Sundays are my favorite.

Sometimes I think about some of the things I've written about Mormon women and realize I've got it mostly wrong - they're much more than the box I put them into when I first started learning more than what the missionaries teach.  If I've offended you, I'm sorry.  I don't mean to be an asshole, but sometimes I am.

I made some amazing vegetable soup last night.  Remember the brisket Jimi made for work and then wasn't going to share?  He brought some home.  It was delicious, and then it became soup, along with the last can of green beans and the last can of corn and some old potatoes that were starting to turn soft and a jar of tomato juice someone gave us back in the summer.  There were other things too, of course, but you don't want all the details, do you?  I was particularly proud of this batch, because I though I needed to make a trip to the grocery to make it happen, then just pulled together what we had and made it work instead.  Very frugal and smart of me, if I do say so myself.  Jimi made pretzel bread rolls and they are delicious, but they were finished too late to marry up with the soup - they'll meet tonight!  I guess we're on a baking kick, because I also made a pumpkin german chocolate cake, but we've only shared one piece of that.

This morning I got up and started on laundry, only to find we were out of detergent.  So I made some more, at 7:30 a.m..  Like a boss.  I've said it before, but I'll say it again - that shit feels like making money.  Putting together a batch of laundry detergent that is as good or better than something I'd pay nearly $20 for at the store - it feels awesome.  I wish I could be more go-get-'em when it comes to other aspects of my life.

For example:  Bossman's birthday was yesterday.  I decided a week or so ago that part of my gift to him was going to be some awesome fudge.  I made the fudge today, because I'm all on the ball and shit.  So I start making the fudge, add the evaporated milk and butter and sugar to the pot, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and wait for it to get to soft boil.  It nearly boiled over.  It was in a 3-quart saucepan, as required per the recipe.  Something didn't look right.  I thought.  I pondered.  I calculated in my head.  And I realized, FUCK, I have WAY too much evaporated milk in there.  I checked the label on the can - sure as shit, my recipe called for (2) 5-oz cans and I'd added (2) 12-oz cans.  Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.  I considered dumping it all out the back door, but then calculated some more and figured there was already too much invested to give up.  I hollered for Jimi and set him to task buttering more foil in another 9X13 while I found another two and a half sticks of butter and 5+ cups of sugar.  By chance, my habit of over-buying paid off this time - I had exactly enough chocolate on-hand to make this thing work.

I'm really glad I caught my mistake when I did - if not, and chocolate and such had been added, disaster would've ensued.  As it stands, the fudge has firmed up beautifully, and the worst sin may be that I failed to add enough nuts.  I'll take it.

Other noteworthy items:  I purchased 2 lbs. of whole, in-the-shell nuts, along with a cracker and some picks.  Do you know what I'm talking about?  Part of Christmas memories from my childhood will always include my Papaw, sitting at the dining room table, shelling nuts and shoving them in his mouth as quickly as they could be freed from their hulls.  He taught me how to do it.  I think Bob and I tried to recreate this tradition once-upon-a-time, but what may have happened to that set of crackers and picks is anyone's guess - I'm glad to have a new set for my new life, to remind me of another time when I was as happy as I am now.

Granny and Papaw were part of the definition of Christmas when I was learning the meaning of the season.  Every Christmas Eve was spent at their home, opening presents, feasting gluttonously, singing joyfully.  It seemed that the heart of the entire world must have grown three sizes each year simply from the good tidings radiating from their home.  I miss them so much.  Christmas lost part of its magic when we lost them.

But it's still mostly happy and joyful.  The circle of life, and all that.  Stacy was over last night - she's got five weeks till her due date.  Five weeks!  We'll blink and that brand new little girl will be here.  I can't wait to meet her.  I was able to feel a knee or a foot or something last night as it pressed out the side of Stacy's belly; there's a whole another person inside of her - it's mind-blowing.  Stacy was wearing a much-too-big for her ICP t-shirt left over from her college days and a pair of baggy gray sweats.  She looked super comfortable, and not even a little pregnant, unless you know she's normally the size of a twig.

We've rearranged more furniture and I've finally repotted the aloe plant and the bromeliad - there's a good chance neither will survive the transfer, but we'll see.  Fingers crossed.

I asked my cousins via Facebook if our grandmother, Mamaw (my Daddy's Momma), had a good singing voice - if anyone remembered.  No one remembers her singing.  I asked Daddy, too - he doesn't remember either.  For some reason, that strikes me as tragically sad.  Was she sad?  Is that why she didn't sing?  Or was she shy, or did she just not carry a tune?  Her life was hard and fraught with loss, but beyond that, I don't know much.  I know she made great fried chicken, according to Daddy, and amazing banana pudding.  What did she love, though?  What made her happy?  My most vivid memory of her involves her tears of frustration as she tried to communicate with me; I was 9 or so, Brother was a new baby, and she had already suffered a stroke or two and her verbal skills were very much affected.  I remember at her funeral, Daddy hugged me and told me that my Mamaw had loved me very much - I remember wishing she'd not been such a stranger to me, though it was obviously through no fault of her own.

Christmas cheer, eh?

Sorry.

The weekends go by so quickly - it's already 6 o'clock on Sunday night, which means I'll be awake and starting my workday in 12 hours or so.  Fuck.

It's fine, though.  Monday through Thursday this week, they can have me.  After that, I'm gone - off for 11 days.  11 DAYS!!!  OMG, I cannot wait!  I don't know how I'll spend the time, but it'll not be answering phone calls in the middle of the night or putting out fires before my first cup of coffee.  I fully intend to at least finish reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and these two new-to-me classic anti-Mormon autobiographies (Deborah Laake and Sonia Johnson) drunk-me bought me for Christmas last week.

Happy Week-Before-Christmas!  May the Force be with you this week as you navigate the malls and shops. (And remember, Buy Local!)

Sunday Morning play-by-play

Wake up at 9, stumble to the bathroom with bleary eyes and do my business, then stumble back to bed for another hour.

Wake up at 10, all snuggled up with our soft sheets and the down comforter that is almost always too hot but I insist on using year-round anyhow.  I'm very warm, and I'm in a great mood.  Throw my warm front over Jimi's cold back - the blankets are down around his waist, because they're almost always too hot for him - and just lie there for a minute, feeling the temperature differences and listening to that man I love as he sleeps through my attack.  He must've been really tired last night.

Roll over and scoot my back right up next to his, make sure the covers are straight and the bottom sheet is covered by the duvet, and call the dog up onto the bed.  Finn's always willing to snuggle, even if he is still mostly asleep and has to go through the whole stretch-and-wake-up routine before he hops up into the spot I'm patting; he lays the length of his body along the length of mine.  

Oh!  Here comes Q the Cat; he wants in on this morning petting action.  He sidles up next to Finn; not quite touching, their friendship isn't there unless we humans aren't around, but friendly enough that there's only a space of a couple inches between them.  Finn smells the cat's face, the cat sniffs Finn's nose and inclines his head, indicating he'd like Finn to rub his ears now, please.  I reach over and take care of the scratching Finn can't and Finn licks my face.

A few minutes of this - 5, 10.  Usually Jimi will wake up and join our little morning hello, making up silly songs or telling the fur kids what sort of things our day will bring.  He stays asleep this morning, though, so when I start to feel restless I tell the boys to hop down, throw back the covers, and my day has begun.

As soon as my feet hit the floor, the cat starts telling me that he's starving and NEEDS his breakfast NOW.  Yeah yeah yeah.  I let Finn out the back door - I can let him into our fenced back yard without having to worry about any neighbors noticing I'm naked when I open the doorway.  If he goes out front, I have to put on something to cover; I'm really happy we've got that fence in the back yard.

Back across the kitchen and dining room, down into the basement, Q two stairs ahead of me, turning back to check on me as he hops down every other step, making sure I'm following him to the food bowl.  He's very happy to have his kitty kibbles back; he hops up onto the old dryer that doesn't work and watches me intently as I reach the scoop into the bin that holds the food.  Some mornings he'll headbutt me as I bend down to scoop; he's always purring loudly with anticipation, and more than once I've been dripped on as he drools into the food bucket.  The cat likes to eat.

I grab a pair of house pants and a house shirt - that's how my clothes are distinguished; either they're house clothes, or they're outside clothes.  House clothes are generally pants with elastic waistbands and shirts that are either A) from high school, and therefore so threadbare they're nearly see-through; B) have a flaw of some sort (stain, hole) rendering it unsightly in public but it's too comfortable to throw away; or C) too tight but I swear it'll fit one day so meanwhile I'll just wear it around the house.

As I go back up the stairs, I realize it's Sunday and we've got to work tomorrow and most of our clothes are lying in our bedroom floor.  (Hamper?  What hamper?  Who needs a hamper?)  I go back downstairs and grab an empty laundry basket.  Back upstairs, I fill it to 150% capacity with all of the things we've worn since last Sunday and then it's back to the basement.  I sort the clothes into piles - pants, reds, whites, delicates, everything else.  Open the washer to start the first load - OH, hello whites that got left in there for a few days!  (When did Jimi wash these?  It had to have been Wednesday or Thursday.  Yay!)  Turn the water on, add detergent (homemade detergent, by the way), close the lid, shrug shoulders.

I woke up thinking fried apples sounded really good for breakfast.  Fried apples bring back happy memories from childhood involving Sunday morning biscuits and gravy breakfasts while watching Star Trek with Daddy, and Granny standing over her stove with her big cast iron skillet full of the fragrant fruit mixed with butter and cinnamon and brown sugar, turning crisp into melty sweetness.  I got out a bowl in which i could drop the fruit as it was cut...eh, so many apples to cut up.  Hmm...

Oh!  We're supposed to have people for dinner.  I need to figure out a meal.  I open the freezer and there sits the big bag of frozen chicken noodle soup, just begging me to thaw it and heat it in the crock pot.  The dinner is done, man.

Now, about those apples...there's a lot of sugar in fried apples and I don't have any canned biscuits and I certainly don't want to make any biscuits this morning...maybe we can have some sort of apple dessert tonight.  I break out the Bisquick cookbook (I have other ones, I swear, but I was after a simple easy fix here, and Bisquick is where it's at.)  A few page flips and I've found a recipe for french apple pie; I've made it before and it's tasty, and it calls for one of my favorite things in the world, streusel topping.  And it will allow me to put off cutting up those apples for at least another 6 hours.

I'm on book eight of the Sookie Stackhouse series.  I decide coffee is what I need, that it would be perfect with the book and a smoke this morning.  We don't own a coffee pot.  Is that weird?  I've not had a coffee pot of my own since I moved from El Paso to Louisville, leaving the $100 Bunn behind for the ex.  I should've peed in it.  Current setup is sweeter, though - we've got a couple of French Press pots.  You boil your water (I didn't leave my tea kettle behind for the ex, because I'm not a complete fool), add your grounds to the press pot, then pour in the boiling water.  The lid of the pot has a fine mesh screen, and when you press the plunger, all the coffee grounds are held in the bottom of the pot while you're left with rich delicious coffee.  I filled the bottom third of my mug with Chai Latte creamer, then top off with coffee, and my morning was ready to begin.

And then I blogged about it.

Just your typical Sunday morning.  I love my life.  Every boring little detail.

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Finn and I walked for 20 minutes today and I did 60 sit-up/crunch hybrid things on the balance ball.  I ate reasonably, including two servings of green beans (like a good girl!), and while I'd love to go in there and destroy a Little Debbie or four, I'm going to go to bed instead.

I worked on the budget, but I need more information so that project is to be continued...

Laundry isn't finished because our dryer sucks and must be cycled twice to fully dry a load of clothes.  But the clean clothes are all folded, and the dirty clothes are awaiting their fate in neatly sorted piles.  I never got around to getting the socks matched up; we had a dinner guest and i ran out of time.  It'll give Jimi and I something to do tomorrow night.

Jimi was a sweetheart and cleaned the kitchen to show his appreciation for me tackling the laundry.  I swear, one day I'm going to change the name of this blog to "Who wants to listen to me talk about how awesome my man is?", cause he is so awesome, and it's all I can do not to sing it from the rooftops every day.

Gosh, I really would love to have strawberry shortcake Little Debbie right now.

I'm trying so hard to get my head in a good place for work in the morning.  I'll get up early and shower and have some breakfast and watch the shitty news and I'll get to the office early and get a head start on the day and everything will run smoothly and it will all be fine.

It will all be fine.

Laundry Day! (Or, time to be a big girl and fold my clothes.)

This is what I started with:

Twenty minutes into my project and I've learned these things:

Jimi needs new underwear.  

I have far more sitting-around-the-house clothes than going-outside-in-public clothes.

I need more hangars, as evidenced by the shirts waiting for homes on the hanging rack.

It doesn't take long for a little bit of work to start showing a big improvement.  I should remember this and apply it to other facets of my life.

Another twenty minutes, and I've finished folding all the clothes on the table, covered the rough wooden surface of the table with an old sheet, and made neat piles of the newly folded clothes.

All there's left to do is wash and fold and wash and fold and wash and fold.  Oh, and I've got to pair up the socks still.  Most haven't seen their mates in months.  

That feels like an accomplishment.

I might sound a little bitchy.

There's a little pit in the center of my stomach that's starting to grow.  I felt it there Friday, but I ignored it.  It showed up again Saturday, but it was Saturday, so I was able to put it off again.   But today?  Today is Sunday, and reality is about to crash in on me -

Vacation.  Is.  Over.

Damn, and it sucks.    

Back to work tomorrow; back to the daily grind of phone calls and emails and customers and drivers.  Time to sort through the days of paper and orders and inventories and schedules; it'll be Wednesday before I know which end is up.  

But, hey, at least I've got a job, right?  And isn't it always fun to go back after being out and get to tell all the stories you would've told last week, except you weren't at work last week and so you've got all KINDS of things to share with your work family?  Why am I turning everything into a question?

I do have that pit, though.  I don't want vacation to be over; I want another two weeks to do all the things I should've done in the last two weeks, like laundry and painting and cleaning and organizing.  I want to get a paycheck and not have to actually go anywhere or do any work to earn it.  Wish in one hand...

I didn't take a picture yesterday, either.  I've taken pictures every day for the last week, and yesterday, the first day of my resolution to take a picture every day in 2011, I didn't take a picture.  I fail so hard.

And Megan was right, I should've done SOME exercise last night, but I swear my intentions are good and I'm totally going to exercise for an hour today.  (And I'll eat BEFORE - I read that Sumo wrestlers eat all of their meals after working out, then take a nap immediately after eating, to encourage their body to store the food as fat rather than using it for energy.  I'm pretty sure I've almost always eaten after I've worked out - the four or so times in my life I've worked out.)  

I slept like shit last night.  Get up at noon, spend the day riding around in a car and/or sitting at a table, do nothing physical, drink a 5-Hour Energy shot at 7 p.m., and attempt bed at 1 a.m. - go ahead, I dare ya.  You'll sleep like shit too.  I tossed and turned all night, and all night, while I fluttered in and out of consciousness, I "dreamed" about Nat the Fat Rat.  I spent an hour or so before bed reading some of her favorite posts of 2010, which she linked from her year-end review post.  I like her; partially because her name is Natalie, so she's obviously awesome, but also because damn, that girl can write.  And she sure did make a cute baby.  I want to be more like her.

There's something going on with my left eye and it's really starting to bug me.  It feels like there's a lump or something on my cornea - I can't see anything when I look in the mirror, but I can feel something.  And it'll just spontaneously tear up - and not stop.  I think it may have something to do with my contacts, so I guess I'm going to not wear them for a few days and see what happens.  

Because we were gone all day yesterday, I wasn't able to fix the traditional corned beef and cabbage and boiled potatoes and black-eyed peas for New Year's dinner.  We're going to pretend, though, and have it all tonight instead.  I can almost taste it already.  

I'm going to tackle the laundry today.  I'm not starting another workweek with my clothes in such disarray, with so much chaos waiting to greet me each and every working morning, starting my day off in not exactly the best way, probably.  I'll post pictures, but not yet - I can't dare show you what the before looks like without having an after to make it all better.  I'm too ashamed.  But I'll be back tonight, with pictures and a clean, tidy laundry room.  Cross my heart.  

As if you care.