My Awesome Weekend

It snowed Friday afternoon and into the night, giving us about an inch of snow. When I picked Cam up from school on Friday, there was already a good dusting of snow. And for whatever reason, he decided he need to clear the "roads." So he ran into the house, found his toy snowplow, and started clearing roads on the sidewalk. The funniest part: he was saying he was clearing the roads to Camelot (no, I am NOT making this up), so he was Camelot's snow plow. So we played in the falling snow for about half an hour, because the wind wasn't blowing, so it felt positively balmy out, despite the snow.



Saturday, we spent more time outside, clearing more roads. Though it was a tad bit more difficult, since the wet, fluffy snow that had fallen had frozen into the kind of snow that doesn't want to be messed with. The kind that crunches with every step you take. And laughs when your snow plow tries to break through. Luckily, we had something of a staging area where his trucks could work without the snow being in the way. (Can you see the payloader in the bit of dirt? He was loading the dirt into a dump truck, taking it over to a bit of snow, and dumping it. It was "sand" to help clear the road.)



I'm still making headway in eating better. Last night, I had homemade sloppy joes. Before, if I wanted sloppy joes, I would buy burger, Manwich, and hamburger buns. But in my healthy eating, hamburger buns are obviously off the table. And with the second ingredient in Manwich being HFCS, and the third being just corn syrup, well, I don't really want to eat that either. So my sloppy joes took a bit longer and a little bit more effort to prepare. No problem. (BTW, have I mentioned just how thankful I am that I enjoyed cooking/knew how to cook before I started on this food adventure?) I wish I had had a red bell pepper, to replace half of the green bell pepper that I put in the sauce. That's my only complaint. Too much green bell pepper taste. Not bad, I say. Oh, and that I had put the onions in to cook sooner, because they're still crunchy, and I'm still not a fan of crunchy onions.

Sloppy Joes

8oz tomato sauce
1 C ketchup (I used HFCS-free stuff. One of these days I'll learn to make my own!)
1/4 small onion, diced
1/2 small green pepper, diced (or 1/4 green and 1/4 red)
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp mustard (oops, I forgot this in mine. Oh, well!)
1 pound ground beef

Brown the ground beef.
Add onion, pepper(s), and garlic and cook until soft (or to desired crunch level).
Add remaining ingredients, mix.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 10-20 minutes.


I also made my own buns. The recipe can be found here. They make an excellent GF/low carb alternative to hamburger buns and with the strong flavour of the meat sauce, you really can't tell that they aren't your typical buns.

Real snow day!

Today, I had a real snow day. As I told my dad, "Cam was snowed out, and I'm snowed in." Cam's daycare cancelled thanks to our almost-blizzard yesterday/last night. I had planned on taking him to classes with me today, until I saw my car surrounded by two feet of snow! Even after attempting to dig it out, he (my car) was in no mood to go anywhere. Luckily, we managed to escape this afternoon once it warmed up and I was willing to dig out snow and ice from underneath the car.

While I didn't get to have any adventures today, I did have some exciting stuff happen! Such as: this morning as I was trying to shovel snow away from my car I hear someone yell "Smile, you're on being filmed!" So I jerk upright, look around, only to see someone with a fancy camera pointed at me. I'm assuming it was someone from the newspaper out taking photos of the blizzard-ravaged town and not just some creeper.

Since we were snowed in anyway, I took advantage of the situation to continue my cleaning. Did two loads of laundry. Would have done more (I have about 1.5 loads left) but I have only so much space for hanging it up to dry. I also cleaned the living room (again) and swept the kitchen and bathroom floors. And I planted some lavender and bell pepper seeds. Hopefully they will grow.

I also got books in the mail today, which is always exciting. One is a CLEP study book so I don't have to take boring science classes and the other is Wicca: A Year and a Day by Timothy Roderick. Now, as you know, I'm not Wiccan. But I am a mish-mash of different paths, Wicca among them. And besides, this will give me a bit of spirituality every day for a year and a day. Maybe I'll end up Wiccan at the end of it. (Probably not.)

I decided I want to start a book of shadows. I have one on my computer: it's a folder called "Paganity" and contains all the general shadowy stuff witches are supposed to have. But I'd like one where I can flip through the pages, and put in more than just words. Dried flowers, herbs, photographs, drawings. Something more than just a bunch of .txt files.

And last, but not least, I found and returned a lost cat! I heard it meowing out in the hall, so I stuck my head out, thinking maybe someone let their cat come along to do laundry with them. But, no, it was standing outside a door meowing with no humans in sight! I knocked on the door it was meowing at, but they don't have a cat. After some hemhawing, I carried it upstairs and tell it to go home. And, very cat-like, it just stared at me and meowed. So, I headed back downstairs, planning on just abandoning it (it was safely indoors; someone would have found it eventually) and met a lady on her way up... I decided to take a chance.

"Do you happen to have a cat?"

Funny look. "Yes"

"Uhm. Is it orange?"

Pause. Another funny look. "Yes."

"Oh, I think it escaped. I just dropped it off upstairs."

Confused expression. "Oh no!" Dashing upstairs. I hear her ask the cat "What are you doing out here!?"

While living in an apartment building is mostly unfun (what with loud neighbours and stairs and all that nonsense) sometimes it can be really amusing.

Blizzard!

It's been snowing like crazy today. We've got about 4-6 inches, and I'm not entirely sure if it's supposed to stop sometime soon. And even though I've named the post Blizzard!, this is very much a calm snow, albeit heavy. I was driving home after picking Cam up at daycare and the snow was coming down in a way that almost made it seem like rain. For about two seconds I was caught up in a fantasy that it was summer, and a gentle rain was falling, and when Cam and I got home, we'd be able to dance and play in the rain. And then I noticed that it was only 32 degrees F out, and it was snow falling, not a warm rain.

For some reason or another, perhaps because snows like this are good for reflecting and remembering, I started thinking about early morning. When I was younger, it was always a blessing to wake up in a house that was still asleep. It always seemed as though I'd woken to a world that was just for me and had no others. And in a house that was often filled with eight or more people, these moments of solitude inside the house were rare and just that much more special. These days, though, if I get up early, I'm always ready to snuggle back into bed and sleep for another hour or four.

And now, a message from Camden:

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