Pizza — My Way

We order pizza at least twice a month (usually more than that) and have done so for more than 10 years. That’s a lot of pizza but it’s NEVER been pizza the way I like pizza.

If I could choose any pizza at all, it would have mushroom, onion and black olives.

Prince J won’t eat mushrooms.
Most of the little kids won’t eat onion.
TW won’t eat black olives.
Elly prefers MEAT, MEAT, and more MEAT but she’s happy to have MEAT and mushrooms (but Prince J doesn’t eat mushrooms and RJ won’t eat meat.)

See the problem there?

So, depending upon the subset of children here for dinner, here’s our normal order and the variations dependent upon children in residence.

1 extra large pepperoni
1 extra large mushroom

or

1 extra large pepperoni and mushroom

or

1 extra large mushroom

Ho-freaking-hum.

I’ve taken to ordering a side of fried ravioli, for myself (though some child who shall remain nameless, RJ, always begs a few and I am nice so I give them to her — grudgingly.)

TW always says, “You know you could order one that’s 1/2 whatever disgusting thing you want and 1/2 what the rest of us want…” but I don’t because I am nice. I know that sometimes restaurants screw those things up and if an extra large pizza showed up with mushroom, onion and black olive there would be hell to pay (and I couldn’t eat an entire extra large pizza all by myself if my life depended on it.)

Well tonight… I did it! I ordered a pizza with half mushroom, red onion and black olives and I LIKED IT. (It looks like other people might also have liked it since an awful lot of it is gone… probably TW’s mom, since I’ve never heard her complain about any of those things on a pizza.)

Yay me! Ya for pizza my way! I’m going to do it again next time, too. Probably.

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Uh Oh

I just realized, I forgot to blog so I’m blogging. Sort of.

Long work day.

Sadness from Hawaii.

Video of Johnny Mac Pippin rolling over.

My computer died with 7 minutes of Bunheads left unwatched and then the sound wouldn’t come back on.

My inbox is not at zero.

Do we really want to move?

It’s freezing and I’m tired of freezing.

Johnny Mac Pippin needs mittens!

Chris never answers my darn texts.

The prairie dogs ate another set of mini blinds.

And there you have it – my life, in a nutshell — so I guess I blogged after all.

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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The Good, Bad Day

I really hate it when you’re having a perfectly fine day and then POOF, it’s turned into one of the most horrible days EVER.

But then, you get some news that is the most AWESOME NEWS EVER.

How do you work with that?

Horribly sad and angry and just exhausted by the bad stuff in the world but filled with joy and excitement about the awesome things happening.

It’s the kind of yo-yo that I really hate. I mean really.

Not that I didn’t want to hear good, happy things — particularly this good, happy thing.

But, it’s hard to really enjoy it when you’re sad.

And none of this makes any sense, but that’s what my day was like, today.

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When It Happens to You

I didn’t expect much from Molly Ringwald’s When It Happens to You. Interlinked short stories … that could have meant anything and I was  expected to be all ho hum about it. Turns out, it was pretty darn good.

Each story was linked and the connections were strong enough so that you weren’t jarred (too badly) when moving from one to another. It was a little hard not to feel like this was all about Greta and Phillip – since they (along with Charlotte) featured so prominently in most of the stories. In that way, the stories might have been a little TOO interlinked. But, the writing was good and I liked most of the characters. I’d definitely read another novel by Ringwald.

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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The Books They Gave Me

TW impulse purchased The Books They Gave Me when we went to an Indie bookstore right before Christmas. I was a little skeptical – group submission blogs don’t always work as well as books as they do as blogs, (The Books They Gave Me Tumblr), but it was good. The selections were interesting, though I got a little tired of the break up stories – I shouldn’t have read the book straight through, lol.

I find the story from the person who has never received a book as a gift to be the saddest story ever. 

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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The Chaperone

I finally found time to read The Chaperone, FINALLY. It’s been on my TBR list for ages. Sheesh.

I really enjoyed it – the Louise Brooks aspect and the story of Cora. I would have liked it more if there wasn’t quite so much time packed into the book, or if it was another 100 pages. Time passed so quickly without any real character growth once Cora came back to Kansas.

(And now I want to watch some Louise Brooks movies, lol.)

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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Dog-Friendly Gardening

An impulse pick from the library, Dog-Friendly Gardening: Creating a Safe Haven for You and Your Dog, I was expecting lots of cool garden plans and photos created especially for dogs. But, it was more like a bunch of garden photos that just happened to have dogs. Probably.

I guess some of the tips were good, but they seemed pretty obvious to me. The list of plants that are harmful to dogs (or appealing to dogs)  was nice but not surprising or unusual. Two photos in the back of the book, one of a ball pit for dogs and another of a digging pit, were good but it would have been cool to see real gardens and garden designs that incorporate them rather  than just a photo of them.

Ho hum.

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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Black Water Rising

After I read Attica Locke’s The Cutting Season I decided I should go back and read Black Water Rising – before the next “Jay Porter” book is released and I’m glad I did. I don’t read a lot of suspense/mystery stuff (TW was surprised when I pulled this out of the library book return bag because I haven’t read it), not because I don’t like them but because they are so often series and those series can seem sort of redundant. (I won’t read James Patterson because once you’ve read three, you’ve read them all – at least that’s how I feel about it.)

I liked this story – I liked Jay Porter. I liked the Houston setting. I’m not sure I liked the early ‘80s time period, particularly since there’s going to be another book (and more after that, maybe?)  Gas was $1.37 and expensive… Yes, I remember those days but it’s a nostalgia thing and causes me  to roll my eyes a little now,  (after paying $3.45 for gas yesterday.) 

I’ll probably give her next Jay Porter book a try but odds are  slim that I’ll keep reading if she keeps writing this particular series.

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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The Damn Dog Reads My Blog, Doesn’t She?

Yesterday’s post, the one where I kind of raved about how awesome my dog is about sleeping on her bed when she’s told to sleep on her bed.

Yea. That post right there, pretend it never existed.

Because last night… 2am, the dog was on my bed. 4am, the dog was on my bed. 5am, the dog was on my bed (and I gave up telling her “Off. Place.” because by then, I was awake and figured I’d just get up and get to work. Busy day ahead and all that.

The little beast had the nerve to GROAN at me when I accidentally bumped her foot (that was hanging off of MY bed) as I stumbled to the bathroom.

How dare I keep her from her beauty sleep.

Shit. I’m tired.

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The Battle of the Bed

Are you wondering how we’re doing battling Skeeter for the bed? Or have you assumed, based on the instagram photos, that she’s won and we’ve thrown in the towel?

We did, sort of, throw in the towel for awhile. The holidays, for instance — too much madness and mayhem. Too many people. She was in our bed constantly — which means we got no sleep because SHE IS A BED HOG.

Once everyone went home, TW took the situation in hand and offered her a compromise — which she grudgingly excepted.

It didn’t go quite that smoothly. There were a couple of nights when TW forced the poor baby to sleep in the kitchen, on the cold hard floor. Well, on her comfy bed on the cold hard floor. But, the puppy did not like this and she cried and whined and completely annoyed me. All. Night. Long. And especially early in the morning when she’d wake up and find herself cold and alone.

I admit it, I whined and TW gave in to me — not to the dog — and brought her back into the bedroom at night.

The compromise is … she can be on the bed until we say it’s bedtime and then she has to get off the bed and go to her place and stay there til she’s invited back to the bed. Or at least until I get up in the morning, at that point, she’s free to take her rightful place cuddling TW.

It took a couple of nights of treat training plus leash training to get her to get off the bed (and stay off) when we told her it was bedtime. And there were a couple of nights when she woke up and tried to sneak back into bed in the middle of the night. But, she did get right back down when told to go.

Now if we could convince her to stop eating the mail…

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