As I recently outlined, this little guy is the reason that Lion’s Head Garbage Can can’t be named Crosspatch, even though I suspect that both represent the same children’s book character.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs | Tagged books, childhood, Crosspatch, iPhone, photograph, postaday2011 | 1 Comment »
How is it that I have never played charades until tonight?
I also never had a Sit ‘n’ Spin as a child. Coincidence?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged charades, childhood, postaday2011, Sit 'n' Spin | 1 Comment »
An interesting side effect of cutting back on my sugar intake and cooking most meals from scratch: I’ve started to really taste the sugar in manufactured foods. Store-bought spaghetti sauce tastes like it’s made of tomatoes and corn syrup. A brand of hummus that I used to buy frequently is now inedible; it’s bland, and what little garlic flavor I can sense is overwhelmed by a sugary chemical aftertaste.
Luckily, my husband’s Uncle Vinnie sent me his family pasta sauce recipe when we got married, and I’ve got a working and flexible hummus recipe that I can throw together pretty easily.
I was going to say that it’s a double-edged sword, when eating healthier and thriftier forces you to forgo shortcut products when you really could do with a few extra minutes out of the kitchen. My taste buds and common sense have convinced me, however, that things that taste this revolting aren’t useful shortcuts at all.
Posted in Eats | Tagged cooking, healthy eating, hummus, husband, kitchen, kitchen shortcuts, pasta sauce, postaday2011, spaghetti sauce, sugar | Leave a Comment »
Meet Lion’s Head Garbage Can.
It occurred to me this morning for the first time ever — and I do mean EVER — how ludicrous it must seem for a grown woman to keep — and use — a garishly colored plastic garbage can in the shape of a cartoonish lion’s head. But I honestly cannot picture my office without it.
I’ve had him (and, I assure you, he’s a he and not an it) for as long as I can remember. I’m pretty sure my mom got him for me in the 1970s using trading stamps from the grocery store.
And just let me add here that everyone should have a mom who answers random text messages like “Did you get my lion’s head garbage can with green stamps?” with the same lack of surprise or suspicion that mine does.
Lion’s Head Garbage Can has been to college and made it through several moves. He has suffered the indignity of being stored in a closet for months on end. Tragically, his name is, indeed, Lion’s Head Garbage Can, which I can’t explain given my penchant for naming anything and everything.
I suspect he caught my eye, or my mom’s eye, because of my favorite childhood book: Crosspatch. I can’t quite remember what Crosspatch was about, although I’m pretty sure the plot revolved around a grouchy little lion cub. I apparently had grouchy little lion cub tendencies as a baby — my father claimed that my early grouchiness was the reason that he nicknamed me Bear.
But Lion’s Head Garbage Can can’t be renamed Crosspatch, because I actually HAVE a small stuffed lion named Crosspatch, which my mom recently rescued from my grandmother’s house for me.
So, here sits Lion’s Head Garbage Can, essentially nameless, but useful and loved, a somewhat ridiculous item that I cannot imagine doing without.
This is the best thing about paring down your possessions to only the essential and the treasured: You figure out the things that you simply adore, and you give yourself the physical and mental space to enjoy them.
Posted in Home, Photographs | Tagged childhood, children's books, Crosspatch, decluttering, father, garbage can, green stamps, home office, lion, mother, postaday2011, trading stamps | 3 Comments »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 33: Computer file maintenance. My digital belongings aren’t as messy as they could be, but they’re not a miracle of modern data preservation, either.
Day 34: Lugged a heavy piece of construction debris to the curb after watching it languish in the garage for nearly nine months. The trash guys effortlessly carted it away. Girl muscles FTW.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home | Tagged challenge, computer mainenance, Do One Thing, garage, muscles, New Year's resolution, physical fitness, postaday2011, resolutions | Leave a Comment »
I spent several hours last Friday making a sweet potato pie, only to discover that my husband really doesn’t like sweet potato anything. I found the pie cloyingly sweet, and certainly wasn’t going to finish it by myself anyway. The only household member who liked it was Yang, who snagged a morsel that I dropped on the floor. He looked up at me like I had dropped the rarest, most delicious piece of fish he had ever eaten. Alas, aged cats do not have sweet potato pie on their list of dietary allowances.
Monday, I spend 30 minutes halfheartedly dipping some unsalted pretzels that were nearing their expiration date into leftover chocolate coating from the grand cake pop experiment. I sprinkled each one with the tiniest bit of kosher salt and laid them out on waxed paper to dry.
Little did I know they were to become the snack of the week. The husband and I both love them, particularly with a little peanut butter smeared on top.
Yang has shown no interest in them.
So, hours of effort yield a pie that no one likes, while a last-minute attempt to clean out the cabinet without trashing food yields delicious goodness. You never know.
Posted in Cats, Eats | Tagged cake pops, cats, chocolate, chocolate coated pretzels, chocolate coating, chocolate covered pretzels, kosher salt, peanut butter, pie, postaday2011, pretzels, sweet potato pie, sweet potatoes | 2 Comments »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 32: I fixed a bathroom door that was sticking by tightening and loosening hinges in a procedure that can only be described as haphazard.
And effective.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home | Tagged bathroom, challenge, Do One Thing, door hinges, home repair, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, resolutions | Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 29: Listed a couple of books and CDs for sale at Amazon. I’m always tempted to keep every book that comes into my hands, but I don’t have room, and I don’t miss them when they’re gone.
Day 30: I have been granted permission to scour the garage and make executive decisions. Best. Fling. Ever.
Day 31: Who’s the genius that came up with side-by-side refrigerators? The freezer section isn’t necessarily small, but it acts small, with two deep drawers that items just get lost in, and a couple of flimsy wire shelves, one with too much vertical space, the other with too little. The design of the refrigerator section is slightly better, but it’s not proportioned quite right either. And, because it’s shoved into a just-right-sized hole in the cabinetry, I can’t open the fridge door enough to remove the drawers. So they’re only as clean as I can get them while they’re still inside. No soaking old dirt and grime off; it’s there for life.
I’ve only chosen my own refrigerator once during my entire life, and we had to leave it behind when we moved four years ago. Therefore, I’m always stuck with somebody else’s bad decision and missing accessories.
Sigh. Today, I repacked some small bags of frozen cantaloupe, strawberries and greens into bigger bags in an effort to make one of the freezer drawers less of an abyss. The other one may hold a human head for all I know.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home | Tagged books, cantaloupe, CDs, challenge, decluttering, Do One Thing, garage, greens, library, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, refrigerators, resolutions, side-by-side refrigerators, strawberries | 1 Comment »
You don’t realize how much you miss a good fried shrimp poboy until you only get to eat one or two a year. And, apparently, you don’t realize that fried foods provoke headaches until you eat fried foods only once or twice a year.
Anyway, I had a superb shrimp poboy and cup of gumbo at Huntsville’s Po Boy Factory with MrsDragon and company in celebration of The Dining Dragon’s 6-month anniversary. I had been meaning to eat at the Po Boy Factory for the last couple of years, but somehow never made it there except to buy a king cake.
This will not be my last meal there.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Eats, Huntsville | Tagged alabama, fried foods, fried shrimp, gumbo, Huntsville, king cake, Po Boy Factory, poboys, postaday2011, shrimp | 2 Comments »
The construction guys next door were making plenty of noise this week, and Yang’s inquiring mind wanted to know what was going on. Note that in his quest to see down into the yard, he has pressed his head against the glass so hard that his ears are flattened.
I live with the reincarnation of Gladys Kravitz.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Photographs | Tagged cats, Gladys Kravitz, iPhone, neighbors, photography, postaday2011 | Leave a Comment »
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