I'm Doing This Backward

Now that is just my daughter and I alone, while my husband is out on the tugboat and my son has moved out, now when it's just us girls, now is the time for me to renew my membership at the local warehouse club.  She and I treat it as an event, an outing, a very interesting thing to do, and when we go, we go up and down every aisle, looking and checking and every time in the spices I say, "If only they had red curry paste," and my daughter says it with me because I literally say it every time.

We carry our bulk food purchases into our house in armloads, because we say no thanks to our purchases being packed in a bigger box, and the counter piles high with boxes of cereal and granola bars, bags of bread and bagels, various jars and cans of soups and whatnot (yes, this means candy) and if everything goes well and it is in stock, a brick of aged white cheddar.

Then I put things away and I moan over the fact that we bought too much and I don't have enough cupboards to hold it all and worry that we bought too much.  It is, after all, only the two of us.

I think I did this backward.  I should have renewed my membership a few years ago, when I had a houseful of starving teenage boys and a husband who packed a daily lunch!

This almost monthly shopping excursion is on my mind because I've given her the last package of crackers for her lunch, and the granola bars are down to a handful, and there is once again space in the pantry.  It must be time to make a list and then mostly ignore it!

A Winter Trip To Seaside

Growing up, the idea of never having been to the ocean, never having had salty waves lap at my ankles, never breathed in deep of that wonderful tang that is the ocean, never sat on a sandy beach and watched waves crash over themselves in a race to the beach, made me feel weird.  I decided early on I could never live in a land locked state.  There is something soothing to my soul knowing the beach is just a hop, skip and a jump away.

My daughter has the same feel.  So when we asked her if she'd like to have a mini vacation over this past three day weekend, she said yes.  We asked if she had a hearts-desire vacation and she said yes.  Seaside.  It's a five hour drive down to the Oregon Coast, and we couldn't leave until Saturday afternoon, but the call of the literal sea-side was too much to resist.

We went.

It was stormy and rainy and cold and absolutely wonderful.

This post inspired by prompt #3 at Mama's Losin' It!

Love

Love is grand when it is right
And right when it is buoyantly solid
Floating bubbles of delight
Bedrock foundations of contentment
An emotion that gives us wings
And keeps us grounded
That shelters us in storms
And storms at us in shelters
The highs will also see some lows
But Love is grand when it is right


Inspired by prompt # 2 at Mama's Losin' It!

Spoiled

As I was carefully cutting away any questionably icky pieces of a boneless skinless chicken breast, I acknowledge that I am very spoiled.  I'm not that far removed from going out to the hen house and wringing a neck for dinner (my Grandma did it) but here I am being picky over food.

Not just picky, but wasteful too.  I hate raw meat and I have a life long fear of chewing a gristly something that can't be broken down by sharp teeth, so I discard everything on that piece of chicken that might come across as 'ew'.  My pile of garbage scraps is embarrassingly large.

I stand in my warm kitchen, with lights and power and cupboards stocked with plenty of food, and I pick and choose the things I will and won't eat and I know I am spoiled.

In the event of a zombie apocalypse, I will have a tough time of it.  But until then, I know I am terribly blessed, and I am so very thankful for the sharp knife and the butcher who made my paper wrapped piece of chicken breast a possibility!


This post inspired by prompt #1 at Mama's Losin' It!

Who Doesn't Need A Styrofoam Head?

I mean, really, who doesn't need, in an absolutely-must-have-soul-satisfying way, a stryofaom head?

I decided I needed be looking for just such a head as I shopped garage and estates sales.  And then today, at the first estate sale of 2014, in a room filled with boxes of junk, bags of plastic bags, a broken barbie and lots of pancake syrup, I spied it.  The head was beat up, it was knocked down, it was not so pretty.

I picked it up.  I  put it back.  I picked it up and I shook it all about.  Kidding.  I put it back, left the room, and treasure hunted the rest of the house.  At the end, with my husband more than ready to go, I walked back into the room, picked up the seen-better-days stryofoam head, and added it to my pile.  If the price was right, I could maybe paint it or something.

The price was right, so I brought home a head, with pins stuck in it like a voodoo doll, and set on the table and put some vintage hats on it and squealed with delight.  Then I started researching how to beatify my find.

Discovering that modge-podge works great on styrofoam, and that I had both modge-podge and a clean brush, there wasn't any question as to what I would!

Before:

After:

  

So the question really changes from who doesn't need a styrofoam head to: 

Does the hat go like this?

 Or this?

Turns out I'm hat illiterate.  Without a tag clearing defining the back, I'm lost!