horribly dissappointing. Then I wondered, ‘Surely in this day and age of cell phones somebody has invented toy phones that are wireless.’ Sure enough, one obscure company has!

So, I ordered a set. I justified myself by saying that they would help the children learn proper telephone manners and also help the shy kids learn to speak up, but really – I just wanted to play with them.

Guess when they arrived? When Lloyd was in Missouri visiting his parents. I was so excited to try them out!!!! With….. no one…..

(Jump jump jump jump)
One. Two. Three. Six.
Four more numbers join the mix.
Seven.Fourteen. Twenty-One
Factors are such mathy fun
End the string with Forty-Two.
Watch the birthday girl boo-hoo.
It’s your turn to write a line.
Doesn’t even have to rhyme.
(jump jump jump jump)

(Our internet keeps going out, so if you read this and there is only a half-written post, it’s because it died while I was writing. I’m hitting ‘update’ after each sentence.)

Tonight I sat on my stool and refilled a prescription from my phone, ordered photos from my computer, and then filled out an online order for pizza. The world is doing such a great job encouraging my laziness.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. I ordered my pizza before I started to upload my photos, then as they uploaded the connection crashed. I got very flustered and re-uploaded all 29 photos and wound up with many, many extra pictures. Stupid time crunch!

I told Lloyd I was getting mad.

Lloyd: “You know how to tell if Lauren is mad?”
Lauren (glowering): “She’s awake?”
Lloyd: “She has a pulse.”

Hmmmmmmm……. sounds crazy, but it just might work!

When my friends from Colorado were here we went to eat at the only nice restaurant in town, Cafe on the Square, and they all had leftovers at the end that were in my fridge. (Macaroni and cheese, half of a french dip, half of a rueben.) Tonight when I came home from work, I looked at the boxes, and told Lloyd, “Let’s just heat them up together.”

So, macaroni and cheese in the pan with a little milk, all the meat pulled out of the sandwiches and diced up, add some tomatoes and viola’! “Casserole!”

Lloyd will eat anything, and in fact declared, “This isn’t bad.”

See? “This isn’t bad.” You don’t get a higher endorsement for my cooking.

(No photo of finished product. I forgot.)