This was pretty much a great weekend. Yesterday morning I went to a friend's cabin for a lady's tea and jewelry swap. Despite only knowing two of the girls beforehand, I had a blast. We were all amazed at how much jewelry we had that we wanted to get rid of. It was only a small sampling of each of our collections, but put it all together and we could have done our own booth at a fair. (And since there were only seven of us, that was especially shocking.) I had even thought when I was first invited, "Oh, I don't really have anything to get rid of...." A quick peek through my jewelry revealed plenty of things I never wear. We went around the table picking one at a time (there were a few hotly contested items) and whatever wasn't chosen at the end was going to be donated or given to the hostess's Little Sister. (You know, from the Big Sister/Little Sister program.)
And yes, I did get a few "new" pieces of jewelry, but they're of a sort that I would want to get anyway sometime. Small-ish silver hoops, a beautiful necklace, some earrings that look like stained glass windows (and reminded me of my honeymoon)....
In the afternoon, I made a new catnip toy for my little guy. He was SO EXCITED. It provides endless entertainment to him and us, because we get to watch him throwing it around the house to chase after. And then he gets stoned, and starts staring at nothing, or chasing nothing (or chasing his tail), or just getting really mellow and letting us pet and hold him more than usual. Sometimes all of this happens within the span of about ten minutes. If you have cats, these toys are really easy to make and can be done with a scrap of yarn: crochet (or knit, I guess, but the small work would probably be difficult) a small tube, about the length of a finger. Grab a funnel and fill it with dried catnip pieces, then crochet the end together. I think I make them in about fifteen minutes, depending on how difficult it is to get the catnip down the tube. Yes it has holes, but this allows the nip to get out. Eventually all the nip is gotten out of them and it's time for a new one. Don't throw away the old one, though! When your cat is good and thoroughly stoned, it'll blow their mind to have a second toy thrown into the mix. :) If you use natural fiber yarn, they can get composted when you're done with them.
We went to J&L's last night to watch movies, but ended up leaving rather quickly. Apparently about two minutes before we got there, L was trying to fix some food for them but had an accident. They have (had) a cutting board that was essentially a leftover piece of the same material that makes up their counters. They also have a completely flat electric stove top. Can you see where I'm going? L placed the cutting board on the stove and turned on the wrong burner. Then she left the kitchen for a moment to take care of something and when she came back it was not burning, but smoking horribly. I'm not sure what the material was (some kind of laminate?) but the stench was beyond belief. And that was after a few minutes of having the windows open and the board itself on the porch. Amazingly, the part that was burned didn't actually burn and melt but turned into powder. So at least they won't have to replace the stove since it was easy enough to clean off. But we needed to evacuate, especially Baby, and give the house a chance to air out. Of course, "airing out" in the winter also has its difficulties because you don't want things to freeze. So we couldn't leave the windows open. We just had to let time do its thing. Even the few minutes we spent in there trying to get ready to leave again gave us all headaches. Shane, who was there longer than I was (he and J stayed behind a few minutes to close up the house while L and I raced Baby out of there) said that his vision was starting to blur before they left. Fantastic.
So it was back to my house. The dog, I'm pleased to report, is freaking out less and less at Baby. I even held Baby on my lap on the floor and let the dog come over and lick her face a little bit. (Mostly, she licked the pacifier.) And actually, Baby seemed to like it. The dog didn't even panic when Baby started to fuss a bit. I'm so proud of my dog. (She's been an angel lately!) Way later than usual, Baby finally fell asleep and we put her on our bed surrounded by blankets and pillows so she wouldn't fall off. (And since we don't have a frame for our bed, it's quite low and she probably wouldn't be hurt even if she had fallen off.) They left around midnight, with me and Shane both reminding them that we have a guest bedroom so if the chemicals were still too much for them, they could come stay at our house for the night. They didn't come back, so I assume all was well. (Although, I'm going to call L in a few minutes to confirm.) Poor lady, she beat herself up all evening about her "attempt to poison us". Shane and I both reminded her that we've done equally stupid things. I had to mark the knobs on our stove to show which ones were front or back (color-coded and written) because I would accidentally turn on the wrong burner and either leave an empty pot on it or something worse. Back when we were still buying industrial meats, I left a styrofoam package of chicken on a hot burner twice. Our kitchen towels have burn marks and holes in them because our old roommate several times left them on a hot burner. I think she was glad to know she wasn't alone in this.
So, our weekly total was: $0. After the glut of spending last weekend we really don't need groceries. The only caveat to that is that it's Valentine's Day this week so we wanted to make an extra special meal for each other. (Valentine's Day is our unofficial marker of how long we've been together, since our second date was on V-Day. Five years this year, and six months married!) I have no idea what Shane's planning to make for dinner, but dessert is mine. I'm making some apricot cookies from a book that L gave me. They're buttery and apricot-y and lemon-y and rich but not too sweet. Shane loves them, but since the ingredients are sort of expensive (here, at least--even bulk apricots are not cheap!) I don't make them that often. And since Tuesday I'm busy (Symphony rehearsal) we're celebrating tomorrow. I want to know what we'll have for dinner....
No comments:
Post a Comment