Author: eaumaison (Page 164 of 210)

This has changed my life:

Dubbed the “Clever Cat” litter box, it’s a top-entry poophouse for your cat.

Molly never grasped the concept of putting her bum inside the litter box. She prefers hanging her tail over the edge while sitting in the box, presumably thinking that all four feet are inside the box and that’s good enough. After having her for a couple weeks I bought a box top to create three walls, but she still managed to dribble out the door flap occasionally. So I come in every couple weeks to clean up the spilled pee. (Yes, I put a mat underneath but still. Gross.)

Years later I find this box. FOUR walls! She adapted right away and we have been mess free for a week. I don’t know that the fancy top mat with hole is necessary. Once I set it up I realized I could have bought a large rubbermaid tub and it probably would have worked just as well. But the idea of catching her with her head poking out makes me laugh. Sort of like this rest stop we used to visit in Wyoming or Utah on our family roadtrips. The stalls were short so you could see your neighbors’ heads while peeing, like this:

How come I’m finally wide awake now that it’s time to go to bed? I skipped trivia because of this and now I hardly feet sick? So not fair.

Saturday is all-appetizers cooking club and I have no idea what to make. Someone should point me to some links.

I love going home to my parents’ house in Grand Junction for the holidays. There’s good company and food, comfort and support, and time sort of stands still. With a week and a half left of school vacation I forced myself home New Year’s Eve, a blessedly uneventful drive. A Saturday night itchy throat turned into a full blown head cold Sunday morning. Today I’m feeling on the mend with the help of chicken soup, sprite, and a mountain of moist tissue balls. Ick. Last night around 3:20 AM when I got up to get a warm washcloth for my head I decided that today would be my computer-working day. I would upload photos, blog, look for a good note-taking iphone app, upload music and movies, and update my resume. Here are some select photos, the rest will be on flickr shortly. Some were taken from Ben’s flickr photostream.

The snowy view from my the back balcony. Those criss-crossing tracks are from the deer. They swoop in at night and nibble in the garden like it’s a salad bar.

There was a lot of this. And waffles.

After a day in GJ we drove up to Salt Lake to visit family. Grandma made a feast for our arrival. The next day we had a heavy winter storm. I read a book and knit the day away. Ogden offered a nice knitting shop where I got some gorgeous yarn. We had to stop at the Arctic Circle for fries with fry sauce on the way home. By night the roads were clear enough to see the Temple Square lights. They have the best tree lights. No one else knows how to wrap a tree so well. At the end of the night we met Andy and Jen at a french bistro where I had a wonderful beet and goat cheese salad. I’m going to try to recreate it at home this week.

We were back in GJ for Christmas. Andy came down too with Linus. Ben drove over from Denver with Jem, so my parents’ house had two cats and two dogs. They behaved surprisingly well with only a few claw-fights. Ben’s mom had trouble coming in from Maine because of winter weather. Richard drove her over the mountains late Christmas morning. We opened presents at my folks house on the 25th and at the Masons on the 26th.

I love sharing presents with my family. I like to give handmade gifts when possible. My folks always have a few surprises for us. I knew that we would be getting iphones for Christmas (and I LOVE mine!). But they also found a 1940s nurse’s cape and a vintage copy of Julia’s Child’s French Cooking book. Mom, Amanda, and I have been passing around Child’s memoir “My Life in France” all year. It’s so funny to read the final recipe book that she spent so much of her life trying to perfect.

The biggest surprise came from Ben. He presented me with a box of sparkly earrings and a card that read “I changed my mind.” I’ve been thinking about getting my ears pierced for months and the only thing holding me back was Ben’s insistance that he liked the fact that I didn’t have pierced ears. With his go-ahead I had my ears done at the Retina Center. More pictures to come in a later post.

Grandma came down a few days after Christmas on her way to St. George. She helped me figure out how to use my cheese making kit that was under the tree. (Note the lovely anthro apron from Amanda, that has it’s own apron! Oh, the cuteness!)

I tried to make the scones from Cooks Illustrated twice. This second version with blackberries and candied orange peel would have been perfect if I’d pulled them out of the oven a bit sooner.

I was able to get together with old friends to catch up.

Funny, it feels like I did so much more than I have pictures to show for. Oh well. Like I said, good food, good friends and family, lots of games and sleeping and knitting. What more could I ask for?

Ben’s birthday is 1/1, easy for me to remember. We had a lovely brunch with his parents and saw Benjamin Button (loved it). We finished the evening with pizza and ice cream cake. Pretty low key but nice. I got him a cool camera strap and a book on bizarre WWII inventions, since he’s kind of a WWII nut.

Resolutions are everywhere and I feel I should declare mine publicly so I stick to them. I only have one real resolution and it’s been the same for several years = lose weight and get back in shape. Seriously y’all, I appreciate your comments that I don’t look fat and I don’t need to lose weight, but you don’t know that I just have good genes to carry weight well. Sitting in lectures for hours every day gave me a comfortable, squishy butt. I weighed in this morning at my highest ever. To put it in perspective:

Last year this time weight (minus) pre-marriage college weight = 10 pound gain over 7 years
Current weight (minus) last year this time weight = 15 pound gain over 1 year

I know I won’t be able to get down to my ideal 125 pound high school wt, but to be back in that early marriage era range is realistic and healthy. How will I do this? I looked at dance classes and can only afford one a week, and they’re all in the evening. No good. I looked at gyms after talking to Kristin (who is gorgeous and svelte lately). The gyms here would be fairly expensive: 200+ initiation fees plus $30 a month. Plus they seem kind of icky with their sales pitches and guilt trips. Miranda (also doing resolutions) reminded me that the Wheat Ridge rec center is just up the street and offers all the same amenities. For 82.50 I get a 20-visit punch card: less than $5 per visit!

We quickly hatched a plan to get our butts there two times a week, even when I have classes. We went for the first time this morning and I feel GREAT! I was so much more comfortable working out with a buddy. Also half the people at the gym were oldsters instead of the tiny 19 year olds at Regis’s gym, where I was constantly intimidated during the workout. These flabby people are totally non-threatening. Well, except for the grizzly geriatric who did sit-ups in front of us while reclining UPSIDE DOWN and with a GIANT WEIGHT on his chest. Yikes. He could totally kill me if he wanted to.

So! The only diet change I plan to do is to go back to more vegetarian meals, less dairy, less white carbs, etc. Oh, and cut down portion sizes. All the regular stuff.

Other goals I’ve made that aren’t really resolutions but you could call them that:

• Get a sweet nursing job by July and start raking in the cash to our savings account
• Put up shelves in the basement storage room and clean it by Sunday
• Watch old movies with Brian more often
• Make a hat out of the yarn I spun
• Go to our family cabin with Ben and friends
• Get a new cat litter box
• Post Christmas vacation pictures before it gets embarrassingly late
• Sew tablecloths for Young Women

Hooray for fresh starts!

Merry Christmas all! I am squandering my days eating lots of dairy products on refined carbs, knitting up a storm, drooling at the yarn store, watching How I Met Your Mother with Amanda, and watching 30 Rock with the whole fam. I haven’t tracked down a firewire, so no new pictures yet. Above are pictures from my phone of what it’s like to have your ears pierced at The Retina Center. Also here are the “family portraits” that we took before Christmas to give to our folks.

Blogging to you live from my shiny new iphone. Oh, the wonders and bounty we unwrapped this morning. The biggest surprise would have to be a pair of sparkly earrings and ben’s blessing to get my ears pierced! Ok, blogging on a phone has been proven possible but slow, so I’ll be giving a proper, longer update on my laptop later. Back to app hunting for me!

Photos from thanksgiving were put up on flickr. The longer I wait, the less I feel like writing 🙂 Basically there was a ton of good food, lots of crafts to do, and natasha demanded a lot of attention. Check out the photos. Note that now you can go to my flickr page by typing in http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelsmason/

I went to trivia last night and have the photographic evidence to prove it. We held first for half the game and got bumped to a two-way tie for second, then lost the tie-breaker. How tall is Mt. Everest. We guessed 29,430 ft. It was 29,029, and the other team was just over 100 feet off. I guess they deserve it. But if Bob and Elle hadn’t missed the first two rounds we would have gotten at least 4 more points, putting us in first. Brian rocked the visual round – identifying images of He-man’s sidekicks. I earned my keep in the convenience snack food round, although I’m kicking myself for thinking that sponge cakes with orange jelly and chocolate are known in England and Ireland as Spotted Dick. Something about the description threw me off course and in retrospect of course they were Jaffa cakes. Funny, because I even mentioned them at one point during that round.

No fooling – check out this afternoon’s forecast:

So I’m really happy I don’t have anything I need to do this afternoon except bundle up in my quilt and watch movies.

It’s been a fun but busy weekend. I hosted the Cooking Club cookie exchange Friday evening. It gave me an excuse to get the house back in order, vacuuming every floor and even mopping the kitchen. Saturday I had to do my last clinical by helping out with the Easter Seals Discovery Club program, where parents can drop off their special needs kids for the day. I was paired with a sweet freshman boy with cerebral palsy. He couldn’t do much more than gesture yes or no and smile, but we had a fun day together. Well, sort of fun. I HATE changing man-pee diapers. It’s the closest I come to barfing when I have to deal with adult urine. But it’s gotta be done so I fulfill my duty. Glad it’s over though. After clinical I quickly put together salad and deviled eggs for a little dinner with friends. We had great food and played some Rock Band. Brian has pictures up on his flickr site.

Today I gave a lesson for the YW. We just looked at various artworks portraying the nativity and talked about them. It went very well, they got really into talking about each work, the symbolism, the times, and the emotion the artist put in them. I was very impressed with their comments. We listened to soft Christmas music and ate ginger cookies while we talked. It went over so well I’m thinking about doing another similar lesson for Easter.

So then I came home and wrote how happy I was that I have no obligations, and that’s still true. I love being unfettered, no deadlines or assignments. Sure I have a ton of personal projects that need attention (organizing the basement storage, shopping errands, finishing Christmas craft projects, turning in school papers, starting the job hunt). But I only have to answer to myself! Love it. Love it love it.

I have no obligations!!!! Pbbhttttttt! :-p

I’ll catch up the blog posts and clean my house . . . eventually.