April vacation.

Last year my few days off in April were so lovely, so welcomed, that I decided to do a few days of vacation again in April this year. And this year Doug has joined me. We're currently through day three of our five days off in a row, and it's been great so far. I'm here to give you some highlights of what's been going on here, vacation-wise, grouped by major category.

Food:
Doug and I enjoy our dinners. We're not so good at breakfast, and are equally bad at eating much for lunch, but we tend to go all out for calories with our dinners. Our vacation dinners have been no exception. Our first vacation dinner was at Wild Willy's in Watertown, and this was on Thursday night, the night we were sprung from work and our vacation officially started. We got a couple of veggie burgers, and I have to say that Wild Willy's offers a mighty fine veggie burger.

Friday night saw us at British Beer Company, which, though a small chain, has really good pub food and a great selection of beers. I confess to never really ordering any of their great beer offerings, but I did once, and I was glad that I did - last year they offered this super-delicious fruity beer called Fruli, just about the best beer I've ever had. It was almost like a glass of strawberry juice, but not as sweet and a little thicker, heavier. I have not been able to find it since (though I admit to not looking too hard), but I hope BBC will have it again this year. I'd actually drink that beer without hesitation.

Saturday saw us eating a very, very sinful dinner at Po' Boys & Pickles in Portland, Maine. I have no photos of our fried pickles, sweet potato fries, or our reuben and muffaletta po'boy, but all of it would have been worthy of a picture (I just typed pickle instead of picture. That's how much I liked those fried pickles). My reuben had Morse's sauerkraut on it, too, which, you may recall, we discovered last year while vacationing in Liberty. That sandwich made me all the more eager for our upcoming Liberty vacation. Days, go by faster. I want to be back on vacation in Maine!

And, finally, last night we stuffed ourselves silly on good, hearty New England fare at the Publick House in Sturbridge, MA. When I say "stuff ourselves silly," I mean it. Look at this plate of food: Yankee pot roast, mashed potatoes, and butternut squash (but left out of the photo were a very large bread basket, salad, soup, and the apple pie and indian pudding for dessert). My stomach and I didn't get along last night, but hey, it was worth it.

Non-Food:
In the non-food realm, our vacation has consisted of doing stuff. We've done some yard work, the majority of it on Friday when the weather was somewhat warm and pleasant. We weeded, Doug started his annual mulching project, and I planted my flower boxes and a couple of planters. Here are some photos of the day:
Saturday we decided to head to Portsmouth, but while we were getting our traditional "crossing the state border into one of the northern New England states" pit-stop drinks in Woburn, we decided to change course. The original plan was to go to Portsmouth, and maybe meet Chris and Chris there for an afternoon/evening meal if our non-existent planning worked out, but we threw caution to the wind and just headed straight for Maine. Good thing, too. We got more time to spend with the cutest little Ruby there is, and spent quality time with her parents, too. Doug and Ruby get along well. I have plenty of evidence of this on film, but here are a few shots to share: Doug's a funny guy, indeed, and he has all kinds of funny things on his face to entertain babies, like large nostrils and a beard, and a funny, high-pitched voice that's normally reserved for the cats. I find that when we're around Ruby I'm more inclined to photograph her with Doug than hold her, because I know that Doug charms her in a way that I don't. I haven't figured out how to make sentences like "Little Ruby, how developed is your palmar reflex today?" sound so funny and elicit so many giggles. Chris is lucky. He's Ruby's daddy, so he doesn't have to try to charm her - he does it automatically with his genetics.

And then on Sunday we did more yard work (won't bore you with the photos of our trimmed shrubs) and headed down to Sturbridge to meet my mother and brother for dinner. You saw our plates of mammoth portions, and while I certainly didn't need this much food my brother certainly did. I love my brother, and for that reason, and because I'm the annoying little sister and it's my job, I am constantly after him to eat more. He's nothing but skin and bones. He bikes something like 15 miles a day, probably more, and eats things like yogurt and nuts, maybe occasionally a full meal. His activity levels and his food intake levels do not match up. At times I wish I could be more like him in this department, especially increasing my activity levels more, but at other times, like when I'm faced with a reuben from Po' Boys & Pickles or a veggie burger from Wild Willy's, I forget that I want people to feel each of my vertebrae as they hug me. Pass the fried pickles, please!

More timely this time.

I'm back with another picture-a-day Week in Review, and this time I'm getting it to you within a week! Doug and I are on vacation through Tuesday, so I find myself with a little more time on my hands. Yesterday we had a leisurely morning, and then we set out for Lowe's (we had gift cards) to get started on our spring yard work project. This is the second year in a row that I've taken off some days in April with the hopes of using them to get some of our yard work/spring clean-up done, and so far it's worked out well. The nurseries are so much less crowded on week days, and it feels so relaxing to be potting plants and raking up old, dead leaves when the rest of the world is at work. I'll have to post photos of the fruits of yesterday's labor, because even though we got a late start and didn't do as much as the old list had on it, we still got a nice bit done and it's looking good. Now all that we need is that new fence. And the trees cut down near the front steps and the dandelions pulled out of the back lawn and the whole lawn mowed and some grass planted and the dead-zone cleared of weeds and the pots for the back steps planted with flowers and the...

Eh, who cares. I'm on vacation. The list can wait.

Saturday, April 17:


Sunday, April 18:



Monday, April 19:


Tuesday, April 20:


Wednesday, April 21:


Thursday, April 22:


Friday, April 23:

Listing.

Here I am with another list. It's been a while, hasn't it, but better late than never! Tonight's list is a snapshot of the things that I want to get done tonight. Or at least start, because if I at least start these things then I can feel productive. And I like to feel productive.

* Eat dinner. We are going through a frozen food/canned food/clean out the cupboards kick here at the ranch, and so far we have made quite a dent. It's amazing how many burritos and pizzas we fit into our freezer, and now we have room for more. I smell a Trader Joe's run coming!

* Blog. Tonight's post is a bit on the lame side, but hey, at least I will have accomplished my goal!

* Exercise. Already done. Karen Voight's B*L*T on a Ball. I actually could have gone for a different kind of BLT tonight, but maybe I'll treat myself to one of those this weekend when our cupboard-cleaning policy has been lifted.

* Clean the bathrooms. Yup, gotta do it. It's time.

* Get out the spring/summer clothes for the seasonal clothes transfer project. It's that time of year again! I wonder how many bags of give-away clothes I'll make this year. I hold on to certain things year after year, thinking this will be the year I wear them, but I never do. Last year was an epic year for purging. It felt so good to purge. I don't think I could ever be a hoarder.

What didn't make the list of things to do tonight was working on my quilt. I worked on it this past weekend and made progress. This weekend I plan to do more, but while I'm procrastinating quilt-making tonight I can post a photo of a quilt that I saw on Sew Mama Sew! a couple of weeks ago and really, really want to make. Isn't it great? Look at the pattern! Look at the fabrics! But before I get ahead of myself I should just focus on the quilt that's sitting in pieces on my dining room table. I've got a ways to go on it, but I'm getting there. It's going to be great.

Overdue week in review.

It's been more than a week since I posted my picture a day series. And I admit to forgetting to take a photo on a couple of days in there. Can't remember what I was doing on those forgotten days, which is probably why I didn't take a photo of anything. Didn't want to bore you with dishes or laundry, or more of the cats. But it seems there are a lot of cat photos in these picture a day posts. Hmmm. I think it's pretty safe to say that Doug and I get a big kick out of our furry friends.

Tuesday, April 6:


Wednesday, April 7:


Thursday, April 8:
Forgotten day :(

Friday, April 9:


Saturday, April 10:


Sunday, April 11:


Monday, April 12:


Tuesday, April 13:
Forgotten day :(

Wednesday, April 14:


Thursday, April 15:


Friday, April 16:

Leaving our mark on the world.

I'm procrastinating a little. I have a bit of a chore to do tonight - a chore I want to do, don't get me wrong, but one that overwhelms me just a little bit. So to avoid doing this chore, I made a fruit salad, did my exercise video, jogged around the block, read a bit of a magazine, wasted time on facebook (is there any other way to spend time on facebook?), and now can't really avoid the chore any longer. The chore is... downloading iTunes onto my computer and putting new music on my iPod. Or maybe even a podcast, or a lecture, or something equally as exciting but missing from my current iPod lineup. Because it's time to finally change the songs on my iPod. I am ashamed to admit this, but I haven't made any changes to what's on my iPod since January 2008, when I added the best from our wedding music playlist. I know, I know - what's wrong with me? How could I have listened to the same songs for the past 15 months? Beats me. I have no idea how I haven't been driven completely batty by the monotony of it all, except to say that I don't listen to my iPod all that much, and that the monotony of my iPod fits in with the monotony of my life in general for the past couple of years. Now that I'm going to the gym again, though, I'm listening to my iPod more, and let me tell you, there's only so many times that I can have the same U2 songs come up on my playlists before I want to scream. It's beginning to get so that whenever I hear an Adam Clayton downbeat I instantly hit the skip button. Can't do it anymore. Must change.

We changed some things around the house this weekend, too, one of which being the flagpole we installed on our garage (wanted it in the front of the house but for a variety of reasons that didn't work out). We wanted to install it just in time for Sarah Palin's visit to Boston - you know, to show our support for her politics and the Tea Partiers, of course - and we managed to make our deadline. I'm not so sure that we'll always be flying the good old Stars and Stripes (I'm feeling those holiday banners in our future, and I guess the next one will be something for Halloween? A pumpkin? A ghost? This one may be especially appropriate...), but putting the flag on our garage made us feel... productive. And a little proud to be a part of this great nation. So hey, whatever floats our boat.


The nook is floating Doug's boat now, too. He joined the legions of e-book reader owners, and his choice was the very sexy nook. I have to admit that I like it. I want to read books on it, too! It's fun to search for a book to buy on it, thinking of all the great reads you can store on the little device, and then actually try to read a book on it. You can change the font size and style, and you can bookmark stuff... it is pretty neat. I am not allowing myself one of those little toys until I finish all the actual paper books I have on my bookshelves, so that means the nook probably will be on its 5th generation before I can think about getting one. In the meantime, Doug can - and will - enjoy his. His first book downloaded: How to Decide, and maybe when he's done with it he can help shed some light on my decision to make a scarf this big: This, my third scarf, is twice as wide as any other scarf I own, and when I started making it I thought the size would be a good thing. More scarf to keep me warm. But I wore it to the Revs game on Saturday, and decided that the size, unless I'm out in negative-degree weather, really is just an inconvenience. It covers half of my face, which doesn't help me breathe or see.

Speaking of the Revs, Doug and I enjoyed the game on Saturday. It was actually a pretty good game (Revs won!), despite the fact that it was cold enough for us to wear scarves, hats, and sit under a blanket. I really like the fact that soccer games are so short and that the fans are so entertaining. Makes the time go by, and I'm not ever bored. At this game I was a bit embarrassed, though, and maybe you can see why: Do you see what's all over our blanket? Can you see all that cat hair? It's like we took Wyatt and Meg and Sasha and rubbed them all over the blanket before we left for the game, but in fact we did not do that. We didn't do anything, really, except pick the blanket up off of our blanket basket and put it in the car with us. That's just a normal amount of hair on our blanket. And I probably wouldn't have cared so much about it if, when we were getting up to leave, I hadn't noticed that a fair amount of the hair was left behind on our seats. Now that was embarrassing. We're like Pig-Pen, leaving a trail of cat hair behind us everywhere we go. Good thing we don't leave the house much.

Hippity, hoppity.

I was all set to come home from the Stand Up for Your Library! rally at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul and blog about how poorly attended the rally was and how everyone (including me) should do more to a) support one's community, and b) support one's community library, when I walked into the house and saw this: My large Butterprint Pyrex bowl, shattered to pieces! Yes, it was my fault for leaving it to dry on the counter-top last night, thus leaving it at risk to jumping cats, but still. How many times have I left it out without incident? Not only does it break my heart a bit to have this bowl that I scored for $4 at the Rowley Flea Market with Chris and Chris broken into a million little bits, but it gives me a bit of anxiety to think of all the little tiny glass particles that might be in the kitties' paws. There were flakes and specks of glass all over the floor. Not fun to come home to.

And do you know what else isn't fun to come home to? Ants. Black ants. Lots of them. I killed four of the suckers in the span of ten minutes. (I have no problem killing ants, by the way. Or spiders. Part of me wishes I could be one of those kind-hearted people who scoop up the offending insect and let it free outside, but I can't. Just can't.) So now I have to wonder how many ants in our kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, etc., it will take for us to finally call an exterminator. I had heated discussions with Doug about this last spring and summer, many a heated discussion, and I finally got him convinced that it was okay and appropriate to call an exterminator, and then suddenly the ants disappeared (probably had something to do with the fact that it got oppressively hot). Well, I don't want to do the heated discussion thing again, so I'm just going to call an exterminator without the whole democracy angle. I'm making this decision. I want the ants gone.

But lest you think that it's all been bad around here lately, let me share some of our Easter with you. We had a lovely day, to which these two ladies can attest: The sun was out, the temperature was a perfect 65 to 70 degrees, and it was just a beautiful day. The cooks outdid themselves yet again - the homemade pizza gain and manicotti are two definite highlights - and I left my sister's house feeling sick to my stomach. Granted it doesn't take much these days to make me ill, but I really ate more than my fair share. I was ready to burst after the antipasto, but there were still three more courses after that. I did try a piece of my lemon cake, and despite the drama I went through to make it, I think it came out okay. Dry, but good. (In an effort to make a long story short, on Sunday morning I vowed never to bake again due to the saga of the two lemon cakes and my butterscotch bars. I found a recipe for a lemon cake on epicurious that didn't require any special ingredients or crazy baking techniques, so I made the cake on Saturday night. I forgot to add the eggs until I was done mixing everything else together (as I was about to pour the batter into the cake pans I noticed that there was an egg sitting next to my mixing bowl...), and I used 9" cake pans instead of 8". The cakes turned out flat, very flat, so I thought that I if I made another cake the next morning I'd somehow get it to fluff up. It didn't work, of course, since I was using the wrong size cake pan (does this mean I have to have two 8" and two 9" cake pans? Who has room in their kitchen for all of this stuff?), so I ended up with two very flat lemon cakes, which you can see here: That didn't stop me from frosting them both and bringing one to Easter dinner, though, and in a way I'm glad I made two - now we have one for ourselves! And the butterscotch bars - let's just say that it's a good thing I bought a whole bag of butterscotch chips for a recipe that only called for 1/3 cup, because I definitely needed those extra chips. Baking was not my thing this past weekend.)

What bothered me about Easter, though - and I'll share this in the spirit of sharing all bad things happening lately - is that my sister is a bit miserable these days, and this weekend she said to me that she's more miserable than she's ever been. This is all due to her classes. Her schooling, her grades, the amount of studying she has to do, the time away from the kids and her family that she has to take, and her unknown future as a nurse. It's hard to hear my sister say that she's more miserable than she's ever been (because for a Sheridan that means that she's pretty miserable), but all I can do is encourage her. Let her know that she's doing the right thing to finish her degree (just the summer and fall to go!), to get the education, to think about the rest of her life, and to follow through on her plans. She's a great inspiration to her kids. They may not appreciate it now (my sister gets a lot of guilt trips from them for missing certain school or social activities if she's studying or at clinical), but they will appreciate it later in life, this hard-working mother. And if my sister ever feels really miserable, at least she has three of these lovely faces to admire: Some of them may have more teeth than others, but they're all pretty darned cute and inspiring, and certainly capable of pulling anyone out of a miserable funk. I, for one, wish I could see my nieces and nephew, and sister and brother-in-law, more often, so that some of their inspired cuteness could snap me out of some funks, too.

Another week (plus) in review.

Saturday, March 27:


Sunday, March 28:


Monday, March 29:


Tuesday, March 30:


Wednesday, March 31:


Thursday, April 1:


Friday, April 2:


Saturday, April 3:


Sunday, April 4:


Monday, April 5:

Friday night lights.

I left work early today. Like, really early. I took the 4pm train home. And the sun was shining and the weather was nice, so I decided to forgo the gym and just jog/walk around my neighborhood. It was much nicer doing that than going to the stuffy, crowded gym. I'm glad I made that decision.

One decision that may not make me so glad is my decision to embark on a a homeopathic treatment, because I can no longer indulge in my decaf iced coffees every once in a while, wear perfume, or have mint (or menthol, eucalyptus, and there's probably other things, too). The mint thing includes minty gum, toothpaste, mouthwash, minty ice cream (including peppermint stick!!)... you know, all the things that I love. This is a huge sacrifice for me. Huge. There are some homeopaths who say that you don't have to give up coffee, or perfume, or mint, or that you can do them all in a much more limited and controlled fashion, but mine suggests giving them all up completely, especially when you're starting your treatment, since you don't know how your body is going to react to the remedy. So tonight, when I went to the grocery store and was reaching for the jug of mint tea, I had to stop and remind myself that I couldn't have that kind. And when I pushed the cart past the gum aisle it reminded me that I had to get non-minty gum, because that's all that I had at home. I will now chew bubblegum flavored gum, and cinnamon flavored gum, but not bubblemint or cinnamint, and I will brush my teeth with lemon toothpaste laced with anise oil. The anise oil does leave my mouth feeling surprisingly refreshed, but that feeling is nowhere near as lasting as it was when I used my super-minty toothpaste with mint-blasters. The things I do, all in the desire for a better quality of life! Seriously.

But here's something that gives me a better quality of life, and I don't have to give up anything for it: Yes, I am wearing a down comforter and holding two citrus-y soaps, thanks to Chris and Chris and Ruby. I've always liked the basic idea of the Snuggie, but didn't like the idea of having it be a blanket and open in the back. And I guess I could have pined for a regular bathrobe, but they're just not warm enough. This down housecoat, though, this fits the bill, especially more so because it has a fashionable Asian design. I highly endorse the product. You can buy your very own here.

I also highly endorse having freshly-cut flowers in your house at all times. We don't have them here nearly often enough, but when we do we all love them. All of us. Even the furry ones. These flowers were intended to be my birthday treat, but they ended up being Meg's birthday treat, too. Which was fine, actually, because on March 25th it was Meggie's 7th birthday. We now have had her for seven years! Seven wonderful, fur-filled, sleepless years. Thank you, Meg, for adding such joy to our lives, and for not completely killing the flowers. We can now see them opened and vibrant and placed on higher ground where the cats haven't been tempted to roam.

And now I am off to brush with my Homeodent, and then hop in bed to watch what I can of Benjamin Button before I oh-so-unfortunately fall asleep. If I make an attempt to watch the movie but don't get all the way through due to no fault of my own, then I can without guilt send the movie back to Netflix and await the arrival of... Ghost Town? New weekend chore - reshuffle queue.