a guest post from flat stanley

There was a largish envelope in my mailbox when I got home Monday night.  Inside I found Stanley, who came from Bird by way of Nana.  So far he's been a delightful houseguest, and we've had such fun together, that I asked him if he'd share with my imaginary readers here all of our adventures.  He very politely accepted.  Take it away, Stanley:

Thanks, Aunt Ellen, it's great to be here with the loyal fans of the opinions.  And of course, I can't say enough nice things about the good time you've been showing me.

Monday night I came out of the mailbox so late I thought we'd probably just introduce ourselves and turn in for the night, but apparently Aunt Ellen keeps much later hours than Nana and Popa because she hadn't even had dinner yet.  She let me cut up some vegetables for a salad, and we even had an apple dumpling for dessert. 

 
Aunt Ellen has new bedding, and I got to be one of the first people to see it.  She even had a small pillow just right for me, but she still wasn't ready for sleep.

We read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for a while.  We were very close to the end, so it was really exciting even if I didn't know exactly what was going on having missed the first 750 pages or so.

Her roommate Jess came home from work while we were reading, so I got to meet her.  She said I could call her Reginald, but I'm not sure why.

The next morning, I got to go to work with Aunt Ellen at the library.  Right off the bat, she got me set up with my own library card!  (I think she had to bend a few library rules to do that.  I hope she doesn't get in trouble.)







I got to play on the computer a bit--this cool computer has lots of games, and a touchscreen, but the headphones were really heavy for me.

I also got to meet the snowman I'd heard so much about.  What a nice guy!

 She let me pick out a book and showed me several books about my own adventures.

 

 I decided to read about the time I went to space, and Aunt Ellen helped me check the book out.

Back at her desk, she introduced me to some friends who were just my size.

Aunt Ellen does a lot of work at her computer, so I mostly just hung out and read.  She did have a class of kids come in to check out books from a nearby school, but she was so busy with them that I just stayed out of the way.

When we finally got home, I was worn out, so Aunt Ellen cooked dinner without me.  She let me have free rein of the remote while she was busy.  I watched the Disney channel, of course.









All day at work folks were talking about a big snowstorm that was supposed to hit on Wednesday morning, and we found out before bedtime that lots of schools and even the library had already decided to call a snow day, so we were excited to get to stay at home and have fun the next day.

Aunt Ellen says that she woke up and couldn't go back to sleep at 5:40 this morning, but she let me sleep in.  She woke me up around nine so we could have breakfast burritos.  I ate mine so fast she didn't even get a picture.  I promised I'd help her do dishes later if we could go out and play in the snow.  She was worried about me being too cold.  Nana made me a coat when I was in Kentucky because it was so cold, but I still needed some warmer gear, so Aunt Ellen made me a hat, scarf, boots, and mittens!  Isn't she a great aunt?

She was still a little worried about me, so she also wrapped me in plastic wrap.  It was a bit hard to breathe, but at least I stayed dry. 

 We set to work working on a snowman, and I wanted to make him flat like me.

 

Didn't we do a great job?  Aunt Ellen helped a lot, but Reginald just stood around mostly.

I also made a snow angel, which is harder to do you than you might think when you're flat.  It was still snowing and getting heavier.

Aunt Ellen and Reginald decided to take a walk up the street just to look around, but since the snow was nearly as tall as me in most places, Aunt Ellen left me to play safely on the porch.

It was really coming down out there!  We were soon ready to come inside, take off our wet things and warm up.  Aunt Ellen let me have hot chocolate with as many marshmallows as I wanted--and I wanted lots.

 We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon inside, so first we played some games of Uno.  I was just about to win when Aunt Ellen played the draw 4 wild card, but I was a good sport.

Later I wanted to do something crafty, so Aunt Ellen tried to teach me how to knit.  I started out doing all right, but then something went wrong.

Luckily Aunt Ellen managed to get me untangled.  She started getting sleepy in the afternoon.  I guess her early morning was catching up with her, so she let me play spider solitaire while she took a nap.  I think I improved her win percentage by quite a bit.  She needed the help for sure.

That's what we've been up to here.  I was worried that this post would be too boring compared to the clever, sophisticated posts that Aunt Ellen's readers are used to, but she assured me that people kept reading through those boring vacation diaries back in the fall, so I think we're safe.  It's been great to be here.  I secretly hope we get another snow day tomorrow, so Aunt Ellen and I can have even more fun together!  If the roads clear up, she's threatening to take me to Uncle Shane's.  Thanks for reading!

And thank you, Flat Stanley for your guest appearance.  Good luck in your travels.

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.

the year in books: nightlight, a parody

*****Series note:  It was not my intention to only post one book a month in this series.  I have just been so distracted by knitting and tv and the Daily Bible and blogging for the past month that I haven't been finishing books.  I've started a couple, but this is the first I've completed since Skeletons at the Feast.  Disappointing, I know.*****

One of my favorite things about working at the library is that I spend so much time talking books with my coworkers that they can actually make appropriate book recommendations to me, and I know enough about what they read and enjoy that I know whether or not to trust them. My friend Joi, who works at a different branch than me now, will actually put me on the hold lists when she discovers that authors we like are releasing new books.  It's handy, and as often as I play personal librarian to my friends and family, it's nice to have her (and other work friends) looking out for my readings interests.

The book I've just finished was the result of a coworker putting me in line for a book.  This time it was Cory the page who just knew that I'd enjoy Harvard Lampoon's Twilight parody, which was released last November.  I made my way up the hold queue a few weeks ago, and I'd had it checked out for 27 days before I realized that it was due back the next day, and as it had other holds waiting, I can't renew it.  So I started it on Sunday night.  Thanks to some completely unexpected snow on Sunday night/Monday morning, I got the day off on  Monday to finish the last chapter or so and eat ice cream cake and take a nap and blog and all those things that are best about a snow day. 

Let me say that when I read the first three books of the Twilight saga, I enjoyed them.  I wasn't all adolescent-girl, obsessed-with-a-fictional-character crazy.  But I liked them.  I was eager for the release of the fourth book, and then I was overwhelmingly, vastly disappointed.  The story just got silly.  It was such a departure from the first three books that they actually seemed worse by association.  So I was/am vastly amused by the idea of a parody.

Pale, gifted, tragic teenager Belle Goose moves from Phoenix and her mother to the small town of Switchblade, Oregon and her father.  It alternates from the painfully ridiculous to perfectly biting critique of the themes of co-dependence and obsession that always existed in the Twilight books.  It was just too awkward for me in a few places, but overall, it was a very pleasant reading experience.  I laughed out loud enough that Jess was bothered by it. 

I pulled out a few absolutely favorite quotes to share:

On Belle's first "date" with Edwart Mullen to an Italian restaurant in a neighboring city:

"He was more worldly and more otherwordly than I.  What world could I bring to our relationship?

The underworld, I thought, resolutely ripping in half my 'Get Into Heaven Free' coupon.  Looking back, I probably could have come up with a better world if I'd given it another  moment of thought.  Sea World comes to mind."

I giggled.

Then a few pages later, Belle is explaining to her dad about her new relationship with Edwart--that's right, Edwart:

"'I'm in the deepest love that has ever occurred in the history of the world.'

'Gosh, Belle.  When someone asks you "what's new?" the correct answer is, "not much."  Besides, isn't it a little soon to cut yourself off from the rest of your peers, depending on a boyfriend to satisfy your social needs as opposed to making friends?  Imagine what would happen if something forced that boy to leave!  I'm imagining pages and pages would happen--with nothing but the names of the month on them."

If you haven't read  New Moon that won't be funny at all.  But it does underline the parental neglect that leads to teenage girls falling in love with vampires.  Charlie would never have asked such a pointed and insightful question to the real Bella.

And just one more:

"Sometimes, the cape my imagination constantly projects onto his back distorts how I perceive reality."

You see, it's funny because it's true.

Final thoughts:
Great literature?  Of course not.
Amusing and insightful look into a cultural phenomenon?  Absolutely.
Recommended for people that haven't read Twlight?  Probably not.
Worth the time it takes to read 150 pages?  Certainly.

While I've been typing this, I got the call that I get another snow day tomorrow, so perhaps I'll have another book review for you later in the week.

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.