The Filthy Minkey and Wolly Willy...

So Christmas has came and went... The kids went ballistic with their presents, and I as a mom trying to over-compensate for the last few Christmases went completely overboard with presents. But I don't get to do it often, so kiss my ass LOL

They woke up at 6:15am! Good god. Why so early? Because the adults were all tired and worn out from cooking and baking that we didn't want to deal with them anymore so we sent them to bed at 7:45p with explicit instructions that if they don't go to sleep that Santa WOULD NOT COME. For once, they believed us and went promptly to sleep. Hmmm... If only it would work every other night of the year. Ho hum.

When I was shopping for stocking stuffers I just happened upon mini Wooly Willy's. I couldn't believe my luck. I can remember how much my sister and I had when we were little with them... Ahhhh wistful memories....

<3

To top off the Christmas wonderment... We had to go to my father-in-law's house. Which normally wouldn't be a problem for me. I love my father and mother-in-law. They're salt of the earth, unless they're being annoying, which isn't often.

But... All good things are swiftly spoiled.... My perfect step sister-in-law, we'll call her Muddy, was there. She's one of those people that you know, if they weren't a part of your family, you wouldn't be friends with her otherwise. She's a condescending, rude, full of herself, top heavy, heavy make-up wearing, gaudy jewelry buying, freak of nature cause she's Mexican and tries not to be with blue contact lenses and has a really weird 3 year old son who is actually 5 but looks like a three year old and hasn't changed a bit since he was 3. She considers herself a photographer, and I guess in Texas they don't know any better cause her pictures are beyond shitty. And I'm not tooting my own horn. They're just THAT shitty.

So not only did I have to put up with her annoying ass and her SIX...COUNT THEM SIX... Annoying, destructive, RUDE children... But I also had to put up with her MONKEY. Yes, a monkey. Like the woman needed another rat even tho she had six of them. And they consider it their child. It's a fucking monkey for Christs sake. 

I'm one of those people who believe that wild animals should remain wild... Iguanas are pushing it... Anything reptilian can stay in the wild. All I can think of when I see a person with a pet monkey is that movie Outbreak. The entire time I was there I was waiting for the animal to go skitzo on me and attack me and give me monkey herpes or something. 

I will say at the beginning I was strictly anti-monkey, didn't want anything to do with it. My real sister-in-law actually made a comment to my mom that I didn't care about the monkey, which is true, but it made me feel bad. Cause I guess it made Muddy feel bad, and even though I don't care for Muddy, I don't want anyone's feelings getting hurt. 

(In the midst of all this I got a migraine. For some reason, unknown to me how and why, I was more friendly AFTER my migraine than I was before. Dunno if it was the ibuprofen talking or what, but it was odd.)

So, showing Muddy my Scentsy wares, I finally got over being trepidatious about the filthy minkey. And let her climb on me. She gave me monkey kisses, which, I will tell you.... I really wanted to liberally douse myself in anti-bacterial sanitizer. Kinda weirded me out. 

I would never personally have a monkey as a pet. That's just too wild. Dogs and Cats are meant to be domesticated. If monkeys were meant to be domesticated, then we would have had monkeys instead of cats. They're icky. And human like... As I told my husband... She's as small as a fetus. LOL enough said.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

May all your Christmases be bright :)

So this is Christmas......

As you'll soon learn, I'm a huge Beatles fan, and this song, the tone and what not, really settle how I feel about this christmas. A little down, but hopeful.

Only a few days left til the joyus day..... It finally decided to snow!

You can't really tell, but it's there, dangit. LOL Guess I need to find some tutorials on how to catch snowfall pfft

I've been busy baking... So far... I finished my Samoas, unfortunately they are not pretty enough to post on here LOL. Made Baklava

and...........

YUMMMMMMM Chex mixxxxxxxxx

The BEST Baklava

Baklava

1 pound ground nuts

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 sticks melted butter

1 package phyllo dough

1 cup water

1 cup white sugar

½ cup honey

1 tsp Vanilla    

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray the bottom and sides of a 9x13 inch pan.

2.  Grind nuts and toss with cinnamon. Set aside. Unroll phyllo dough. Cover phyllo with a dampened cloth to keep from drying out as you work. Place two sheets of dough in pan, butter thoroughly. Repeat until you have 8 sheets layered. Sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of nut mixture on top. Top with two sheets of dough, butter, nuts, layering as you go. Continue until all the nuts are gone. The top layer should be about 6-8 sheets deep.

3.  Using a shape knife cut into diamond or square shapes all the way to the bottom of the pan. Bake for about 50 minutes until the baklava is golden and crisp.

4.  Make sauce while baklava is baking. Boil sugar and water until sugar is melted. Add vanilla and honey. Simmer for about 20 minutes.

5.      Remove baklava from oven and immediately spoon sauce over it. Let cool. Freezes well. Leave it uncovered as it gets soggy if it is wrapped up.

Looks fab, huh?

Chocolate Covered Cherries and Fridgerator Magnets...

What else is there to do on a rainy, dreary Kansas day? I can't crochet worth a darn... My Kindle is in my bedroom and I'm limiting my reading so I don't finish it too fast... Reading Night Embrace by Sherrilyn Kenyon... Yummy book... Want to find a Talon of my own ;)

So I'm "baking". What you might ask?

What does.....

and....

make? Other than this girl a complete chocolate/cherry orgasmic mess? They make these little cuties!:

Ugh! NOM NOM NOM they're sooooo good. The almond bark I bought was the more expensive kind and that's the last time I use it... It clumped up and got nasty. Might have been from the juice of the cherries. Not so sure, this is the first time I've done it.

Got some more baking to do....

ok... a LOT of baking to do...

I'm never lonely while cooking in the kitchen.... I always have some "buddies" watching over me....

My cartoon buddies John, Paul, George and Ringo....

Mr and Mrs Doughboy from my childhood

And a pleasant reminder of Vacations past....

It's so nice to have something other than this to look at.....

Blech... The view from my kitchen window...

More to come probably later today...

Thinking.....

Today I had lunch with my first love and my husband. Oooo sticky, you think? Yeah, kinda. It was a little awkward. I'll call my first love Bryce, keeping up with the anonymity of this schtuff. And this really isn't disguising him I guess. Granted, I don't know many that know his middle name lol.

Anyways, like I was saying.... I had lunch with him today. He just recently came back into my life after 15 year on and off again hiatus. I was soooo madly in love with him in high school. He was my first kiss, my first real boyfriend, my first love, my first fondle... He was my first in a lot of things. Well... Not THAT first. Unfortunately. Ever have one of those guys you wish you would have bedded because you're SURE it would have been fabulous? Yeah... That's him... The one that got away... *Insert Katy Perry music here*

I've known him since I was knee high to a grasshopper. For those of you who are not familiar with this vernacular, this means a REALLY REALLY long time... His mom worked with my mom, we lived down the road from each other, went to school with eachother, spent oodles of time with each other and effectively hated each others guts for the longest time.

Until Sophomore year. The year my parents split and my world turned upside down. We moved 10 miles away from my childhood home in Podunk, KS and I went to school in Oshitty, Kansas for a few months. That's when Bryce and I hooked back up. At first it was a cat fight every single time we saw each other. I vaguely remember having him in a headlock in Biology class. *blissful sigh* Oh those were the days when you could pick on someone and they knew you liked them. Now if you pick on someone because you like them they call that battery or harassment. Pfft.

Anyways. We started dating. As much as Sophomores without vehicles could do. He spent Seminar class with me digging earthworms for my earthworm collection... We spent the choir/band trip to Worlds of Fun together and even got a cute little charicture made of us. Wonder if he still has that.... He got me a stuffed Buffalo... Which I still have :)... We finally decided that it would be beneficial on both our parts just to give up the guise of beating each other up and date. It worked. We were THE power couple of the Geek Squad. He was the Gambit to my Rouge... He was wonderful.

Then my mom met this Colonel Sanders wanna be on the internet that was some software guru in Seattle. Her bright idea? Move to Seattle and put down roots there. So... I told him I had to break up with him. Broke my little 16 year old heart. and his... When I found out a month later that we weren't moving to Seattle (turned out Colonel Sanders liked to frequent the M4M Seattle Chat rooms on AOL.... Uhm.... Ew?) I tried to get back together with him. No such luck. He was dating someone else. And once again, my heart was broken.

After that we moved to Springfield and I got to experience what high school SHOULD have been like for me. Not the hell that I went through for the last two years. It was fabulous. Nothing like being the little fish in a really goddamned big pond. After graduation my dad wanted me to come live with him. I said, sure, why not. It'll give me a chance to get away from my overbearing and domineering sister and mother. Just what I wanted.

Got a job at good ole Wallymart and told my dad I'd quit smoking. Who does my best friend Lizard bring in one night? After 3 years of not seeing him.... it was Bryce... Goddamn did he look good?! Pouty lips, a little stubble, beautiful blue eyes. I melted on sight...

We were hot and heavy... And god I was so in love.... We danced in the moonlight to George Strait... He kissed me and told me he loved me and always had... He was just.... Amazing...

And then I lost my job and threatened to throw my evil step sister off the Ferris wheel at Worlds of Fun... For some reason she thought it was a threat... When in all actuality it was a promise. My dad threw me out... I had to go back to Springfield and I had to break a promise to Bryce that I swore I never would...

He wouldn't talk to me after that phone call... I sat outside and bawled, watching him as he drove past my dad's house repeatedly... His old truck was unmistakable even in the darkness... A part of my heart closed up for good that night... He wouldn't even let me explain myself... To him I did the unthinkable... I left him when I said I never would again...

I had been trying for years after that to find out little snippets of information... Along the way I found out he joined the Marines (HOORAH!!)... I was so scared he'd get killed in duty and I'd never know. I wrote tons of letters to him that I never mailed... Cried a million tears that he never knew about...

A few years after I got married to Chucuardo, I found out that he got married as well... to an evil bitch shrew that I was sure would ruin his life *how true that was!*

A year or so after that I found him on either facebook or myspace... Not sure which... He divorced his wife... We talked a few times on the phone, but that was it... It helped for awhile... then he disappeared again...

I kept having these dreams with him in them... Very vivid, very prophetic dreams... In one dream he told me, looked me straight in the eye and told me, that every time I dream of him, that he's thinking of me. I can still hear his voice telling me that all these years past.

I lost track of him again except for sporadic facebook message every now and then... About every time i'd close up the wound, he'd surface again and it'd start festering. So many things that I wanted to say would bubble to the surface and I would never be brave enough to tell him how I feel about him and what I felt that Last Night.

I still feel that way, to this day. I talk to him on the phone, I've seen him twice now in 15 years and every time I See him I want to sit him down and just pour it all out. Husband be damned. I can't help it that I still have feelings for him... But I know they're probably one sided... That there's no way in hell that he could possibly still carry a torch for me like I have carried for him all this time....

I was driving back from a session in Oshitty earlier tonight and I was passing by the neighborhood we grew up in... Looking at the beautiful Victorian painted ladies, thinking to myself... If I would have stayed with him, I'd still be in this god forsaken town.... But I'd be happy... Because I was with him. I'd deal with my overbearing and slightly senile father... I'd deal with my bitch shrew of a British step mother.... Because he'd be there to hold me, to love me, to let me love him....

He's still the slightly geeky, overly awkward boy I fell in love with when I was 9... He still has those beautiful blue eyes and that gorgeously infectious smile that never fails to get me smiling with him.... But alas.. We're on different courses in this life... *sigh*

Well, well, well...

I don't have a blog where I can be myself. AKA... I don't have a blog that my mom and family doesn't know about. Last night before going to bed I sat and stewed awhile; toying with the idea of creating a blog soly for ranting purposes. For stupid, mundane and otherwise boring things. So I did it. Lord only knows if I will keep up with it, if I will ever get followers or anything like that. I'm not looking to be the Julie, Julia of the photography world. I just want to carve a little niche out.

A little about myself. I'm a 30 year old stay at home mom/photographer/independent Scentsy consultant. Yeah, I spread myself a little thin, but hell I love it. I'm married to who I'll call... Chuckuardo... Been married to him for 8 almost 9 years. It hasn't always been pretty and there's times that I'm sure he's felt the same way about me that I've felt about him. But despite his flaws, and mine *gasp, yes I have flaws too!* I still love him. He's my rock. My go-to guy. The one that has ALWAYS been there for me. So he deserves some props.

I have two beautiful children, who I'll call Cubby and Princess Twit respectively. Cubby's 10 and Princess Twit is 8. Why Princess Twit you ask? Because... She thinks she's a princess, which makes her look like a twit. Pretty easy. (BTW... Did you know that a twit is actually a pregnant goldfish?)

I'm obsessed with all things coach.....

Like I said, I'm a photographer... I shoot with a 10 megapixel Sony a230... Looking to upgrade my camera come tax season ($$$$). Hoping to get something that will work with my lenses I have, I'm too cheap to buy new ones and the ones I have are fabulous. 

I live in the gret state of Kansas. Don't ask me about Dorothy, Toto, the Tin Man or the Emerald City. I've seen em all, kicked Toto's ass and stole Dorothy's ruby slippers. Yeah, I said I was a rouge. That's me.

Right now that's all I can think of. But beware... There will be more... Oh yes, there will be more.