Hello, October

I'm so glad tomorrow marks the first day of October. I've always loved October. As a small child it meant picking pumpkins out of our garden and carving them with mom and dad. My dad helping us carve scary faces while my mom roasted the seeds in the oven.

October in Nebraska is perfection. The temperature plunges into the 50's, making sweaters and jeans a necessity. The leaves change color and crunch underfoot. In high school October meant football games on Friday night (boy chasing/watching! swoon!) followed by golf meets on Saturday morning. State golf was always in October, which meant an all-expense paid trip to the illustrious and exotic "Grand Island" in south central Nebraska. It was neither 'grand' nor an 'island' but it did have a Holiday Inn Express with an indoor swimming pool. That was the king of swank for me back then! (Who am I kidding, it still is!)

For some reason I've been nostalgic for Fall back at home... In fact, last night I woke up tremendously homesick. I think it had something to do with the windows being open, but I woke up longing for the last few rounds of golf at the Plainview Country Club before the snow set in. The Husker games in Lincoln and the Plainview Pirate football games wrapped in a fleece blanket clutching a cup of hot chocolate. The excitement of youth in those shortening days and lengthening nights that promised adventure and little bit of trouble.

Now seems as good a time to mention it: I am visiting home December 26 through the 30th. It will be short. It will be good. Lavernivus is turning 60 on the 27th.

Until then, I will enjoy the bittersweet emotions of fall from afar.

Up To Date

So many updates!! I’m going to try to keep this brief, though, because my hands are swollen from the 18 holes of golf I played yesterday (at TPC bow chicka wow wow). These hands are not used to that anymore. I’m such a pussywillow!
So! The weekend! Look at the amazing weather I had out at the beach on Saturday morning complete with a double rainbow. What a great way to kick off a weekend. Gotta love surfing in 80 degree water and 75 degree air.
Then I spent the rest of the weekend putting up fence posts in the backyard with Schuyler, painting the living room, and just general working around the house. I currently have 160 pounds of concrete mix in the trunk of my car. The work is not yet done and I’m beat.

However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a ‘shred’ update. And the fact that I graduated to Level 2 (cue Rocky music) and the jumping portions of Level 2 have me rattling the rafters in the house. Schuyler says I look like I’m flailing around like an epileptic stork. I would have to agree. I did weigh myself this morning and I’m back to my original starting weight. So I still have 7 pounds to lose. And I haven’t had a carb in a week. Ok, I take that back. I had a cookie yesterday after my round of golf. Although I convinced myself that I had earned it.

Perhaps this is why I never lose weight. I can always qualify my splurges. I should put this to practical use and become a lawyer. A big FAT lawyer. One that can afford painters and carpenters. Ahh, the dream…

Happy Adoption Day, Lulu!

One year ago today we adopted a twee little 6lb French Bulldog. She was 10 weeks old and just.too.CUTE.
Since then we've had quite the rollercoast ride with our little nugget. Massive vet bills, jokes about her being "SpewLu" because of her unfortunate digestive system.

But Lulu really is one of the lights of my life. She's so funny, well-behaved, friendly, playful, and above all- sweet hearted.

Happy Adoption Day Lulu. I love you!

Plague day five, Shred day three

I love coming down with a sinus infection! It’s so fun! Oh and why am I winking at you? That’s just my sty. His name is Bonkers. He causes me much physical and emotional pain.

As my sister told me today, I am a hot mess. That would be true. However, I’m not letting my hot mess-ness get in the way of the 30 Day Shred. I managed to do my workout yesterday after spending all day in bed. I think the meds started kicking in last night, so I quickly did the Level 1 for the second day.

I will get to my third round tonight.

So far? No progress has been made unless you count the all-over tenderness in my body. In fact, according to my scale this morning I’ve gained two pounds since Monday. But my scale is a little temperamental, and I did have brownies for dinner last night. (I swear, it was the only thing that sounded good. And I’m siiiiickkkk. I get what I want when I’m sick, right?) I think I’m just retaining a little water, so I’m not going to weigh myself again for another week.

I took some super-sweet before pictures, too. The big reveal will be October 21st. If all goes to plan, I will be greasing myself up and going as The Incredible Hulk for Halloween I plan on being so shredded.

Oh, and on a side note, Schuyler referred to this experiment as the “Squish” yesterday. He said, “so are you going to Squish today or do you feel to sick?” And I looked at him like, Oh lawdy he’s made up a new word for foolin’ around. I figured all the eye winking Bonkers the Sty has made me do, he thought I was coming on to him. After a weird look he pointed at my hand weights and said, “that Squish or Squash or whatever you and your sister are doing.” Ha. Ha. Haaaaaaaa. Boys are so weird.

Pounds Lost: +2 (UG)
Number of times I’ve told Jillian to go F herself: 8

30 Day Shred

Hello All. I am announcing structure to this weblog that is usually filled with random rantings about my weird life. The randomness is now gone. I am now blogging to document my highs and very low lows, my triumphs and my failures… of the 30 Day Shred.

I have a silent partner in this quest, but I don’t know if she wants me documenting her struggles along with mine. So we’ll just refer to her as “Silent Partner.” The Silent Partner has already done her Level 1 workout today and we both have had the same reaction: HOLY SHIT. Seriously, I always pictured myself someone who is in pretty good shape (hey, I can run an 8 minute mile ya’ll.) But. Uh. No. This made me so dizzy it was ridiculous. It made the my Silent Partner up chuck. This better get easier… something tells me it only gets harder. However my motivation is the wedding dress I ordered this weekend, and paid for (no refunds, sucker!) and the fact that it might be a hair too small. We don’t know, the sample I tried on was a size 12 which was like wearing a potato sack. So the size I ordered was off my measurements which, HA, indicated that my bust is a size zero and the rest of me is- well, much more than a size zero. So we ordered a size in between my butt size and my bust size. Thus- I need to reduce my butt in order to not pay $100+ for alterations. Or something. We’ll see. It doesn’t get in until January. I have lots of time to obsess over it.

I’m trying to decide if I’m going to post my start weight for all the internets to enjoy or if I’m just going to say that my target weight loss is 7 pounds.

For now, I’m going to stick with the 7 pounds.

*Update: Silent Partner just said I could reveal her identity. It’s my sister! She just had a baby! Let’s all look at the cute wittle baby:

Not just Top Ramen...

Pearls of wisdom I have gained from living with a chef:

Slice back and forth, do not chop. Chopping gives a girl a dull blade.
Chef’s have special band-aids. They are blue. The blue makes them easy to find when they fall into the food.

Let’s all take a moment to shudder after that last one.

Cookies don’t cook right if you’re too impatient to wait for the oven to heat up. Patience is rewarded, fatty!
Any recipe that calls for “crushed corn flakes” or “mini marshmallows” will not be taken seriously. (Thus voiding the legitimacy of roughly 87% of all the recipes protected and cherished by my extended family.)
Butter really is better.
I now know what the following terms and jargon mean: amuse bouche, stodge, 86’d, frisee, torchon, in the weeds, mise en place. Granted, you can learn and hear these words by watching Top Chef or reading No Reservations. However—who actually gets to use them in daily conversation? That’d be me!
When mixing large quantities, use your hands. It’s way more affective, AND fun.
Reducing a recipe that makes 15 dozen sugar cookies in a recipe that makes ‘just enough cookies for a small family gathering’ takes MAJOR math skills. And perhaps a metric converter application for your iPhone.

I would like to thank Mr. Cook for giving me all the tools to decipher an episode of Top Chef, order off an impossible menu, and keep the crushed cornflakes out of my recipes.

Sorry, Kelloggs.

Milk Crate Jungle

So. The backyard. It all started like this…

Once upon a time a boy wanted to start a heirloom tomato patch in Florida. Unfortunately, the Florida soil cannot sustain a tomato plant. The PH is all wrong, or something. So, the always intrepid boy acquires some milk crates, lines them with garbage bags, and fills those bags with nice store-bought potting soil along with tomato fertilizer. However, thanks to Google searches, we found out that to avoid having tomato-eating bugs destroy our future crop, the milk crates should be elevated off the acidy-useless-non-fertile-bug-filled Florida soil.

Hmm. What could we use? Something free. Something we have a lot of… hmm.

Ah. Beer bottles from the recycling bin. The narrow end gets hammered into the ground with a rubber mallet, and the flat top supports one corner of a milk crate.

We have 24 tomato plants. That is 24 milk crates. Multiplied by 4 beer bottles to hold up each crate equals: 94. That’s 4 cases of beer. So when Schuyler gets testy with me and says, “You need to chip in more around here,” I just point to the beer bottles. Because 94 divided by 2 is 47, and that's 47 instances of me 'chipping in.'

And they all lived happily ever after.

Because I promised...

After I posted the video of Lulu panting a lung up after playing 'stick' I got several requests to post a video of her actually playing stick. I suspect most of you think I'm lying about my little dog's ability to chase a stick, what with her legs being 3 inches long and her head taking up 67% of her body mass. Behold Lulu's addictiong to her doggy-crack, aka "the stick."

* You may want to watch it with the volume turned way down. Our neighbor was chipping a stump or chain sawing a tree or something godawful loud.
** OMG, a post about the contents of our backyard to follow, ya'll. It totally takes an entire post to explain the ways and means and... is that a milk crate held up by beer bottles? To which I have to say HEY, at least they are Sierra Nevada bottles and not PBR or Coors. We do draw the line somewhere.
*** My backyard is totally freaking you out right now, right? You really want to know what the deal is with the milk crates-- don't you? MYSTERY!

We actually do eventually throw the stick for her. This is just much more entertaining. She's got a great vertical, but no landing skillz yo.

Duuuude

Oh me oh my. I cannot believe I haven’t posted in almost a week. For shame, Margo.

So since we’ve last met here on the blawg, I have had quiet the week. Let’s see… our house is nearly finished! All that is left to do is dust the drywall particles off of everything (no small task) and paint the ceiling. I think we’re going to wait until next weekend to attempt both of those feats of strength. Right now we’re pretty tapped out in the home-improvement category.

I have, however, compiled a list of reasons why September is now on the up and up.
1.) The Daily Show will have new episodes starting this week. FINALLY. Life is so much sweeter when narrated by Jon Stewart.

2.) We are harvesting tomatoes by the bucket in the back yard. Although, I did manage to waste a good 15 of them during the salsa incident last Saturday. (Note: If you plan on making salsa, don’t put in the seasoning packet your future mother in law gives you from her last trip to New Mexico if the packet does not list the ingredients. My taste buds are still dead, and I had to throw out an entire pot of salsa. And New Mexico, what do you season your salsa with? Gun powder and battery acid?)

3.) The ridiculous (on my part) night out last weekend with the Ladies. I haven’t had a (non-book club) girls night out in forever! (Oh, man, I just re-read that sentence and hoo boy do I sound LAME.) I’m pretty sure I decided to finish everyone’s beers at the end of the night. I blame my father and his silly “waste not, want not” mantra of my childhood. Still, it was so much fun. Thanks Love, B for coordinating!

4.) YOGA. Duuuude. One of my college friends totally gives me yoga classes at her house. So I don’t have to sit in a row of 30 sweaty strangers. Famazing!

5.) New fall BOOKS. I’ve had a recent epiphany about how I spend my free time. I spend a lot of it watching TV or reading junk online about people I do not know. Last time I was in Yoga, Meghan said something along the lines of, “Let go of everything that doesn’t affect you.” Oh wow, I realized that I carry so much emotional ‘stuff’ around that does not affect my life. I LET it affect my life. So I’m working on working on myself. That means more books (I just ordered The Road and Republican Gomorrah on Amazon for like ½ price. I totally heart Amazon. I also ordered Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. Don’t judge me.) I hope to turn off the TV after my Jon Stewart fix at the 7pm rerun time, and get some reading in. I will try to become a minority in America, that is, know more about real culture and less about pop culture. I think The Real Housewives have started to rot my brain and I must reclaim it before it turns into compost.

Have a great Monday, ya’ll. I’m going to resist watching The Rachel Zoe project with all my might this evening. Wish me luck!

That's a lot of 'ations'

I’m on day 10 of sleep deprivation, home renovation, sanity obliteration.

Thus, I cannot post anything of substance. You’re lucky I’m still using punctuation and capitalization.

Hopefully this will all be over by Friday and I will have my brain back in time for the weekend. Brain, I miss you.

The Subconscious Bride

I have had two wedding dreams in the past weekend. Two. I don’t know why. This is really confusing as I don’t even possess the *squee* factor most ladies have in abundance when it comes to all things “wedding.”

Dream 1:
It’s three hours before my wedding and I’m riding in a pickup truck into Plainview, Nebraska. I am with some unnamed rough-and-tumble cowboy and something tells me I’m hitch hiking. This is confirmed when I ask to be let out at the second hand store and he drives off. I go inside to shop for a wedding dress. The store is packed full of clothing, but none of it is what I want. I ask a lady for help and she shows me the only “wedding dress” they have: it’s a polyester green tube dress. I say, “no no, definitely not what I’m looking for” and I leave the store to go get married. In my jeans. In Plainview. Hmmm, got anything Freud?

Dream 2:
My wedding has become a challenge on HGTV’s “Design Star.” I have 9 hours to decorate and plan my perfect wedding! To win! A prize! So instead of running off to the party supply store what do I do? I am trying to catch fish in a 100 gallon aquarium to give to a Board member at work. I am chasing around these two little fish with a net, and I am thinking to myself that these fish are really ugly but it is absolutely imperative that I catch them. Ya know, for the Board member. Who NEEDS THESE UGLY FISH LIKE YESTERDAY WOMAN! Then I invite the Board member to my wedding and she’s all “Can I bring my boyfriend?” and I say of course. Then Schuyler flips out on me because we don’t have room for these people. OH yeah, and it’s Design Star so it’s time to start designing. First task? I kid you not… I decide to wax the windows on the front door of the reception hall. WAX. Ummm, I just want to take a moment to go on record by saying that I know you cannot wax glass, but apparently my subconscious is all “WAX THE WINDOWS… THE WINDOWS INTO YOUR SOULLLLL.”. Then my alarm went off, so I don’t even know if I won the Design Star challenge OR if I even got married.

My friend Kim assures me it is only going to get worse as the date looms. I wonder what’s next?

Time to invest in a creepy dreamcatcher. (It might be just me, but this picture makes me feel like listening to the Grateful Dead while tie dying my entire wardrobe.)

Turn that frown upside down... yeah yeah

So I was totally planning on blogging about the OMFG-ness of my house right now. I could regale you with my story of the disconnected hot water heater and the joy of washing my hair in cold water this morning. And how not only do I not get Labor Day off (no, I don’t work at Taco Bell) I have to spend my entire “holiday” (pffft) weekend trying not to scowl and curse at the good hearted people who are working very hard to renovate my living space.

Try…. Not…to…scowl….tryingg…. not working….

UNTIL…

My sister sent me these pictures online today:

My scowl is lifting…

My wrinkled forehead is smoothing…


Yup. I’m smiling now. Goodbye, scowl. Thanks, Olive-Tree!

Lulu says she's HOT

Lulu loves to play stick. Going outside and saying “stick!” elicits the same reaction as saying “who want’s ice cream” to a Kindergarten class or “happy hour” to any fellow colleagues. Her eyes get big and bright and she immediately scurries to the nearest stick in the yard. Many days she has come back with tree limbs three feet long. (That would mean they were two feet longer than her.) What can I say? She must be part carpenter ant.

However, she is also part fatass. Which means that while playing ‘stick’ is doggy-crack for her, the high only lasts for a few minutes before she is panting a lung up. Behold- a video of Lulu after playing stick for a whopping ten minutes in the backyard.