The Thoughts of A Horrible Cook....

I tried to cook again today. I even wore the cute apron my best friend gave me for my birthday last year. I imagined I was a cute 50's wife with my hair all dolled up and beautiful. I pictured a spotless house with the table set and the oven timer sounding just as my incredibly handsome husband arrived home from work. Beautiful dream...Isn't it? Too bad my hair isn't fixed and I'm wearing sweat pants. Oh...and I almost forgot! It would be nice if I knew how to cook.

After a long two days of interviewing, I decided it would be nice if I made supper for my honey for once. My mind raced through easy but delightfully healthy meals that I could fix my husband in a crock pot. I landed on a whole chicken. How hard could that be? Well, I'm afraid it is EASY. I still had to call my mom.

Me-"Mom, what is the difference between table salt and kosher salt?
Mom-"Nothing...it's just a fancier type of salt."
Me-"Good...cause I already put it in the chicken...bye..gotta go... Love you!"

Me again.."Oh shoot...I was supposed to mix all of the spices together before I lathered the chicken in spices....now I have a spotty paprika, salted, Italian seasoned chicken with half of its skin hanging off (I got sick of trying to peel the skin off half way through). Maybe if I try to spread the spices around with this wooden spoon....gosh darn it...this isn't working either....why the HECK didn't they give me instructions to mix the spices together BEFORE instead of AFTER the list of ingredients....stupid recipe writers....hmmmmph...I'll just turn the crock pot on high...hopefully that will work."

Mmmm...bon appetit' my handsome husband! Hope you like your half skinned, spotty chicken I slaved away at!! I love you Joel!

Frusterated

I haven't been posting lately because I can't figure out how to upload my photos from my iPad. It's definitely putting a damper on my blogging motivation. Someone help!

What Should I Do with My Wedding Dress...

Per my mom's suggestion, I decided to write about my wedding dress. Currently it is tightly sealed in a very large box up in our guest bedroom. After I said "I do," I thought about selling it, but was quickly dissuaded by my sister. "Don't you remember looking at mom's dress when we were little?" I do recall these moments. I enjoyed the time spent with my mom and siblings, but I was always very glad when my mom said "Don't feel like you have to wear this dress!" So, for sentimental reasons I kept my dress. I'm beginning to have second thoughts. I may be able to get a pretty chunk of cash for my dress...and the longer I wait....the less likely I will be able to sell it. It's BEAUTIFUL. I LOVED wearing it, but I was also very glad when it was time to take it off (sheesh...those dresses aren't made for comfort). So, readers....what should I do? Keep it or sell it? What have you (or your wife) done with your dress?

Which Books Have You Read?

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES.
Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8  1984-George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott-read to me...that counts..right?
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia- CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi- Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck~
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville Think I read this in Highschool--HATED IT!
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson BurnettRead to me
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray-read 600 pages and couldn't get any further
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazu Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


Read-31
Started-7...now what does that say about me? :)

That Makes Me Cry....

Sometimes I'm really dismayed at the number of silly things that make me cry. The inevitable tears seem to pop up at the most unwanted of times. Sometimes I'm lucky, and just happen to be sitting on the couch watching an episode of glee (yes, I said GLEE)and the tears just start popping. As I sit there crying over the most unbelievable show ever made, I think how silly I am. I mean seriously, I shouldn't be crying over such a fictitious tv episode. I'm sure that my (almost) year of experience at work has made me much stronger in this regard (my co-workers could probably tell you that) Yet, if one of my foreign exchange students in sunday school say something touching and my eyes fill with tears, I feel really embarrassed. This makes me wonder why it is so shameful to cry? Okay, so I get that it's not cool to break down at work, but why shouldn't I be moved emotionally when others share their heart or difficulties. It seems weird that when others are telling me about the problems in their life, I'm worrying about holding back the tears. And that's my thought of the day. Have you ever had someone cry with you during a hard time? Were you glad that they did?

What Now?

Ever since Joel finished his EDD, we've been asked a lot of questions. First of all, everyone wants to know what he plans on doing with his doctorate. THEN, everyone asks the big family planning question. "Are you going to have a baby soon?" I think this is such a funny inquiry.. I mean, what if I were already pregnant? How would I answer that? If I said "yes" it would take all the fun out of announcing it later. If I replied "no" I'd be lying (No, I'm really not pregnant right now..this is a what-if scenario I'm trying to work through) I think it's even weirder when people ask us if "we are trying or planning on trying soon" Next time I'm asked this, I'm going to play dumb and say "Trying what?" :)

Anyway, since this blog post is titled "What Now" I'm gonna give you a few highlights of the past couple months.

1. We stayed at Joels parents house while he passed his dissertation.
2. We stayed at the Tides Inn....AMAZING!
3. We traveled to SkyLand Drive.
4. I found an amazing sweater at Anne Taylor Loft for $8.
5. I ate the most amazing blueberry cobbler.
6. I learned what a springform pan is.
7. Norfolk Christian won state in Football. Go Ambassadors!
8. We bought an i-Pad. LOOOOOVE it!

Baking

There's something about baking that makes a gal realize how much she still needs her mom. I've preformed CPR, called medical response teams and faced the scariest of neurosurgeons, but throw a pumpkin cheesecake recipe at me....and I call my mom. Springform cake pans and crunchy apples (see earlier blog) can really throw a 20 something year old gal for a loop.

My mom warned me as a teenager that I'd wish I knew how to cook when I was older, but I rolled my eyes and said "I'll marry a man who will do that for me." Fortunately, we were both right. Joel does do all the cooking, but usually the baking is considered my area of expertise. I'm so lucky to have a mom that will pick up her phone and answer obscure questions about the latest food I've tried to bake. Who else would put up with three phone calls about cheesecake?
I love you and miss you VERY much, mom!!! Thanks for answering all my crazy, frantic calls about the latest concoction I've been cooking up. I hope I can be as patient of a mother as you are someday!!