House Mouse

This past week was really just hairy for me. My boss was out of town and I became the De facto boss of a new employee and a crazy employee. It was stressful at the beginning of the week, but as the days past, I found myself becoming more accustomed to the ways of my coworkers. Unfortunately I completely skipped out on my homework, and the house became slightly more messy than I prefer. However, because of the stress at work, I was inspired to come home every day and get on my yoga mat for about 40 minutes. The harsh, rainy weather made my yoga routine even more restorative. I enjoyed it so much, I started wondering why I stopped taking formal classes. When I was in high school I did yoga every day. There was a little fitness center on the other side of town that hosted a variety of yoga classes, which was no big deal at the time since I was finished with school by 2 pm every day, and religiously I would attend. I became so good at it I was able to do a head stand (okay, so I could only hold it for 15 seconds, but still!!), and most importantly, I enjoyed it. The center closed down before the end of my senior year, and I haven't regularly attended another yoga center since. I think there are probably a variety of reasons for this, but I could probably sum it up by saying that I have never felt comfortable anywhere else. Now, I am more interested in home practice anyway, mostly because I don't have copious amounts of free time, and what little I do have a spend cleaning, doing homework, and running errands.

This weekend I decided to treat myself. I felt so great that I was able to make it through the work week with my head held high, and manage myself an those around me successfully, that I went straight to Barnes and Noble Saturday morning and purchased a variety of magazines. I stopped reading Vogue, Elle, and Marie Claire years ago though. No, I was on the hunt for crafty, health and fitness, and gardening mags. I already subscribe to three different cross stitch magazines (The Cross Stitcher; Cross Stitch Collection; and Cross Stitch & Needlework) but what with my renewed interest in yoga and the spring planting season just around the corner, I was ready for some new literature. I ended up choosing these: 

I cannot yet give a review of these because I haven't actually read any yet. I bought a lot!

My Reviews:

I picked up "Whole Living" on a recommendation from Mrs. Catherine Ruehle. This magazine really runs the gambit when it comes to topics. Everything from workplace wellness to recipes. But, I'll admit what really sold me was a little article in the back of the magazine about playing with your cats and how to train them to not scratch you. It seems like every time I read something on pet care, it's really only about dog care. Not that I don't love dogs, but hey, where's the stuff for us overly obsessed cat parents??

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Both of the Yoga magazines are actually the same magazine, just different issues. I didn't realize this at first, but it seems the "Yoga Journal" focuses on a different theme each issues. For example, the December issue read "Yoga for healing and happiness", the January issue read "Yoga for fitness and health". I like this publication a lot! There is just a wealth of information in each issue, explaining every pose in depth so that when practicing at home you can monitor yourself and not cause potential harmful side effects by holding a pose incorrectly. 

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The "Natural Home and Garden" I didn't really care for. There were no articles that really spoke to me, and I just couldn't connect with the feel of the magazine. There were very few projects or home ideas I would implement in my own home, and in general I was very bored reading it.

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"Tea Time" magazine may soon be my new guilty pleasure. If you don't love tea or all things feminine, I wouldn't suggest this magazine to you. But, I loved it. There were many fun articles about tea, recipe ideas and even whole party themes for hosting a tea at your own house. I am hosting a whist party next weekend and you can bet I will be using some of the ideas from here to decorate my table!

Sometimes I like to say, "I didn't get a thing done this weekend". And, while I truly feel like I didn't, when I tell people what all I did, they look at me like I might be a bit crazed. Saturday I was up early, first going back to the office where I had left my cell phone, then heading to B&N for the magazine extravaganza, then to Kubes to pick up my opal earrings (they cracked over the summer), then to Kroger for my weekly grocery run, next to Central Market (swanky grocery run), then back to the house to stash all necessary items in the fridge, and finally rush to the Big House to get Dad and take him to the Honda Dealership. Afterwards, I came home and started baking two batches of granola bars. Oh yeah, I as usual, I cleaned the house Friday night. So, how is it, you ask, that I still feel like I got nothing accomplished? Well, the simple answer would be, I am a woman.

When I was little, my mom, like so many others of the nineties, was totally in love with Mary Englebreitmommying full-time in the evening. Then I would look to my Dad, sitting on the sofa … By George, the mug was right! As a new home owner, these words have never been more true. So, while I say I have done "nothing" it's just because my list is never ending.

I made two types of granola bars this weekend. I was inspired to do so after wasting many calories on Ritz Peanut Butter Sandwich Cracker packs. Not only do they have a lot of calories, but there is just a lot of "stuff" in them that I cannot even pronounce, let alone know what they are. The first type I made, I have dubbed "Power Delight" bars, composed of various nuts and dried fruits. The second type I dubbed "Cocoa Dreamy". In the end, I was WAY more impressed with the "Power Delight" recipe. You can click on the link above for the step by step process, I have included pictures of the process from my kitchen below. If you do decide to make the "Cocoa Dreamy" bars, please please please add some salt! These bars just turned out tasting like sweet nothing to me. I think if I made them again, I would nix the cinnamon completely and add several teaspoons of salt to bring out the chocolate. Mom also suggests using special dark chips to help enhance the chocolate taste.

Ingredients gathered, except for the PG Tips!

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 "Power Delight" Granola Bars

Add the nuts, wheat germ, and oats together and toast.

Melt butter, brown sugar, honey, and salt in a pan until simmering.

Combine warm grains/nuts, dried fruit, and the sugar/butter mixture. Mix until everything is well coated.

Place the hot mixture in a long pan. The author lined her pan in wax paper, but I didn't have any, I substituted plain plastic wrap. Also, the instructions say to "press hard" once the mixture is in the pan and covered. Please take care as this is mix is HOT at his point. you will need some paper towels between you and then granola while pressing. I left my granola in the pan to cool over night.

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 "Cocoa Dreamy" Granola Bars

Mix all dry ingredients. (chocolate chips, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, wheat germ)

Everything is well mixed.

Make a well in your mixture and add the egg, vanilla, oil, and honey.

Mix until well combined.

Bake in a greased pan at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Cut them after cooling for ten minutes. I waited to lift mine out of the pan until the following morning because I was worried they would fall apart while warm. I had no trouble getting them out with a spatula.

Some final tid bits...

While on my magazine quest I found this little tin treasure. I LOVE this tea! I first had it about a year ago at the Kimbell Art Museum, and instantly fell in love. It's refreshing, beautiful, inspiring, everything a good tea should be. Anyway, I was too cheap to buy it online and pay for the shipping (how shameful to even admit!), so imagine my delight when I found this little tin in the B&N coffee shop. I was so excited I almost bought two tins, but had the presence of mind to remember that I don't have that kind of space in my miniature pantry. Of course, now that I have it, I will probably hoard it as I still think of it as a rare treat. What is it that makes us hoard those little indulgences we keep around the house? The other day I had run out of soap (Dove) and was forced to either a) use no soap (questionable) and b) use the soap my sister's sister-in-law gave me almost two years ago for my birthday. It was a bar of "Fresh" brand magnolia soap that I had been stowing away in my bathroom. Honestly, I almost put it back in the cabinet, but sighed with the realization that it had to be used. As I carefully unwrapped the pretty packaging, all I could think of was what a luxury the soap was. It is expensive and very perfume-y compared to my modest bar of Dove. As I was standing in the shower, lathering my body in steam laden perfumey bubbles, I though, "why have I been waiting to use this soap?" The more I rubbed, the more I started to realize, "It's like I don't feel worthy of my soap…", and I suddenly understood what a silly idea that was. I am worthy of my soap. I don't have to be a size 2 to have the right to enjoy these expensive luxuries every once and a while. Needless to say, my soap talks down to me no longer… It was an enlightening shower experience. 

I know it looks like my shawl is progressing slowly, but I didn't really work on it at all this week. I am happy with the way it is turning out though.

I had a heavy meal tonight with Mom and Dad and Cracker Barrel. I didn't eat much, but it the food (while wonderful) is very heavy in my stomach. Peppermint tea to the rescue!

The Fine Art of Idleness

I had every intention of blazing through this weekend. Determination was at the helm of my Friday afternoon when I took off from work an hour early after skipping lunch, and I crash through the front door in a frenzied rush. Work, or maybe my life, is more tense and often when the weekend has arrived you will find me leaping about the house in purple rubber gloves and ammonia in tow. I'm a cleaner. There's no denying it. From baseboards to air vents, I work out my tension on the inevitable dust (and cat hair) which seems to be ever accumulating from sources yet unknown. I have only been living on my own for nine months now, but I have a solid routine; dust, scrub, vacuum, repeat. Of course, these tasks are made even more enjoyable by a somewhat eclectic itunes library turned up at maximum volume (when I say "leap" around the house, I mean literally!). This weekend was no different. As I wiggled about the house, whipping my Swiffer duster with attitude to Aretha Franklin's "Respect", I could feel the tension of the week melting away… until I started vacuuming. That's when the burglar alarm was tripped. If you have never lived alone, I don't know if you can understand the kind of fear I felt. You see, I am very cautious of my safety. The alarm is always set, each door locked thrice, and all windows bolted. And yet, there I stood in the middle of my kitchen alarm blaring, vacuum blasting, and music on high. I froze. Suddenly, my own home was no longer safe to me, and I spent the next few minutes peering around every corner thinking I was just moments away from being assaulted. I reached for my house phone, but couldn't dial out. Even though I had already silenced the alarm, the phone must have been tied up trying to call the alarm company to alert them. By the time I got to my cell phone my hands were shaking so badly, I could barley unlock the screen and speed dial my dad. Of course, he was at my door in no time. What we discovered was that the "glass break" alarm had been tripped, so we went to check out all of the windows. As it turns out, one of the windows was unlatched. I don't know if someone was actually trying to break in or what. I do know that my house is thoroughly locked down now.

Still, I have to say that I have not been so scared in a very long time. The "fight or flight" response must not have been present in my state of panic because I was in more of the "deer in the headlights" mode. So petrified I couldn't even move. I guess it is the utter point of helplessness. I hate admitting that in a way because I am single and as such know I need to be able to defend myself if necessary. All I can hope for is that I learn from this experience and understand the better course of action in the future.

Needless to say, the scare really put a damper on my weekend of motivation. I stayed huddled up on the couch all Saturday under a quilt. I knitted, turn the TV on low, left the alarm armed and kept all the doors locked. It is truly an awful thing to be scared in your own home. Because I did not get out to run errands or cook and bake as I had planned, I had the time to start a little knitting project I found through Lion Brand Yarn (www.lionbrand.com). It's a simple little shawl. So far, it is turning out well, but if this warm weather keeps up I can hardly see when I will have the use for it again.

This is a very simple pattern if you are a beginning knitting. You can find it here: http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/khs-prayerShawl.html?noImages=

I chose to use the color "parfait" as I thought the model on lionbrand.com was too much like fall.

I also had a chance to read a few more essays from my new book "A Tea Reader" by Katrina Munchiello. This is a great book for someone who loves tea. What is even better about this book is that it is simply a collection of essays relating to tea or the tea experience, so most passages are a few pages long at most, making it great to pick up, read for a few minutes and return to the shelf. One of my favorite passages so far is called "The Spectator on Tea", author unknown. Written by an Englishman in 1907, it's quirky sentences like…
          What he wants when he is jaded, body, soul, and spirit - when the day is glowering in to the unsympathetic twilight of early winter, and he has before him the long journey into Suburbia - is the soothing effect of the fragrant cup sipped solitary, or with only a good companion who knows the mercy of silence.
…that pull at my heart and whisk me away to cheery old England with its coal fires and snug family dens.

Today, however, I was more active. Up early, I ran only to the grocery store and worked in the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon. Fortunately, this was a productive cooking day. For, not only did I get several dishes cooked and one chocolate cake baked, but also, and most importantly, everything tasted great.

In the end I would say this has been a most unproductive weekend, but what little I did do, I did well.

…I still cannot bring myself to turn on the vacuum cleaner again. Maybe tomorrow...

"I Would Rather Have Been Merry Than Wise"

I have been reading Emma for a while now. I'm sure I must be swayed by my partiality for all things English, but I really do LOVE this book. It is so funny. I even find myself laughing out loud in some sections. Certainly I can equate the characters presented in the book with many of the women I work with in today's world. I find it so funny that with all the advancement for women, all that as a gender women have "achieved", we still seem to care only for those things which were important to women hundreds of years ago… status, status, status. Whether it be a barouche-landau or a Cadillac, the finest silk slippers or the highest Christian Louboutin's, a grand estate or a cramped McMansion, most of the women I know are all about the status and the objects that reflect upon it. But, don't get me wrong. I am neither a feminist nor a social whore. Living somewhere in the middle ground, and being insignificant enough to observe people in a most unsuspecting state, I simply find these observations striking. The only difference between today's world and that of the past is that people are rude (perhaps I should say poorly mannered?). I would be willing to bet money that not even 50% of the people in my age bracket know who Emily Post is. But, here I am standing on my little soap box and (unless you agree with me) that's just annoying.

Lately I have started reteaching myself how to knit. I'm not making anything in particular. I just found that I needed something to do with my hands while in between cross stitch projects. I know exactly what pattern I am going to work and have even prepared my fabric, but I just haven't felt that desire to start working on it. So I knit onward. The "knit" stitch is actually really easy. So easy in fact that I often get my stitches overly tight. The "purl" stitch is not so easy yet. I can do it faster now, but I have trouble keeping a firm tension while creating this stitch. I guess it must have something to do with the yarn in the front of your work instead of behind (which I find to be a more natural state). Next up, the "stockinette" stitch!

Spring classes began today. I cannot say I was "excited" about it, as I normally am, but I was ready. And, there are certain things about the first day of school that I really love. For instance, nothing can compare to the pristine inner zen one feels when writing on that first page of spiral bound notebook paper. That one moment, when pencil touches paper, is tranquility in itself. Another bit of good fortune is that there is a guy in my class who I had previously been classmates with in an earlier semester. I am definitely sitting by him next time. The seating arrangement today was such that on my left a valley girl was (not so quietly) talking to a guy friend throughout the whole class period and on my right was a funky looking Asian guy who smelled like Starbursts and coughed… a lot. The guy directly in front of me was nothing short of "man-child" status, even going so far as to question the professor on his explanations and procedures. Seriously? To those people, I sometimes wish I was whimsical enough to say, "Well, why don't we just give you a doctoral degree now since God obviously made you smarter than everyone else?" I'd probably follow it up with some expletive or another as well. But, I am not that person. So, I just sit back and curse them in my head for doing nothing more than stroking their egos and causing the rest of us to stay later than necessary. As for the professor, I'm not real sure about him yet. Right now I would say I don't like him. He is clearly smart, but talked in such a way that I felt like he thought we were… not so bright. But, that aside, I actually did not care for his teaching style. He tends to mumble, is very unorganized, and somewhat unclear. I am going to watch him very closely this semester. This is the kind of math teacher that most student encounter over 90% of the time and it will be interesting to compare his teaching style with what I would like mine to be, hopefully making me a better teacher in the future.

Just knitting to knit.

The "knit" stitch.

The "purl" stitch.

In closing I will say that I have found I cannot go a day without some sort of crafting and be in truly good health. I know this sounds nuts, but it is true. I don't care if it is knitting, crochet, or cross stitch, but I have to do something with my hands at the end of each day. It just melts away all the stress and anxiety I hold in. It doesn't have to be a marathon of crafting either, just a handful of stitches and already I feel better, easier, more relaxed. Now if only I could get this way about the dreaded ex (exercising, that is)!

All the Pretty Things

This holiday season was one of the worst on record for me. I was sick, the first time, during the Christmas holiday with a cold. The second time was during the New Year's holiday when I had a nasty stomach virus. The good news? I got some time off work, and as such, was able to finish my "Pedigree of Honey" cross stitch sampler by the New Year (See pictures below). I have not decided what to make next, I am taking a bit of time of right now and toying with the idea of picking back up my knitting needles. Now, if your like me, you have tried knitting before with some variation of success. Mostly making wonky scarves that are too fat on the ends and too skinny through the middle, or have massive holes throughout where stitches were dropped. Still, I thought it would be nice to just stitch along the needles with no real project in mind. Like making a sampler of knitting stitches I guess. I'll keep you posted as to what I decide to do next.

The finished product.

Some trouble areas I had include the side of the bee hive stand. The markings on the pattern were not clear enough for me, and I ended up trying to make it look as much like the picture as possible instead of using accurate stitches.

Another issues I had was with the bottom alphabet portion. Basically, I was one stitch too far to the right which lead the final letters of each line to be squashed against the border. Still, it is not very noticeable from a distance.

Because of the mis-counted bottom half of the piece, I had to do a creative interpretation of the hive hexagons portrayed on the left hand side of the picture. I think, however, if I didn't mention this it would look intentional.

My signature.

The finished piece. I guess I will have it framed, but with the mistakes in it, I would hate to spend a fortune on the framing. I'll post pictures once it is in its final form.

Most every New Year I vehemently reject the idea of "resolutions", but this year, I thought I would give it another go. Will I be perfect all year? Highly unlikely. Will I stick to any of my "goals"? It remains to be seen. My resolutions are as follows:
     1. Try to get more exercise in my daily life without joining the dread gym
     2. Don't keep the TV on for background noise
     3. One weekend a month plan on getting out of the house
     4. Do the best with what I have
I think if we really thought of everything we wanted to change about ourselves, the list could easily be a mile long. This year, I decided to focus on more "frame of mind" topics than physical objectives, so maybe that will be easier in the long run…or harder.

One thing I have been better about is the exercise. Today I walked to the neighborhood grocery store from home and back again. I found it so pleasant. I stopped and talked to several neighbors, whose names I did not know, but who were friendly nonetheless, and enjoyed the warm sunshine and the sounds of the world around me. Meddled with the passing cars was the soft hum of a Northern breeze and little birds chatting to one another. I'm sure part of this activity was due to the fact that it has been unseasonably warm here. I was really hoping for some cold weather after one of the hottest summers ever. And yet, I cannot say I am upset with our current situation. 70 degrees, light north wind, blue skys…who could argue with that. The only thing I will say is that we all look quite silly now with our Christmas trees still sitting in the window. At least when it is cold outside, you can turn a blind eye to this oversight.

Mostly though, I hope I can learn to be satisfied with where I am in life now, knowing that all I dislike now is only temporary and a means to an end. Graduate school will be over soon enough, my career will soon begin, and the next chapter is already waiting for me. I just have to not be so anxious to turn the page that I worry, become frustrated, and ultimately angry about the fact that I am still on page one.

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings."