Ovens.

Yesterday I broke the door off my oven. It isn't important how that happened--just so you know that I did finish painting my kitchen...

Anyway, I had to look at what a disgustingly dirty oven I have all afternoon. I finally decided it was time to clean my oven. Of course, not me personally. It does have a self-cleaning setting (which is quite lovely with an appliance.) I know. I've used it before. Once.

Since we had the instruction manual out to try to fix the door, I was able to get the oven cleaning setting information. It had times for average and heavily dirty ovens. Unfortunately neither of these options could describe MY oven. I added an extra hour for it to clean mine.

So, after 30 minutes the smoke alarm started going off. I opened all the windows and doors, hoping the freezing cold wind would help. It did not. My husband was able to rig up a fan which finally stopped the incessantly loud beeping of the smoke alarm. (The cats may never recover from this trauma.)

I think I'm supposed to wipe out the inside of my oven now. Except with the door now back on, I can no longer see inside it. I will most likely not remember. So basically I blame the door for my dirty oven. I'll get around to it the next time I paint.

Merry Christmas!

We decided to get Sarah and Heather laptops for Christmas this year since they'll be leaving for college this fall. We asked Heather what features she wanted her lap top to have. You know, stuff like a camera, Internet access, memory, etc.

"I want it to be purple," she decided.

So on Christmas morning she opened up her computer and smiled. "It's just what I wanted. It's purple."

Luckily for her, she has a long time to discover all the other features on her purple laptop.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

The Snow Cave

Alternative housing in case the need arises.

These accommodations sleep two comfortably.

The snow this year has a decidedly "industrial" taste to it.

Making snow angels with my honey.

This is Nick's excited face. See all the snow on the deck rail?

Shoveling the driveway on Saturday morning. They had to shovel it 3 more times because it just kept snowing and snowing...

It's harder than you'd think...

On my list of things to do today was "buy a maroon towel for Nicholas." Okay, I can do that. At the mall I went to Marshalls and looked through the towels. Man, there are a lot of different colored towels!

"Excuse me, but would you call this towel maroon?" I asked a lady walking past. "No, that is eggplant," she informed me. (Eggplant?!?)

Obviously this lady knew her colors. I wasn't about to let her get away.

"What about this one?" I asked holding up another towel. "No, I'd call that more of a paprika," she told me.

"This one?" I asked hopefully, holding up yet another towel. "Nope. Here let me show you." She led me over to the pillows and pointed to one. "This, is maroon. See, it has more red in it."

I lamented not being able to drag the color lady through the mall with me as I walked to another store. I immediately asked the sales lady at Sears, "Do you have any maroon towels?"

"The closest we have is cranberry." she replied. I left wondering why all the towels seemed to be named after food.

A few more stores later I went to JCPenneys determined to come out with a towel. "Is this maroon?" I asked another unsuspecting customer who had the good fortune to be lingering in the towel section at just the right time.

"What does it say it is?" she asked grabbing the towel and looking at the label. Labels! What a great idea...that I'd never thought of...

"It says it's 'Wine' colored." That was helpful. "Would you say that wine colored is also maroon?" I tried, desperate at this point.

"It's close," the lady replied. Probably just to get me off her back.

"I'll take it!" I yelled, excited to have finally found a towel I could buy. Some guy laughed and elbowed his wife. "Why don't you get that excited about towels?" he asked her.

So now I'm at home wondering what Nicholas will say about the towel. I don't know why I'm so worried. I mean the towel is just going to be used to wipe up spit from his trumpet. And I'm willing to bet that some poor kid is going to show up with a cranberry towel or dare I say it---an eggplant colored towel.

But at least it won't be my kid.

Dreams are a mysterious thing.

Three of my fingers were black with frost bite and I was standing in line to have a doctor cut them off. Every time I got to the front of a line, a guy from Pizza Hut would be there asking to take my order. I'd try to explain that I was waiting for the doctor---showed him my fingers--and he'd say "So do you want fries with that?"

I'd get in another line and the same thing kept happening over and over. Finally I asked the Pizza Hut guy why he was asking me if I wanted fries and he said it was because he used to work at McDonalds and it was a habit he just couldn't break.

My fingers never did get fixed. And now I'm awake and craving pepperoni.

Apparently I've met my musical match!!!

Family Resemblance.

Someone asked Heather if her parents played instruments. She told them that yes, they did.

"I knew it!" the guy replied. "I saw them rehearsing with the Orchestra."

"Actually you saw my dad and my sister---they are playing percussion for the Orchestra concert," Heather informed him.

"You look like your mom," he replied.

"But you didn't see my mom. You saw my sister!"

Unfazed, the guy tried again. "Then you look like your dad."

Dating...

We were driving in the car last night and I mentioned to the girls that some guy called and thought I was them and kept talking to me like he was going to ask me out. Finally I yelled out again that I was the mom and the girls weren't home.

They laughed because apparently he thinks that Sarah and Heather are the same person (which oddly enough, happens to them quite frequently).

My husband offered them $50 each if they promised never to accept a date with this kid. He then had to add that no one was allowed to ever tell the guy about this. If you think about it, if the guy or his parents ever found out, it could get a little awkward...

Of course, Heather being the entrepreneur she is, hopefully won't try to make money off this. "Will you give me more than $50 if I go out with you?"

'Tis the season...

Don't you hate it when you have a cold and it's bedtime? It takes like ten minutes to find just the right position so that you can breath out of one quarter of one nostril. Then just when you are drifting off to sleep your nose starts running...and you jerk awake every few minutes throughout the night and have to re-position yourself AGAIN.

I've decided the role of NyQuil is not to prevent any of that from happening but eventually with the correct dose, you just won't remember it. I'm still working on tweaking the dosage...I'll let you know when I've got it perfected.

This morning my nose is running and I'm trying to make "Crispels" (a recipe from the middle ages---kind of like scones but they don't taste as good) to drop off for Heather's class. I'm wiping my nose and washing my hands and wiping and washing and I'm in a cycle and I can't stop and the crispels are burning...so I stick a wad of Kleenex up my nose and continue on.

I'm almost to the high school office when I think to myself how great it is that my nose hasn't been running. I realize it's because I still have the Kleenex stuffed up my nose. Ahhh, this explains the look I get from several high school students on my way to the office...Lovely.

It's okay though, because hopefully with a large enough dose of Nyquil tonight, I won't remember any of it tomorrow...