haikus

Seasonally-appropriate poetry:

Wintry weather nears--

More menacing than last time.

Snowpocalypse Eve.

Snow days fill my soul,

but I won't get my hopes up--

burned by that before.
 

Phil said spring would come

Guess the weather is balmy

in Punxsutawney.

Run on bread, milk, eggs.

Attention Kroger shoppers:

French toast goes with snow.

One piece of advice

if Snowmaggedon finds us:

turn into the skid.

Fear not, faithful fans,

Snowfallocaust may provide

guest post tomorrow.

some craftiness of late

Last week I had to come up with an after-school craft idea.  We'd just had a fairly substantial snow fall that some frigid temperatures kept around for much longer than we normally experience, so snow was on the brain.  A quick Google of snowflake paper crafts yielded a spectacularly lovely, deceptively simple project that was extremely well-received. 

Nice, huh?  I'm not going to show you the process, but if you want to make this stunning project, here's where I learned it.

The snowflakes became wildly popular around the library.  That happens here fairly often.  We get quite enamored of various crafty things from time to time.  A few weeks ago we got a new book in with loads of tubey crafts.  We've been making tubular crafts with empty toilet paper rolls for ages, but there were several fresh ideas in the book about which we were quite excited.  Then one day, Lisa realized that all of the columns throughout the library were giant tubeys waiting to happen, so we talked about how exciting it would be to do that.  Sometimes we hype ourselves up about things like that and then we don't have the time or inclination to make them happen, so I wasn't completely certain it would happen.  Pardon my skepticism.

Fast forward to today, imaginary readers, when we arrived at work just ahead of more forecasted snow.  Lisa declared it a snow day and decided that we were going to make that first giant tubey dream come true by building a snowman.  She put Susan to work making more of the 3D snowflakes, and we started planning our attack.  The column (which got painted this particularly violent shade of yellow this summer during our part of the remodel) started out like this:

After some measuring and wrapping we had our base up.

Next we added this:

And then this:

times seven or eight, which made this:

You're feeling it now, aren't ya?

Next came his scarf.  Yes, that is real fleece.  No flimsy, flappy paper scarf for our snowman.
The hat brim was my first true test.  After a fair amount of measuring and equations and fashioning a compass out of a pencil and yarn, I achieved moderate success.

The band and flower cover up some of the less attractive bits of construction and give him a jaunty flair.  Right?

Next came his arms . . .

 . . . and mittens . . .

. . . and buttons.  Because what self-respecting snowman doesn't have buttons?

And then he was complete--and precious I might add.

And then to make his winter wonderland complete, we added the snowflakes:

Couldn't you just die from the cuteness?

And this is what he looks like to the itty-bitties who'll come up and pat him and rip his arms and buttons off in the next few weeks.  It'll take a slightly taller kid to take care of the nose, but I feel fairly confident that it'll come off a few times too.  The good news is the dedicated craftsmanship that went into the project should insure that anything that is ripped off will not actually tear away the "snow" underneath.

For the record, it did snow for the middle part of the day, going from early mist/rain/sleet to great, fat, gorgeous flakes to dense flurries of tiny flakes.  But in the downtown area it just never stuck and my hopes of getting to close early (like the city offices and schools and everywhere else) melted along with all those snowflakes.  Such is life, I suppose. 

At least I have a long-lasting, all-weather snowman to show for it.

a bit of a ramble--blame the weather

 

Photo courtesy of bored roommate and reporter in the field Jess.

I never want to work for a place that can't declare a snow day.  Snow days are the most indulgent type of day-off ever.  A snow day is an excuse to wear favorite pajamas all day, cook every single thing that's in the kitchen without doing the dishes, and spend the remainder of one's time in the most frivolous ways possible.  So far today, I slept until nearly noon, drank chocolate milk (pre-snow day grocery store runs are all about self-indulgence too), watched last night's episode of Bones, made and consumed some lunch, and read a bit.  My afternoon if full of more of the same.  Bliss.  If I had some chocolate, I might die from contentment.

I went to the grocery on Tuesday because I was making dinner for my sweet Uncle Don who drove down to Little Rock to take a shot at fixing my broken dryer.  I didn't plan on going back, no matter what the weather might or might not do later in the week, but yesterday afternoon, I had to make another Kroger run to buy orange juice to take to Our House (a local homeless shelter) to go along with the brinner that we were serving last night.  So since I found myself at Kroger with all my weather-concerned neighbors and standing in line for one thing was going to be just as annoying as standing in line for multiple things, I bought the indulgent chocolate milk and the ingredients to try my first Pioneer Woman recipe.

Have I talked about my girl-crush on the Pioneer Woman here yet?  You know the part about my winning a $75 amazon gift card in one of her contests.  And I feel like, without doing the archival research, that I've talked about here other times too.  But maybe you don't know the depth of my admiration/stalking.  P-Dub cracks me up, and I want my blog to be just like hers when it grows up--without the livestock and the fancy camera and the homeschooling.  Her recipe posts are awesome, full of step-by-step pictures of what things should be looking like at each stage.  It's a delight.  So this week when she proclaimed that she had perfected a non-chunky salsa recipe, I was definitely intrigued.

I have salsa issues.  I love Mexican restaurant salsa, but I don't have even a smidge of love for thick or chunky jars of salsa.  The only kind I will ever buy is Tostitos Restaurant Style, which they stopped making for a few years but is now back, I'm happy to report.  But if sensible, frugal Ellen is leading the grocery shopping expedition, impulsive, salsa-loving Ellen doesn't get to pay $2.79, plus another couple of bucks for chips to enjoy a salsa experience.  I don't know why frugal Ellen gets so hung up about this.  I hate frugal Ellen.  She never lets me have any fun.  Luckily PW-loving, cooking enthusiast Ellen can sometimes show frugal Ellen who's boss.

Lucky for all my various personalities because PW's description of her new salsa recipe sounded like everything I wanted in a salsa--and there was very little chopping.  I hate chopping.  It uses canned tomatoes and Rotel and a food processor among other things.  I don't own a food processor, but I decided that all the ingredients were liquidy enough that I could try it in a blender.  So I went for it.  And it is awesome, possibly perfect.  Mine did turn out a bit runnier than hers, due to the blender, I'm sure, but I liked it that way.
  This morning frugal Ellen got curious about the cost of buying all those separate ingredients, so she got got out her receipt and did some math.  I already had the onion, garlic, salt, sugar, and cumin here at home, so the cost of those are not figured in, but the truth is, I always have those things at home, and I used such small amounts of each that the cost seems negligible for those ingredients.  Anyway I made 48 ounces of salsa for $3.78.  The jars of Tostitos are 16 ounces, I'm fairly certain, so technically I saved $4.59 by making my own.  Take that, frugal Ellen.  The only bad spot is that I'm almost out of chips and I'm committed to these pajamas.

In other news, I didn't actually make it to the homeless shelter last night to serve dinner after making that special trip to Kroger for o.j.  Yesterday morning I woke up with a ridiculous amount of pain in my neck from sleeping on it funny.  I tried to let the shower pound on it some, which is usually all my aches and pains need, but this was serious.  When I made the reflexive move of throwing my head back after removing my wet-hair towel, I thought I would hit the floor in agony.  It was bad.  I went to work and whined all day, and after the Kroger run, I decided that I couldn't take it any more.  So I sent the juice to Our House with Jess and made a date with my bed, some ibuprofen, and a heating pad.  I could make myself comfortable in various positions, but when I got up later to eat dinner and make the salsa, it still hurt, and this morning when I finally dragged out of bed, it still hurt.  It still hurts now.  I should probably take more ibuprofen.  Instead, I'm going to complain.  I don't like being old.

Frugal Ellen won another victory yesterday, besides the salsa incident.  Jess and I are moving to a new place.  Last week, our friend Dee told us that the other half of her duplex was about to be empty, so I put in a call to her landlord immediately.  We hadn't seen Dee's place at that point, but we knew she had two bedrooms and we knew she payed $225 less in rent than us.  That was definitely worth pursuing.  We were able to see Dee's house, which is a mirror image of her neighbors on Saturday, and we liked it enough to stay interested.  We were able to see the one that would actually be ours yesterday afternoon, and we're sold.  We're not moving until mid-March, which works out great for the remainder of our lease here.  It's in North Little Rock, which is closer to Shane and closer to work for me, but further for Jess.  She says she's fine with that.  She also says she's fine with the smaller closets, but we'll see about that.  The kitchen is small and has some storage and space issues, but I have too much stuff, so here's an opportunity to work on that.  Anyway, we're excited.  It's going to be fun to live next door to Dee--and not feel too worried that we're being too loud for the neighbors.  And it's going to be a delight to pay $112.50 less in rent every month.  Frugal Ellen's heart sings.

Now I've got to stop this ramble.  More frivolous entertainments await.  Wherever you are, imaginary readers, I hope you're warm and snug and safe.

too cold for responsible journalism

I had a brilliant plan for tonight.  Jess is gone to be in a wedding in Searcy this weekend, so I had decided to put off kitchen cleaning and de-Christmasing the apartment until tomorrow or Saturday in favor of starting either of the two books I need to crack open, being online and ready to take Pioneer Woman's 90s movie quiz when it went live, doing today's project 4:4 reading, and maybe watching Ugly Betty and Scrubs episodes from earlier in the week.  I had a fast dinner mapped out in my head, so that I wouldn't lose the whole night to being in the kitchen, and nothing was going to keep me at work past six.  And if all those things went as planned, I'd have some time at the end of the evening to blog about my reading project progress.

Things started to head south at work.  I did a Wii game day this afternoon and instead of packing it in at 5 when the kiddos left, I tried out a couple of the sports on our brand-new copy of Wii Sports Resort.  That wasn't frivolous or selfish.  I have to help kids with games all the time, and I needed to know how some of them worked.  Plus there's an unlocking element to some of the game features.  I was playing for the kids.  I also managed to have a mostly intelligent, big decision-making conversation while I was learning to throw a frisbee.  And it's not like I played for hours, maybe 20 minutes.  But then a couple of our teen volunteers came in, and I let them play for a while because I'm a sucker for courteous teenage boys.  Then after I finally kicked them out and with the competent help of Cory the page (whose pagely awesomeness deserves a blog post all its own--in a totally professional way), I decided on a new Wii storage schematic that will eventually simplify my life, but just took up time today.  And there was a fair amount of gathering of personal belongings once I made it back to the workroom, since I was deciding what to leave and what to take of the decorate-your-own-cupcake supplies from Lisa's birthday celebration today (a complete success, in case you were wondering).  So I guess it's actually borderline amazing that I got all of that accomplished by 6:45.  Those 45 minutes shouldn't have broken down the plan anyway.  Leaving work late is not my problem.

I realized when I got home that I hadn't factored in some time spent figuring out if I could fix the non-working dryer that Jess reported before she left.  The answer, curious reader, is of course not.  I did follow over-the-phone instructions from the Popster enough to know that it's not a breaker problem, and I'm quite certain it's plugged in.  The rest is beyond me.  Good thing doing laundry tonight was just a good idea rather than a desperate need.  And at this point in my evening I'm too tired, grumpy, and cold to feel guilty about not cleaning my kitchen, so the rest of my evening was salvageable.  A broken dryer, while frustrating, is not my problem.

Then the cold set in.  Perhaps, unless you've been living in a cave, you've heard that it's a bit chilly here (and lots of other places too).  And though the no-heat challenge has ended in our house, we've been keeping the thermostat set right around 60 and layering.  It is officially too cold for that.

Here are some other things for which it is too cold:
1.  reading--holding a book and turning pages means uncovered hands
2.  fast-forwarding through dvr-ed commercials--again with the uncovered hands
3.  computer usage--I never thought I'd live to see the day that physical discomfort could overcome my internet addiction, but that's the world we live in now.
4.  remembering stuff--I might have convinced myself to stay on the computer longer if the mind-numbing cold hadn't made me completely forget about that 90s movie quiz.
5.  staying awake--I finally lost the bone-deep chill that set in during my walk from the library to the far-away parking garage, and once I was cozy, sleep was too powerful to fight.  I would eventually wake up around eleven feeling too alert to switch from warm and snuggly on the couch to warm and snuggly in bed, which is why you're reaping the benefits of this rambling rant tonight.  You're welcome.

But that brief stint in alertness is fading fast, and my uncovered fingers aren't nearly so toasty as they were when I woke up, so (count your blessings, dear reader) the self-pity and incoherent mutterings end here for tonight.