We Have Always Lived In the Castle

2013, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Fiction /

A few weeks ago, I saw a blog post that had a list of creepy books (or maybe it was creepy book covers?) for Halloween. Oh, well. Maybe it was a month ago, not a few weeks ago? Whatever. Time flies and I still haven’t caught up with book blogging. Whatevs. I’ll get there. Eventually.

Anyway, on this list were a couple of books that I realized I had not read. One of them was Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived In the Castle. I like Shirley Jackson. This one was available on audio and we didn’t have any other audios to listen to so… I reserved it.

Weirdest book EVER.
Very creepy.

I think TW and I will always say “Silly Merricat” and “Lazy Merricat”, just out of the blue, forever and ever. It’s that kind of book.

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Yummy Food Cooked In the Ninja

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Foodie /

I’m thankful for grilled cheese sandwiches with cranberry grape sauce, cooked in the Ninja.

Yummy. Very yummy.

And, the clean up took like 2 minutes.

Win, win, win, win, WIN!

If you don’t have a Ninja, you need one. If you don’t have cranberry grape sauce… well… I don’t know what to tell you since we bought our jar in Beloit and I dunno if you can find it anywhere else or how one might make such a thing. Surf the internet — maybe you’ll get lucky and find a recipe you can make IN the Ninja?

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Thanksgiving Shopping

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Holidays /

I’m thankful for stores and restaurants that are open on Thanksgiving — very thankful.

Jenn, Ted and JMP are in Hawaii. Chris is in Charleston. Michelle is in Philadelphia (and worked today.) The little kids are with their dad. Which means, today was not our Thanksgiving in the traditional sense of the word.

It was our traditional Christmas shopping day, though, and I’m very thankful for all of the stores that were open today.

We hit Starbucks for holiday coffee — where I put my traditional $40 into the tip jar (and we gave one of our favorite baristas a holiday gift.)

We dropped TW’s mom off at the nursing home so that she could spend the day with TW’s sister.

We went to Kmart, as usual. It’s not nearly as much fun to shop at Kmart now that our kids are grown up. There’s just not much there that any of them want or need. We bought some things, though nothing “fun” by TW’s definition.

Then we went to Walgreens for our traditional Thursday freebies run — the most exciting purchases there were cheap toilet paper and laundry detergent. Nothing fun, again — but we have a ton of RRs that TW can use this weekend to buy alllllll of the fun stuff she wants.

Next stop CVS where we bought more cheap laundry detergent and used all of our ECBs on holiday candy and a few holiday things.

Then we went home where I talked to Jenn and Facetimed with JMP while he opened his Elf on the Shelf present.

We were going to take a nap but we’d forgotten to put the quilt in the dryer so… hard to nap in this freezing house with no quilt… we went off to Big Lots where we thought we might find a trunk for RJ, but did not. Instead we found a ton of Bob’s Red Mill stuff at about half the price we normally pay for it. That was a big, unexpected win.

And, we drove through Burger King for lunch — mistake. The awesome fries we had from the BK in front of our neighborhood were not to be found at the BK on Golf Rd. Blech. I think we may never go to BK again… blech.

Then it was home for a nap before we headed back to pick up TW’s mom.

Dinner was a nice chicken breast with some cranberry something or other while we fought over the advertisements from today’s newspaper and joked about camping out in front of the Petsmart tonight so we were first in the door tomorrow morning. Hah.

I talked to Michelle on the phone for a bit and I’ve cleaned the kitchen. If I was a little more motivated, I might wrap a few gifts but I’m not, so I won’t. We’ll watch a little TV and read for the rest of the night and call this non-Thanksgiving a success.

Because it was. Even with the bad BK for lunch.

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A (somewhat) Clean House

Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I really am thankful for my cleaning ladies — and the child(ren) who gifted me with the cleaning ladies this fall. I’ve missed them and it’s been really nice to have a (somewhat) clean house every couple of weeks, even if it only lasts a few hours before the dogs track in dirt and drag fluff and chewed up stuff all over the house.

It’s really really nice to be able to walk barefoot in my bedroom without feeling like someone had shook out a beach towel on the floor. It’s really nice to not have a dusty tv when we’re watching Survivor. It’s really really nice to have a clean sink.

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Mmmm, Chicken & Waffles

Daily Dose, Foodie /

Is there any better combo than chicken & waffles? I don’t think so unless you toss in the exactly right sweet tea and one of the best biscuits on the planet.

And that’s what happens when you go to Chicago’s Home ofChicken and Waffles, in Evanston.

This has become our favorite restaurant and as TW said today — we’ll miss it when we move away. That’s saying something because there’s not much we’ll miss when we leave here.

The people are nice, the atmosphere of the restaurant is wonderful, the patrons always look like they’re enjoying their meal (and the company they’re with) as much as we do. And, there’s always a diverse crowd. That’s our favorite kind of restaurant and we’re thankful that they opened this branch in Evanston.

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Thank You, Coupon Bloggers

Daily Dose, Money Talks /

Seriously. I cannot imagine shopping without coupon bloggers. Mostly Rachel, at Mashup Mom, but I do still look at Southern Savers and Totally Target once a week or so, too.

Without them I wouldn’t have bought $75 worth of gift cards for $55 on Sunday. Not to mention the $45 in free products from CVS. Or the 2 bags of DeLallo pasta from Whole Foods today for $1.75. Or the deals coming to me for Christmas gifts from all over the darn place (including new laptops we desperately needed.) And the $40 of free food we’ll be buying at Jewel to finish off the shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. Or… the list goes on, really.

Yay for coupon bloggers!

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You Don’t Suck

1 Comment / Community Chest, Daily Dose, Family Funk, Kid Talk /

I took the girls to Michaels today — a little Christmas shopping, just the three of us. If I hadn’t had to force the child to get out of bed at 1:45 and hadn’t had to listen to her gripe about having to SEE PEOPLE when she didn’t want to SEE PEOPLE, I’d have turned around and gone right back home when I saw the parking lot. MADHOUSE, just in the parking lot. I’m not used to that. Normally when we go to Michaels, it’s pretty much empty. Darn holiday season.

But no, I braved it and by the third aisle I was pretty sure they were going to kick us out. The girls were… wound UP. They were those kids people talk about. The out of control, loud, touching everything, getting in everyone’s way kind of kids. And they’re TEENAGERS. Hell, one of them is an actual ADULT who can VOTE for godsake.

Some people glared. Some people stared. Some people grumbled. I couldn’t really blame them because OMG they were out of control.

But some people were nice. Particularly the man and woman in front of us in line. And we were in line for a really long time because there were cash register problems. I really appreciate nice people who don’t suck. Elly calls that woman my new BFF because she was so nice.

I sure hope I see more nice people who don’t suck this holiday season — she made my day. Go out there and be the nice person who doesn’t suck and make someone’s day!

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Endless Supply

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I’m thankful for hot water… hot baths are lifesavers and sanity savers around here.

Though I complain a lot about the lack of hot water and our old tired hot water heater, I am appreciative when I get one SUPER HOT bath a day. On the rare occasion that I am able to run TWO SUPER HOT baths in one day, I’m over the moon.

Speaking of which… I’m going to run one now, I’m pretty sure this is my only chance for SUPER HOT water today… I had best hurry though, TW and RJ are both headed that way… it’s not wrong of me to knock them over to get there first, right?

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Thank You, Evernote

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I make a lot of lists. Some on paper but most in Evernote. My entire life is in Evernote. All of it. Every single bit that’s important.

Need an address? It’s in Evernote.

Need to figure out why we’re confused about something at work? My notes are in Evernote.

Need a url for a post we wanted to remember from six months ago? It’s in Evernote.

Want to know what my plans for the week are? Those are in Evernote.

And Evernote sinks to my iPhone and my iPad. So I always have everything I need to keep me sane.

Without Evernote, I would definitely NOT be sane and I’m thankful for my sanity ’cause goodness knows, nobody else around here is sane.

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Two Cybils SciFi/Fantasy

1 Comment / 2013, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I’m kind of ODing on middle grade and YA books. This is what happens when I don’t read enough throughout the year… gah. The end of the tunnel, I can see it. I swear!

Planesrunner, the YA scifi I thought I wouldn’t enjoy, particularly since I had so much trouble getting past the first chapter, turned out to be a lot better than I expected. Physics is not my thing. Neither are books where ONE paragraph is more than a full damn page. Other than that — it turned out to be a pretty fun book. The airships made it great (and the solid female characters, in a boy story, too.)

Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities is Middle Grade scifi/fantasy and I had a hard time getting started with that too… what’s with all of the comic book superhero stuff lately? After about 30 pages, I was in and enjoying it. I particularly liked what happened with Polly, Captain Stupendous and Vincent’s mom. Super female characters in what’s mostly a boy story.

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