Homemade Pretzels......

I was thrilled to find my bread machine last week, and I immediately made a loaf of warm, delicious bread. Personally I think the bread is a letdown after the aroma, but that's the nature of the beast. The crust on my bread was a little too crumbly, and it was hard to slice. So I gave up and just tore off huge chunks. You're my friends so I can admit that.

The recipe book that came with the bread machine has other stuff besides bread, and I'm hoping to try several of them. When I saw the recipe for pretzels, I knew I wanted to try those.

You know the kind .... yeasty, warm, salt-covered, chewy deliciousness that you can buy at a sporting event, or heck even for a day at the mall if you're so inclined.

My pretzels weren't pretty, as you can see by the picture below. Hubby looked up a video on YouTube and tried to show me how to tie them properly, but for some reason I was insulted by his offer of help. So I just looped them any old way I wanted to.

Next time I need to roll the strips out smaller and, yes, perhaps I need to practice tying some so they don't look like globs of pretzel dough. I used sea salt on them, which was perfect, but for my personal taste I need to use more next time.

Hubby doesn't like them, so I had all the pretzels to myself. I would like to pretend that this was the only pan of them and that I exercised some restraint. Both would be a lie, however. I ate so many pretzels that I skipped dinner. Or perhaps that WAS dinner. Wonder why I'm so thirsty now?

Now I need to find a recipe for some of that delicious, gooey cheese they serve with these bad boys.

(I haven't given up on my weight loss attempt. I just took a little tiny break from it today. Back on track after tomorrow!)

The Streak is Over........

Tonight was our first home gymnastics meet, and the first loss at home since 2005. I'm not disappointed, though. Our score went up, and oddly enough we will probably go up in the national rankings. Gymnastics is a weird sport in that wins and losses don't really count. It's the score that matters. Heck, the other team doesn't even have to BE there. You could just perform in front of the judges and email each other the scores.

The home team in a dual meet always ends on floor exercise, typically the highest scoring event. Visitors end on the high-pressure beam. And we had them on the ropes going into the final rotation. But floor turned out to be our nemesis tonight. No real major mistakes, but a lot of little ones.

We only lost by a tenth of a point, and we lost to the #3 team who also upset the defending national champs last weekend. We don't have to hang our heads, and neither should our girls. It's a long way to April.

Now it's time for the Falcons to kick off. My blood pressure is taking a beating tonight.

Not a Good Choice for a Speech Topic.....

When I was in college I took a public speaking course, and it's probably a good thing I did. I was terrified every time I had to get up in front of my classmates (about 20-25 people, as I recall), but the more I did it the more I got used to it. The terror, I mean. We had to do a different "type" speech each week. I don't remember what the specific types were, but I remember our teacher almost did back flips when someone FINALLY used hand gestures in a speech. (It's all too easy to get white-knuckled grasping the sides of the podium.)

The week we had to do our persuasive speeches, I was in the middle of a break-up with a guy I had been dating for almost a year. I've written about him before; he's the one who Googled me and then told me we shouldn't be communicating because his wife wouldn't like it. He sang in the Men's Glee Club; I sang in the Women's Glee Club. He was Jewish; I wasn't. His mother hated me; I couldn't figure out why. (Duh - Have you no idea about the whole Jewish mom thing? I didn't at that time.)

I was feeling bitter and sad and depressed and angry and all the things that go along with a break-up that was initiated because his MOTHER said for him to.

Being the genius that I am, I decided to do my persuasive speech on the topic of not dating people from other religions. Yeah sure, I can be objective about THAT.

I don't have the slightest idea of what my teacher looked like. But I remember that I started off my speech with a sentence that said something along the lines of, "I don't have to tell you how bad the divorce rate is in our country....." or something equally erudite.

I made it through my speech, but just barely, without becoming emotional. My instructor sat in the back of the classroom so he could watch us just like the rest of the class. He gave me some immediate feedback about my speech, and I remember that he chided me for saying "I don't have to tell you" and then telling it anyway. Makes perfect sense.

But I couldn't turn around and look at him. Tears had welled up in my eyes, and I just kept staring down at my desk. He must have been smart enough to figure out what was going on, because he didn't press the issue. I was embarrassed, and I'm sure the rest of the class was embarrassed FOR me. Or they were thinking, "Man, I'm glad that's not me."

Note to self: Next time you have to give a persuasive speech, don't choose a topic that's so personally painful.

What was I thinking?

Vignettes.........

Normally the title of this blog post would be "random thoughts." If I were drinking a beer, I would have titled this post "random thoughts." I'm drinking a glass of wine, however, and that demands a much more sophisticated word like "vignettes."

I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I do own a corkscrew. I think that is an important distinction. Lawanda the Warrior Princess gave me a bottle of muscadine wine for Christmas, along with a ...... I'm not sure what you call it .... a stopper? A thingie that you put into the bottle of wine on the off chance you don't polish off the whole bottle because it's so good? Yeah, that. It has the first initial of my last name on it, and it's the same as the first initial of LWP's last name, so it will always remind me of her for both reasons. I realize I could have saved the wine for a special occasion, but I deemed the college football bowl season special enough. And after the way MY team played in THEIR bowl game, polishing off the whole bottle was not only called for, it was darn near necessary.

On one of his several-times-weekly trips to the package store a stone's throw from our house, he bought me a couple bottles of replacement wine. (I don't think it had the effect he was going for, but whatever.) I didn't have the heart to tell him I gave up beer because of the calories, and I didn't need to replace them with wine. And I couldn't hurt his feelings by not drinking HIS gift, not after the way I scarfed up devoured delicately sipped that of the Warrior Princess.  Tonight I decided to open the bottle produced by a local winery. I thought I would give Hubby the rare chance to be useful debonair, so I asked him to open it for me. I was busy loading the dishwasher and stepping around him as he leaned against the counter watching me load the dishwasher.

He peered at the bottle for a moment. "How do you get this foil thing off?"

Sigh. I found the little hickie thing and peeled the foil off.

To his credit, he did know how to work the corkscrew. He opened the bottle expertly, set it down beside the dirty dishes, and walked out of the kitchen to sit down at his computer.

Sigh. Wouldn't the next NATURAL step have been to, oh I don't know, POUR ME A GLASS?

Hubby's granddaughter, known on this blog as the Sullen Teenager, although she is turning out to be much less sullen now that she is nearing the age of reason, is sixteen years old. She is driving now, which blows my mind in no small way. She's not your typical boy-crazy teenager (thank you heaven above for bringing TWO such level-headed girls into my life), but she has had three boyfriends .................. named Colby. (Although one of them was spelled with a "K," but you get my drift.)

Have I mentioned (lately) that we live in a small town? As in we only have two high schools, one of which is relatively new. And Sullen Teenager has managed to have three boyfriends with the same name. Not Jason or Anthony or Michael or David or Joshua or Gregory or Jonathan or Justin or even Seth.

Colby.

Colby? Seriously? We HAVE three of those in our county?

One of her family members has accused Sullen Teenager of auditioning boyfriends based on name alone.

Justin? Loser.
Jonathan? Forget it.
Michael? Give him a fake number.
Colby? What time are you picking me up?

I don't know if it's because I'm tired of it or because it's such a rare occurrence, but the last few times I've been outside, I've been a little surprised to see that the ice and snow are STILL on the ground after five days. On a logical level I realize it hasn't gotten above the freezing mark, and I know all about the physics required for ice and snow to melt, but I'm just a little taken aback that I STILL can't walk from my front steps to my car without peril. Usually when we have snows in the South, even those of several inches, they are gone within a day or two. The roads are still treacherous. Those that are well-traveled are in pretty good shape, but even on those it's easy to become over-confident. You can be driving along just fine, and all of a sudden there's just a solid sheet of ice. And you just hold your breath and hope the driver in front of you doesn't decide to put on brakes.

Our psycho new superintendent sent out an email yesterday afternoon regarding school today. I may have mentioned it in yesterday's post. She basically said we had three choices: get to school by 11:00, take a personal day, or take a day without pay. (Students had the day off because it wasn't safe for school buses to run.) Apparently some folks in the district were rubbed a little bit the wrong way by that, so a softer, gentler email followed in which she urged all of us to consider our personal safety first and foremost before deciding to come to school. Oh, and we would be able to make the time up if we weren't able to make it, instead of being docked for it.

I debated whether or not to go, but was unaware of the softer, gentler email. I have personal days, and I have comp time from last summer, but I like to save those for important things. Like bike rides. So I had Hubby drive me to school at 11:00 and told him to pick me up at 3:00, unless I called him before that. The member of our staff most like to make the rest of us actually work couldn't come in, and the one who lives the furthest away from reality didn't come either. Because we are such a small staff, there's not a lot we can do with only three of us. That's my justification for these being the activities I completed while at school today:

• I caught up on the four days of newspapers that were finally delivered this morning.
• I watched videos of last Saturday night's gymnastics meet. Again.
• I worked on my quilt.
• I texted Katydid and the Warrior Princess.
• I went to Matt's room and interrupted whatever he was pretending to do.
• I went to Lynn's room and interrupted her work on her prospectus. 

At 2:00, when I was about to LOSE MY MIND, I texted Hubby and told him to come get me.

Fairly early in the afternoon, the superintendent sent out a new email, saying pretty much the same thing about tomorrow as today. Students will not have school for the fifth day in a row, but teachers are to report at 11:00 and stay until 3:30. (Did she even look at the calendar? Who in the world is left at school at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon EVER?)

I went to my principal and said I could do my work from home, and she agreed. I can monitor the handful of students who have taken the opportunity to work from home this week. I can work on an online course that we have set up using a career website. The owners of the career website have changed their site, and our course now needs to be tweaked a little to match the site's changes.

It's silly for us to sit at school with no students. It's not like the traditional high school, where we could take a rare opportunity to collaborate and plan together. We do that all the time. Our most important work is WITH STUDENTS, and if they aren't there, we are just spinning our wheels.

I will probably go tomorrow, but you can bet your next paycheck I won't still be there at 3:30. I may even take Gus with me and let him play (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) with Pebbles, the poodle that belongs to one of the teachers on the other side of our building.

An 11:00-2:00 workday. Now there's something I can sink my teeth into.

I Don't Even Have Cabin Fever......

Today was our third day out of school, and Hubby is the only one going stir crazy. You know, the one who is retired and who is able to sit around for many days in a row when he's not golfing? Yeah, he's the one who wants to get out of the house.

Me? I have puh-lenty to do. Read, quilt, eat, play video games, read, quilt, eat, play video games, repeat. Oh, with an occasional nap thrown in.

We did venture out to the Wally World today, though, and I had a pretty dumb reason for going.

I found my bread machine.

When Hubby was diagnosed with diabetes in 2002 (can it really be that long ago?), we thought the world as we knew it had changed forever. And to some extent, of course, it did. We made drastic changes in our eating/cooking habits, and we gave away our deep fryer and, to my great dismay, my bread maker. Or so I thought.

Apparently I simply put it away in a safe place in the basement, in a cabinet that is rarely opened. It is full of things I plan to put in the yard sale I fully intend to have this year.

I didn't want to venture out today, but Hubby did, and I didn't think I could ask him to pick up the missing ingredients so I could make bread. I had everything except bread flour, powdered instant milk, and dry active yeast. Those are pretty vital to making bread. So I reluctantly accompanied him on the treacherous 3-mile trek to WW. It took two scary tries to get out of our subdivision because the road from our neighborhood onto the main road has a stop sign at the top of a hill. It would have been fine if a car hadn't been coming from the left. If we could have just kept going, we would have been okay. But Hubby had to stop, and there was no way to gain traction again. We had to back (slide?) all the way back down the hill, find a patch of relatively dry pavement, and try again.

Once we were on the more traveled roads, it was fine. But getting out of the subdivision is not going to get any better, since temperatures tonight are supposed to be in the teens and not climb over 32 all day tomorrow. What little HAS melted will undoubtedly freeze tonight, and tomorrow I get to attempt that climb out of the subdivision on my own. Unless I can talk Hubby into taking me to school. I don't feel confident enough in my driving abilities to navigate ice.

Our students are out again tomorrow, but we have been asked to report at 11:00 if we are able. We are to use our best judgment, but if we don't report we either have to take a personal day (out of the precious three we get all year) or take the day without pay. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all why they are so determined to have teachers there on a day with no students. I mean I understand it on one level, but on another it's just ridiculous.

I guess it's not a bad way to end the week, though. We will be able to wear jeans tomorrow, and even if the students are able to come on Friday, Monday is a holiday.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a loaf of freshly made (I know it was in a machine, but by golly I MADE it) bread to polish off.

#20 - Become Debt-Free......

To be honest, out of the 50 Things on my list, this is the one I LEAST wanted to write about. For one thing, it was destined to happen early this year, so it felt kind of like cheating to be on the list. But it's something I've never been able to say before, so I left it there.

The other reason I didn't want to put it on the list is that it feels a lot like I'm bragging. Believe me, that is not my intention. In fact, I can't take any credit for it at all.

Hubby's upbringing was far from idyllic. They typically lived on land owned by someone else, and his father made his living working for the land owner. His father also did some work in a chicken factory, and his mother worked in a couple of sewing factories. Wages were worse than pitiful, and they raised two kids, Hubby and his sister, on those salaries.

It would be easy for someone raised in those circumstances to become one of the "sorry" members of society, but Hubby was determined not to do so. He had an amazing work ethic from the age of 16. He bought his own car, and the first time his father bought a vehicle on credit, HUBBY had to co-sign the loan.

Not long after we started seeing each other, Hubby mentioned that he had NEVER made a house payment late. I was incredibly impressed by that. I had just been married to someone whose philosophy of bill paying was that he was not obligated to pay anyone who already had more money than he did. Guess who lost his house in the past year? (With my name still on the mortgage, but that's a whole different story.)

I'm not sure if Hubby molded me into his philosophy of owing money, or if I just adopted it on my own. But when we got married, I became determined not to let debt overwhelm me as it had done in the past. Having a cooperative partner was a significant step up to start with. When we financed cars, we paid more than the required monthly payments so they would be paid off sooner. (The exception is my latest car, because we got 0% financing.) We pay off credit card balances every month, with very few exceptions.

When we decide to take a trip, we plan very far in advance and pay for the trip up front. Our travel agent, Judy (bless her soul), takes care of everything, and she has my credit card number on file. I give her an amount to charge to the card every month, something we can handle and that I know will pay for the trip before it happens, and she takes care of it. It may seem silly, but to us it makes traveling much more enjoyable to know that we aren't going to have a huge credit card bill to pay when we get home. Except for the bar bill on cruises, but we budget for that too. Even when it includes things like $300 pedicures. 

Our house was paid for shortly before I even came on the scene, so I can't claim any responsibility for that. In fact, if it were up to me, we probably WOULD have a mortgage. I would so love to have a new house (the list of things I wish were different in this early-70's house is quite long), but I'm practical enough (when nagged by Hubby) to realize that it isn't worth the trade-off. I'm not willing to work beyond the year I am eligible to retire, and paying a mortgage in retirement is too scary even for me. So we continue to make improvements on the house, and I make do without the things I wish I could have. Like closets, a real garage, a real laundry room that isn't in the basement, and a downstairs bathroom.

That's not to say I'm giving up on winning the lottery, though.

Our last major purchase was the RV a little over a year ago. We made a pretty significant down payment, and then my mother gave me a hefty check for my birthday last year. It was very generous of her, and we put every single dime of that check on the RV loan. So we managed to make the last payment just about a week and a half ago. Again, I have to give Hubby all the credit for that. If it had been up to me, we would have bought a brand-new RV instead of a used one, and it would have been bigger. (Full disclosure here. I'm sounding like a greedy b**ch, even to myself.) And it was tempting to take the check from my mother and buy some other toys. But by then the prospect of having no debt was so near I could almost taste it, so I let good sense (provided by Hubby mostly) prevail.

That's not to say we are wealthy by any means. We still have the usual monthly bills, and some of them don't represent good sense at all. For example, I pay for the pleasure of having internet to three different companies: our home internet, the internet on our iPhones, and the connect card I needed for remote access when I was teaching online. I may need to whittle some of those things down too, after I retire.

So there. I've written about the first of my 50 Things, something I feel a little uncomfortable talking about. It's something I never dreamed I would achieve in my lifetime, not because it was impossible but because it's our very culture. And now that we have no debt, I can start working on #31.

Snow Day(s)......

I was a little -- no, a LOT -- suspicious of the weather forecast when we went to bed last night. They had started talking about snow so early and so frequently that I guess I was afraid it wouldn't pan out. Don't get me wrong - I don't hate my job, but ANY free day out of school is a bonus.

I woke up this morning and had the feeling that when I looked out the window there would be NOTHING on the ground. Our school district had already canceled school as of last night, so I don't know what I was worried about. I needn't have worried - there was a solid sheet of white stuff on the ground.

The picture above is of our front steps. It's hard to see where one step ends and the next one begins. I did what I could with a regular shovel to get most of it off before it could freeze again. I could easily have added #51 to my list: Shovel snow. This Southern girl surely didn't expect she would ever have to do THAT.

Gus is slightly perplexed by it all. He can't figure out why he has to JUMP to get from one step to the next. And why the ground keeps caving out from under him when he walks.

Hubby has been diligent about feeding the birds. We have two bird feeders, and he also scattered seed under the tree.

This is the view from the end of our road looking up toward the entrance to the subdivision. Our neighbor tried to drive up the hill not long after I took this picture. She couldn't make it, so she backed all the way back to her house. I have no idea where she thought she had to go; she works at one of the local high schools, so I KNOW she didn't have to go to work.

Above is my mother-in-law's house. We went to make sure she had everything she needed and that her house was warm enough. Boy was it. We didn't stay long; it was almost suffocating in there. She has gas heat, so even if we lose electricity, she should be fine.

Hubby and Gus, accompanied by Lucy and Enzo, the dogs that roam the neighborhood freely. They would really like to play with Gus, especially Lucy, but Gus does not play well with others.

Lucy and Enzo. I don't know if that's really his name. It might be Endzone, which I think would be infinitely cuter. But I think the little girl who lives at his house said his name was a character from something. Any ideas?

The magnolia tree in mother-in-law's back yard.

Snow on the back railing of mother-in-law's house. Hubby said it was six inches of snow.

This is the main road just outside our subdivision. There had been a few cars up and down the road by the time we walked up there, but not many. The slush was already starting to freeze into a solid sheet.

Needless to say, we aren't having school again tomorrow. Yay! And I'm not too confident about Wednesday either, since temperatures aren't supposed to get above freezing tomorrow. No way this stuff is going to melt, and with so many rural roads in our county, driving will still be treacherous.

Shucks. I guess I'll just have to read, play the Wii, work on my quilt, and drink hot apple cider.

I'm kind of liking this rehearsal for retirement!