It's new to me

So here are some things that I've discovered/tried/liked lately.

1. This whackadoodle gift shop at my local mall. I've walked past it many times but never gone inside until today. OMG. If you're ever in Austin and need someplace to buy a fake skull that holds restaurant-style salt and pepper shakers in its eye sockets, a life-sized semi-pornographic fairy sculpture for your garden, a neon pink katana, a crapload of cell phone charms and some Pocky, I can hook you up. One-stop shopping!
2. Elk. You know, the animal? Or more accurately, the meat from the animal? I am always looking for non-CAFO animal protein to which none of my family members are allergic (P is allergic to poultry, C is allergic to beef, my body can't metabolize non-heme iron and we are all sick of pork). My local health food store had ground elk so I made meatballs out of it and we all loved it. It's very lean and tastes a lot like beef, only richer. Not gamey at all. Will DEFINITELY buy again.
3. Starbucks. Oh, I know. But see, I've managed to completely avoid Starbucks all these years. First I didn't like coffee, then I DID like coffee but couldn't handle caffeine, and I was intimidated by all the roasts and shots and pumps and whips and whatnot. However, while we were traveling over the holidays P taught me the code words to say for the drink I like and now, a couple of months later, I've got a grande decaf soy latte monkey on my back. (And he brought his friend, the cranberry-orange scone monkey.) I feel so unclean. But I cannot deny, that freaking coffee is DELICIOUS. (And so are the scones. God help me.)
4. Sherlock, the contemporary version of the classic with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson. My local PBS station shows this on Sunday nights right after Downton Abbey, which means Sunday nights are suddenly the most awesome nights of all time. I don't usually like "updated" classics but this one, I love. Cumberbatch is pitch perfect and I have adored Martin Freeman since The Office.
5. "Resistance" by Muse. This really could not be further from my "usual thing", musically speaking, but I heard it while sitting on an overstuffed ottoman waiting for daughter H to finish trying on clothes at Kohl's and I fell in love with it. I don't even know myself anymore, you guys. (Do I like Muse now? Am I ALLOWED to like Muse? Are they too young for me? OMG, THEY PROBABLY PLAY THIS SONG AT STARBUCKS.)

In other news:

1. I have a new laptop, because I keep killing laptops. I hope not to kill this one anytime soon. My old favorite photo editing software doesn't run on the new laptop because apparently the company that made it was bought by another company in 2004, which tells you how old my copy of this software is, and anyway I can't edit photos now so I'm not posting any until I get new software and have learned it. And since learning curves are my anathemata ... it might be a while. Is what I'm saying.
2. Son C fell in the shower yesterday and while he did not get hurt (apart from some bruising), WHICH IS THE IMPORTANT THING, he did somehow manage to destroy, like, an entire wall in the upstairs bathroom, and all the tile on it, and all the plumbing behind it. We picked an excellent time to replace our floors, eh?
3. Speaking of the floors, the dog is still completely freaked out by them and I am so over it. We have done everything but smear the floors with cheese and cat poop to convince him they are awesome and totally not going to kill him, but he is not having it. I think we might have to lobotomize him. Or I might have to move to another house and take the floors with me. Or start drinking more.

Yep. That's about all that's going on around here.

Stuff and nonsense for your Friday

So what happened was, we got new floors.

They're hand-scraped hickory, and they're only downstairs and on the actual stairs (upstairs is still manky horrible carpet).

And I love them. I love that they are all distressed and mis-matched, like crappy old wood that we just found rotting in a pile somewhere and decided to put on our floors.

Even though they show, like, every single speck of dust. As you can see by these photos. Fortunately daughter H's OCD has kicked in and she's sort of obsessive about Swiffering them (when she's home, which she wasn't when I took these photos).

UNfortunately, in getting these floors we broke the dog's brain. He has only two speeds: OFF and 11. If he isn't sitting/lying perfectly still, he is running around like a crazy thing. So, he slides on the floors. Which makes him afraid of the floors. Which makes him want to run across them even FASTER. Which causes him to slide. Which makes him afraid of the floors. Rinse, repeat.

We have a bunch of rugs thrown around everywhere and he kind of hops from one rug to another like he's playing a game of Frogger. It would be funny if it weren't driving me absolutely nuts. I'm not sure which one of us needs sedatives more, quite frankly.

Apart from the floors and the dog we are our usual busy selves around here. I found out one day before the first rehearsal that son C was going to be in a week-long musical performance for school, so that was fun. We're still in the midst of that now, and since it's at night and I can't see to drive in the dark, husband P has been ferrying him around while I stay home to help H with her homework, which seems to involve an awful lot of glue and colored sand lately for some reason.

Speaking of homework, son C is supposed to be reading Jane Eyre just now, although I don't think he actually is, and since I hadn't read it myself I thought it might help if I did, and so I am. (It's appalling how many classics I haven't read considering I minored in English in college.) I am enjoying it quite a lot and trying to convince C that he will too, but he's too busy playing Skyrim. Oy. Meanwhile I have ordered a paperback copy, even though I don't read real books anymore, of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and am very much looking forward to reading that as a followup, assuming I even remember how to read real books. We shall see.

Prior to starting Jane Eyre I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I also hadn't ever read, and now that I have I'm thinking that could have been a MUCH better movie in the right hands. Just sayin'. I read TWWoO because H and I have tickets to see a Broadway Across America production of Wicked in a couple of weeks, and I was thinking I might re-read the Gregory Maguire book before seeing the musical and that it might be nice to have a frame of reference before reading the book this time, only now I've decided NOT to re-read the book beforehand and instead just to enjoy the musical for what it is without the need for comparisons. So. I'm glad we got that all worked out.

Let's see, what else is going on? I've had the same weird, nebulous crud that I get every year around this time, which I always assume is some sort of flu that my body is fighting off owing to having had the shot back in October. (Except this time it might actually be dust/cedar poisoning. Hard to tell.) I'm trying to beat it back with naps, hot toddies and lots of sriracha. That usually works.

My hair, which I shaved off in May 2010 and have been growing back for a little over a year, is making me completely insane but I am not going to let myself shave it again because boy howdy, that was a pain to maintain. Assuming I didn't want to look like a Monchhichi, which I did not.

I recently read this article and loved the concept of setting seasonal goals rather than annual goals, so I promptly resolved to make more homemade granola, take more photos and drink more chai tea this winter. So far I've made ONE batch of granola (coconut almond -- it's OKAY, but not worth sharing the recipe until I've tweaked it), taken ... the three photos you see in this post, and consumed not a single cup of chai tea. Heh. I even suck at REMEDIAL resolutions.

Yep, that's about all I've got. Enjoy your weekend.

New year, same old me

Hello, I did not mean to quit blogging at you for so long but the thing is, I have been too busy sneezing. Sneezing, blowing my nose, throwing away tissues. That is all I do now. There's no time for anything else.

We're all sneezing really, even the dog, and the reason we're sneezing is that Phase One of our big home improvement project has been completed, and that particular phase involved cleaning out closets and clearing bookshelves that hadn't been dusted in ... well, EVER ... and also ripping out 9-year-old carpet that had been professionally cleaned ONCE in its entire life, and now we're all dying of dust poisoning. I had no idea how much dust was lying dormant in my house until it all rose up in a great big angry tsunami which is still swirling around a couple of days later, trying to kill us all. You'd think opening the windows would help, but this is what's going on OUTSIDE the house right now:

Image courtesy of Your News Now.

Do you see that second column? The cedar? That is the pollen to which I am most allergic in the world. THE CHART IS NOT EVEN HIGH ENOUGH TO CONTAIN IT. I am going to die, I'm pretty sure.

I did manage to accomplish a few things earlier this week, before the very air I breathe went on its murderous rampage:

1. Bath and Body Works put their tiny little holiday-scented candles on sale, one candle and one little glass holder for $1.50. I am not even going to tell you how many of these I bought, but suffice it to say that the next several Christmasses around here are going to be EXTREMELY fragrant.
2. The prize I won during NaBloPoMo arrived! And I was very excited. And very sad that I no longer read real books. And then I looked it up on the Kindle and it was only 99 cents, so I bought it. That's right. I WON A TOTALLY FREE BOOK and then I BOUGHT ANOTHER COPY. Please mark this down as reason #4,583 why I am not a millionaire, and reason #52 why husband P is in charge of all our money.
3. Speaking of (Kindle) books, I read Darcie Chan's The Mill River Recluse and liked it well enough, and then I intended to read Jennifer McMahon's The Island of Lost Girls because I very much enjoyed Promise Not To Tell, but I accidentally read a free sample of Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends instead and decided that I had to read that next. So I am. And it's good.
4. I took advantage of an Amazon gift card and bought a whopping ton of MP3 music, including the first album I ever bought with my own money (Queen's News of the World) and all the Florence + The Machine I could get my hands on. (Also The Head and the Heart. And some old Chicago. I know, I am so eclectic! Or maybe just weird. I'll let you be the judge.)
5. I bought a poodle calendar for 50% off and hung it in my bathroom next to the toilet. Yes. That happened.

And that pretty much brings you up to speed. More soon, I hope. If I don't die.