Those who hide too well away...

Ok so.

Recently, my beloved in-laws (and when I say 'beloved' I truly mean 'beyond myself with excitement upon their arrival'), we're out on the west coast for a few days prior to a trip they were taking. We headed out to whistler and basically had a totally bitchin' time. Came back into Van and got to take them around. The weather was flawless, we got to take them around our city and see the, after a long, hectic emotional Fall. We got great pictures which i wanted to post here. Of course by 'recently' I mean THREE WEEKS AGO! What is my problem!? I know I have been avoiding this lovely, comfortable beanbag chair of Internet known as blogdom because I am stressed and so once I have managed to escape the constancy of living in my brain under these circumstances, the last thing I want to do is spew, for your sake as much as mine. Life is in general upheaval lately. Everything from the practicality of working vs school (even when it is only for a time) to the emotional slog of sifting through inter-relational 'issues' has made my psyche (and the consequent outpouring of it) inhospitable and my generosity nearly non-existent. My desire is to pull a NaBloPoMo as I did last year to exercise my own internal accountability for my blog. Because I like it here. And I always feel better once I leave. (Except for the Pinterest post. I was just as pent up after I wrote it as I was before.) I am being emotionally lazy right now because I feel emotionally wasted. That's as self-pitying as I'm going to get on my blog :)

*On a side note I am blogging through a different interface right now which mainly means that I will no longer be able to blame my insufferable grammar and spelling on OS Lion. Using a new interface required I learn how to use it properly and I wasn't interested in that for a few weeks.

I want to summarize some baking successes I have had lately. This is a list for posterity when I'm feeling inept.

• I made a pumpkin loaf pimped out with hazelnuts and dried blueberries.


• Red velvet cupcakes with fudge frosting for Halloween that totally claimed me as red velvet fan. I am, however, not enough of a fan that I feel I need to convert every dessert known into red velvet. I may make red velvet crepes for Moozh on Valentine's.


• I made brown sugar pavlova for small group last weekend that was glorious and actually made me want to run for the camera when I glanced into the bowl after hearing my hand mixer shriek at hi speed for three and a half minutes. But I didn't let it deflate (even for the sake of posterity).

My project leading into December is to create a hydration starter. I am at the tail end of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain wherein one of his many anecdotes recounts a brilliant baker he worked with on many an occasion had a giant heaving tub of sourdough starter he affectionately called "the bitch". I intend to call her the same. The only thing that makes me hesitant to start a starter is that is IS quite time consuming and requires a fair share of attention, something I do not have plenty of right now. But, as the Wild Yeast blog has convinced me, a good 100% hydration starter is a magical thing to have. And it won't take long to get a hefty return on your investment.

Come Christmas-time, I want to make stollen, reconfigure a cool take on mincemeat, made Mama Dempsey's coffee cake Christmas bread, and make peppermint pots de creme. Here we go.

I'm doing the countdown dance. Five weeks and I'm sporting my whites. Five weeks! Work just hired a new baker who graduated from PICA's pastry program in June. He has been such a great wealth of information leading into school for me. And I am even more pumped for the faculty now that I have first hand accolades from someone who has come through their leadership.

Until then, i'm going to enjoy and be present through what will likely be our last Van christmas. Ooh I totally forgot about Glogg. Making it!!!!
Next entry will be stimulating, I promise :)

"The fabric of your flesh, as pure as a wedding dress…"

I've been listening to "Howl" by Florence and the Machine for probably a half an hour. It's like when I listen to "One" by U2 and Mary J. Blige. I'm pulling a Mary J, ya know breakin' it down. Moozh always get a hefty laugh out of that because he doesn't understand the fierce bitch inside me, all locked up inside an awkward white girl. All good. At least Florence is white too. She's a ginger even! But the beats in her music matched with her howling (Ha! No pun…well yeah pun intended), practically rearranges my heartbeat. And makes me want to take my shoes off and dance on the lawn. And we have to share our lawn. Awkward.

Moozh and I took in the sunset last night playing chess and having wine and bread for dinner. Because we can. And because I grew up on the prairies and I always feel a little bit guilty when I don't take advantage of the waterfront, especially when the sun is OUT. It has been remarkably sunny lately, I will concede.

And because it sounds like a cool thing to do. There I said it. Sigh.

Made soup and popovers for dinner from the Moosewood cookbook lent to me by a lovely new friend. We swapped cookbooks after we had had too much wine. It's the female version of "I love you man."
"Make this cake. Oh my gawd, it's so good. But it's so easy. Seriously, I'm not kidding."
And so I did. No cake yet, but "Gypsy Soup". It just kinda sounds like I'd want to eat it. And popovers are always yummy. LIke puffy muffins. Puffy muffin biscuits. Puffinscuits…..new word.

I found this blog called "The Daybook" through Pinterest. She taught some of my first Photoshop photo processing. But she has this fun portion called "Awesome and Awkward" where you categorize what happened in your day. My days would be a tad one-sided methinks. IN THE AWESOME CATEGORY. Obviously.

Here goes:
Awesome -

• Handing out resumes like I was on a paper route. Let's get us a fine job!
• I didn't get beaten at chess every round last night. I never won but I managed enough stalemates to stay above water. 
• We saw someone walking their dog on the beach and the dog was a dead ringer for Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. It made me seriously want one. I think it's a French Bulldog. "I got a dog! It's a collie…that was hit by a truck." Cutester. 

Awkward -

• When it gets hot my hair gets all droopy and my bangs look like Nick Carter from The Backstreet Boys. You know, when the 90's where the 90's (said with a serious sad face). 
• Standing in my pyjamas in the sunlight pouring through our front windows, drinking my coffee and being thankful when a painter who's here because our building is being painted walks past my window and stares at me in my pjs. Awkward. 
• Giving people the 'death stare' when they stand in my way as I wait for the crosswalk. There is no way I could be in that much of a hurry. 

Happy September! Hope everyone had a nice Labor Day long weekend. I realized today…that it was yesterday. This is what happens when you're unemployed. You have absolutely no need to keep track of time. Unless you have to volunteer at a farm.

Question for today: What would your ideal meal be? Ritzy? Chill? Alone? With company?
I know mine would be a loaf of crusty bread, a chunk of cheese, a bottle of wine and my Moozh. I could eat this meal on the side of a highway and would still be beyond content. Mmm-mmm.

"Night smoke rose from the boil of the sunset…" E.Birney

Whoa. Whooooooaaa.

I basically have the best husband ever. I will love him now and until forever, if not because I truly love him and he is in general extremely loveable, for this moment alone. On Sunday, we were trying to clean my computer out. It was becoming really slow and thus we decided to transfer some stuff to the hard drive and do a system clean. The only problem was that the moments directly following that were extremely traumatic. We decided to empty the trash (don't ever empty the trash!) and then found that the folders we had tried to back up (aka all of my course work for my summer classes, some of which were due within days, and ALL of my creative writing) was gone. G-g-g-g…empty. So basically I cried. And then drank some wine. Cried some more. Kind of felt like I was going to puke. Talked myself off a ledge. Had Moozh talk me off a ledge. And then I moved to distraction tactics.
In the days following, my husband, my majestic, indefinable, incomparable Moozh, searched my laptop and our hard drive for any trace of my missing files. After a day of searching, I was ready to give up but Moozh soldiered on. (I feel like I'm writing an epic.) And then, as I was trying to write my term paper from scratch at the Yoob, Moozh calls me with a little giggle in his voice and tells me he found it. He sends me a file that is the identical to my term paper. In fact, it is my term paper! I raced home, cried a little more and then kissed him all over his face. And now I am finishing my final paper with no drama to be found. He's a gooder. And so good to me.

It's firework season in Bankybear. Last Saturday was the first entry of the fireworks competition. It was China and it was really impressive. The windows of the apartment buildings in the West End look as if their lacquered with sequins. They mega sparkle.

Apartment Therapy had this wicked post that had 20 Unforgettable American Movie Interiors. One of my favourites, It's Complicated, is on the list. Meryl Streep's kitchen, nay her WHOLE HOUSE in that film is unbelievably beautiful. Slobber. I also loved, funny enough, Meryl Streep's house in The Hours too. Totally different place but still so cool.

I have decided that I want to make pickled blueberries. And this recipe by Tigress in a Pickle seems pretty good. I love pickled peaches and blueberries have a similar glorious sweetness so why wouldn't that taste good? The recipe suggests it as a chutney on top of meat or on top of ice cream. Seems like the kind of thing that I would eat off of a spoon. Or the palm of my hand. Obsessive.

Sunday we go to Vic! Moozh and I are making a trek over to the Island for our anniversary trip. Our anniversary was actually last week but it was so hectic last week that we didn't get to truly celebrate. We haven't been back to the Island since we moved to Bankybear so this trip will be so great. We have our old haunts all picked out.

Coffee and a scone from Union Pacific

Union Pacific Coffee

Fifth Street Bar and Grill. We seriously love the people here. They took such good care of us when we were in Vic. Great people. Great food. Great atmosphere. 

Victoria Grid Project

Rebar! I will chew my food properly this time because I will be prepared for the goodness. Last time I just go too excited and had indigestion for a full 24 hours. 

Eat Drink Victoria

Irish Times! Great scotch. Great Guiness. Great Music. Moozh and I did our first vodka tasting. It was kind of impromptu (meaning it was impromptu) but they've got some great vodka available. At least it sure felt that way after six shots. 

Irish Times Pub

And Bubby's! That pie is kick ass to the core. But we will also get there in time for their Shaker Lemon Pie which is uh-maaaaazing! Make the trip, just for that.

As of noon on Saturday I am home free. Be thinking of me and be wishing profoundly analytical things regarding Canadian literature my way. 

"The 'Earth' without the 'art' is just 'eh'…."

Two days ago was my second year wedding anniversary and in celebration of that, I gave my bloggy a facelift! You will notice a new "Lexicon" tab which is a glossary for all of the bizarre words I use on this blog. I will likely continue to change my blog visually in the next few weeks. Some blogs just have great designs. Like Smitten Kitchen. I think in the five years I've been reading that blog the layout, the typeface, the background, hasn't changed once. That is what is known as consistency. Which I don't think I have in any respect yet. But I have been married for two years! That's consistent.

In two years I have been Moozh's crazy, trendy bitch who buzzes the side of her head who doesn't pay her cell phone bills and and sleeps in her car (even though she had a house and a bed). I have been his hippy granola wifey who wears Prana and Chacos and washes her face in glacial rivers. I have been his Fisherman's wife who wears waffle knit and big socks and we talk in long, late hours of Shiraz and Yankee Candles about being fisher's of men.

All in two years! That's alotta changin'. Makes me feel like I've had an identity crisis. Or that I have multiple personalities, which I'm sure is not as fun as it looks on United States of Tara.

My Jew class is over tomorrow. I kind of feel like I've been dragged by the waistband of my underpants through it. My head is super full with just tons of extracirricular stuff, things that Moozh and I are trying to figure out. And so I haven't been present in this class, I just haven't. Which is too bad because I love Jewish history even though it makes me want to slit my wrists sometimes.

Good friends of ours just found out that they are having a baby girl! Mama is due in December but yesterday they found out that it is a little girlie. I called her "Devochka Rabyonuk" which means 'baby girl' in Russian. As it goes with Russian, something short and nickname-y becomes cumbersome with really harsh consonants. But it's pretty fun to say. Devochka Rabyonuk. I'm gonna make her booties. Or mocassins. O die! That's the cutest.

Pregnancy is the new skateboarding. Everyone is doing it. We have friends in Cowtown that just had their baby and other friends that are due in the fall. We have our good friends in Bankybear that are preggers. That's it. It's actually not that much. But I guess when you're always eating with them and talking about acid reflux all the time it seems like a lot. But many pregnancy is fun when you don't have to do it yet. Baby Ds are quite a ways in the future I think. Not quite ready to share Moozh yet.

Well, there isn't a cloud in the sky in Bankybear right now and you know how she can get. I have to get outside before she feels unappreciated and sulks for the rest of the day.

Happy Thursday! Tomorrow's Friday!

"And have you tell me that wherever I choose you go…"

Here we go y'all. Twelve hours from now I'll be butt-skipping into Cowtown, groggy but ready to party. I get to see my sister wear a bow or something similarly outrageous on her head and open presents. My sister gets married in a week! Makes me smile.

This week is going to be packed with family stuff and wedding stuff. Bombaniers here I come. It's all candy covered almonds and tinted cellophane for me this week. It's all good. I love crafts.

I hope that the next four weeks are filled with lemonade, and tanlines and hopscotch and sunsets. Mine will be. And there are rumours of a sister blog to this one in the works. A travel blog! And by rumours, I mean my brain is tinkering away at it. 

Happy  Friday!

P.S~ Go Canucks!

She's touring the facility and picking up slack.

I've concocted a little project for myself. It will be stressful but at the same time, it SHOULD be tasty.

What I intend to do is cook through, alternately, the Rebar Cookbook and the Joy of Cooking. Matt bought them for me in an effort that my obsession with food blogs would bear something productive. One day I will cook from the Rebar cookbook and then the next day (or the next exercise in frustration) will a similar dish or entree from the Joy of Cooking.  There will be times of strife, ("Yeah but does it TASTE burnt?" or "I don't know what that means. I'll just improvise.") and moments where we have peanut butter toast for dinner, but I believe there will be moments of tastiness.

Rebar's whole THING is fresh ingredients and good whole foods. I've never eaten anything there that seemed really all that complicated but, as my criminal history indicates, it never in following the instructions that things go horrifically wrong. It's in the measuring ("Oh that says TEASPOON.") or the prepping ("Chiffonade? Okaaay....."), even in the clean up, like when I made jam and sliced my finger open washing the tongs. Or when I was making angel food cake FROM THE BOX and I got my fingers stuck in the beaters. Or when I was making a fritatta and I burned all the way up the inside of my arm.  Whhyyyyyy? Because that's my angle.

Happy Monday!

Things that made me happy today:
~Happythankyoumoreplease. This movie looks sweet.
~This totally is awesome. Especially when they write verb conjugation in Russian for you.
~ I never get tired of this song.
~ Mmmmm soup.

Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful. Link

Song for our Fathers

Sigh.

I was going to take pictures. I was going to go OUTSIDE.

Now, let me put a disclaimer on this. I am not a weenie. Correction: I am not a weenie when it comes to weather. Growing up in Cowtown, I bought my clothes with the proviso that I would be standing at bus stops, jumping through snow banks, peeling off layers when Chinooks hit, etc. But here...here is different. It's sleet and it's flying sideways (diagonal?). It doesn'

t matter if you have a hood. It doesn't matter if you have an umbrella. It doesn't matter if you have anything other than a balaclava and even then your mascara would still run. And then stick together and freeze like that. Oy vey.

So no pictures today. I handle the camera like a newborn and I have severe...clumsiness. A sunny day, or at the very least an overcast one, will saunter about and I will have some fun. So THERE, Bankybear! Until then, it'll be all interiors.

This is a picture from Simply Stardust, a blog I found off of Bloglovin'. (I really shouldn't do this. More blogs and more blogs. It is like memorizing trivia you will never have the opportunity to utilize. It's SO SAD. I do that also.) I think I realize that what I love so much

about food blogs are the photographs. So I don't love food blogs. I love photography blogs. Well good. Problem not solved.

I love when people capture something that is so everyday and invisible but capture it in a way that makes you want to seek those things out. It's a reminder to do that every day in everything.

I am convincing myself that in real life this would be unwise and perhaps not as cute as it is here.

I pretty much can't even handle this. Hey Bloglovin', you've totally taken over my life.

Idle-diddle-didle-didle-man

Resolution Number Five: Stop brushing my teeth so hard. I am on the train to gum-recession-town.

Resolution Number Four: Just because you vomit on your morning run doesn't mean it was of quality.

Resolution Number Three: If you're going to spend an exorbitant amount of time on food blogs, at least cook something! Recipe goals: Panna Cotta, Beef Bourginon (for the Mister), and BAGELS!

Resolution Number Two: Make it through the minor prophets. That is all. I love the Old Testament but I never want to read through NUMBERS.

Resolution Number One: Love my husband and do for him before I do for myself. It is a conscious thing to keep life from taking over your marriage. But it is a daily blessing.

T-minus one day until second-semester total annihilation. Scratch that (resolution six: get a handle on your exaggeration), I am actually very excited about this semester. I'm hoping my Writing for New Media class will enable me to actually make money and not sell my soul to wait tables (or become a clicky-pen tester). I've read ahead in my Russian textbook and we are going to learn how to say we we 'took a bus' and what our hobbies are. It's gonna be big. I'm going to learn how to say I test clicky pens. I have a science class which makes me want to binge eat but I'm hoping that since it's a science class targeted at arts students (namely the students that binge ate their way through Chem 30) that it will be manageable. There is a decidedly vague description on the website but it has a picture of a robot so that means it can't be all bad right? And it's one of those cute robots that looks like Eve from Wall-e and probably sorts M&M's by colour. My intro writing course is taught by the same guy who admits undergrads into the Creative Writing department so Operation Brown Noser is a go.

Links!

*I felt bad for a while that I spend so much time finding new blogs and telling people about them UNTIL there was an opening on one of my favourite sites, Apartment Therapy, for a blogger. One of the requirements was "an ever-broadening knowledge of blogs regarding food, home, and entertainment." I'm in training!

- Have you seen the new Restoration Hardware catalogue. Holy Lord.

- This will be my desk one day. I don't know how I'll get any work done but what will probably end up happening is I will hold my laptop on my lap and look up at my desk every so often and feel good about myself.

- Another place that I just can't get over is Steampunk Home. Some of it is slightly...overwrought. Not exactly a house that livable. But some of it is pure genius.

- This song is magical. It's from The Assassination of Jesse James soundtrack but it's also in the breathtaking trailer for Water for Elephants.

- I want to organize our books like this some day.

- I LOVE this song. I've had it stuck in my head since I watched it over Christmas. I love how it's a sober but graceful song that's so appropriate for a wedding. And this because, I mean really, that's skill.

Toodle Loo Bankybear

So my new blogosphere of devotion is SheWrites. Their tagline is "A Room of Her Own Just got Bigger" which makes me want to die it's so genius. I've been trying to figure out how to 'bust out' my blogging if you will. I'm not a genius photographer (not that I couldn't become one), I'm not a proficient chef (see reason #1), I don't enjoy posting pictures of my outfits online (though maybe one day?) and I don't get a kick out of blogging about other people's outfits. I don't plan weddings, or deliver babies, or craft my day away making custom camera straps or pants for children 4-10. I write. And I want to write well.

On my portfolio site (which is in desperate need of a facelift) I want my blog to be reflective of who I am as a writer. Here I can swear, and talk about my marriage. I can post links to cute baby pictures or hilarious YouTube vids. There I want to grow as a writer and make a point of exercising my ability in different forms. One of my creative writing classes next semester is writing for new media which looks at blogging and similar new forms. I want to take this next period of time to really become familiar with it.

Which is why I'm so excited about SheWrites. Like NaBloPoMo, it's a site that is a support to writers and to bloggers. And because they quote Virginia Woolf, they are fun, feministy types.

Hopefully, this site can help me to articulate better what kind of writer I want to be. I know why kind of writer I don't want to be but as G.K Chesterton says, you end up standing for nothing.

This is from SheWrites. May this be a fruitful union.

Literary Love Affair

When I first began to read, it was everything from Bailey School Kids Mysteries to Black Beauty and Little Women. I read Number the Stars and Under the Quilt of Night and they opened my eyes to the possibility, tragedy and fascination that the world held. I went through a lengthy "cute animal centred mystery" phase.

When I first began to write, I had books like I am David and The Giver on my mind. I began to write very young and while I can't necessarily stand by my writings of the 'old days'. I wanted to travel to distant places and my imagination could take me there.

When I first began to raid my mother's bookshelves, I read The Red Tent in junior high and it blew my mind. I think I read through the entire Old Testament that summer.

When I first began to have my bookshelves stocked by English professors, it was Margaret Atwood, Alice Monroe, and Sylvia Plath. I read Faulkner, Twain and Adrienne Rich. I read Aristotle, Anne Sexton, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

When I fell in love with poetry, it was Margaret Atwood, Carol Ann Duffy, and Anne Sexton.

When I fell in love with the short story, Alice Monroe, Flannery O'Connor and Tim O'Brien.

I can't remember when I didn't love the novel. Lately it's been Audrey Niffenigger, Mary Shelley (Frankenstein actually scared me when I read it), and C.S Lewis.

Over the years my writing teachers, Dale Wallace, Bill Gaston, Carla Funk, Joan McDonald and John Gould. The introduced me to writers that I couldn't help but find. John Vailant, Leonard Cohen, Martin Amos and I, Claudia.

Music hijacks my mind. I've been listening to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford soundtrack lately and my fingers just fluttery. It pulls me into a different space. Explosions in the Sky does the same. Mind. Blown.

My friends Ginny Monaco, Jenica Chuahiock and Kirsti Doggart remind me that I'm a writer, even when I don't write. (My mom and dad do that, too.) We sit around our workshop and ooze what makes us passionate and simultaneously ecstatic about writing.

Who inspired you to write? Who inspires you now? Tell us the story of your literary love affairs.

Margaret Atwood (my computer will probably know her name off by heart I talk about her so much), Susan Perkins Gilman, Eli Weizel, John Vailant, Anita Diamant and C.S Lewis.

At least there will be plenty implied

This month has been a wonderful blog month. I began NaBloPoMo which has initiated a love affair and a growing respect for my blog and for habit.

1. I discovered Today's Letters, which has taken me by storm.

Emily and Tim Loerke are a couple from Dallas, Texac. Her bio makes me die it is so adorable. It reads, "Mr. Loerke and I have been married for 5 years. We like to dance in our jammers, sleep late in the biscuit, build forts, write each other love letters, and spend lots of time in the kitchen experimenting with food. We also get to ask each other for forgiveness each day. Holla." Seriously, oh my goodness. They are incredible God loving couple who love small groups, ice cream and calling the things in their life by funny names. They call their car a fart box and their bed a biscuit. AWWWWWESOME! My favourite posts (at the moment -they seriously get cuter and more awesome every day) would be their Halloween post because they drew her beard on with those smelly marker and the post where they talk about how they met and fell in love because honestly who doesn't love those stories. And the posts are back to back! They. Are. Great.

2. I love Bluebird Baby. She is a photographer out of Maine and even just the photos of her house are mesmerizing. She's a big antiques person (so is Emily Loerke actually! There's a mathematical equation here waiting to happen) but she did a reno on her kitchen that I can't get over. The open face cabinets are beauuuuuutiful. Krasivaya! She does every monday, these links pages that are so great. Get's you listening to new music, looking at new pictures, and seeing new sites. Gweat! She has the cutest little daughter who dresses herself like a total champ and she has the cutest love ever too. She has a whole category called, "I love Sasa". Ummms yes.

3. I will put Smitten Kitchen on here because I truly spend an inappropriate amount of time on food blogs. Which is crazy because I don't even really like cooking that much. Or eating. But on every blog I've ever been on in their link tab they have Smitten Kitchen listed. Everyone loves her. And she's Jewish, which means I love her. She also has a surprise me button which is every browsing web surfer's nemesis because it keeps you there longer than you ever intended to stay. But if you really wanted to invest your time in meaningful things you wouldn't be surfing the net. :) This looks delish and many a Casa del Dempsey staple in it. I want to eat far more sweet potato because I'm a tuber hound. Cheers.

Prompt!

P.S~ I've been trying to resist until December 1 but the Christmasness is working itself into my mind. I have a Christmas playlist on my iPhone now. And we got a Yankee Candle. Merry Christmas!

"I love that boy and he is my friend...I wave to him from very far"

Oh Russian, how did this happen between you and me? Oh yes, I ignored you. I know how much you don't like that. Duly noted.

Casa del Dempsey (I pillaged that from here) has been a scholastic internment camp lately. I feel like it's been a little too long since I said, "Yo Husband I love you like for real". I've been saying it in my head because life is moving at the speed of sound. My artful and persistent propensity for procrastination has reared its head once again. I had tricked myself into being VERY proactive thus far and then I did a research proposal that I had known about since Sept 7 last night at one o'clock in the morning. Matt didn't feel sorry for me. I didn't either.

K and whoa. This is magical. Magical.

We're church shopping right now which is lame. Though it makes me kind of heavy hearted to be in this process, Matt and I are praying a lot more together and we're talking about what we're looking for and what we need which is perfect.

He becomes more and more of my favourite person everyday. To doing a bum dance while he's flossing his teeth (after I convinced him to), to the eternal improvisation of his 'Baby come to bed' song when I'm brushing my teeth and to his ceaseless, imaginative, god-honoring, locked-like-a-steel-trap mind. To making me laugh, and making me mad. To constantly reminding me to strive to be what God intended us to be for each other. Mwah!

I love these. They are my favourite. Brown ones. Happy Fall.

1000 Awesome Things

Quickie

My mom told me about this site and it is (as advertised) totally awesome!

This entry makes me laugh, out loud everytime! This is quoted directly from his site. Careful, it's totally addictive and will make you feel so happy all day!

#521 Calling a mulligan on the day

Do you play golf?

Me, I’ve tried a couple times but it’s always the same: I lace up some stained sneakers, borrow rusty clubs from someone’s basement, and then scrounge around the parking lot for somedented balls for my once-a-decade tee shot.

Now, I’ve mentioned my athletic abilities before so you’ll understand why I love that golf rule which lets me call a mulligan. Have you heard of it? Basically, I swing and miss the ball a dozen times before eventually shanking itdead sideways into the dense forest.

But then I just yell MULLIGANNNNN! really loudly and everyone lets me try again.

It’s a great rule and it got me thinking: We should be able to call mulligans anywhere. Because hear me out.

What if you could call a mulligan on your driving test? Yes, after tire-punching the curb and hitting Grandma’s shopping cart you just drop the m-word and start again. Or how about calling a mulligan after anawkward side hug in the airport? Or after accidentally spitting a tiny piece of food on your date’s face?

It’s starting to sound good, am I right?

Now, my old college friend Mike is the master. See, he’s perfected the beautifully indulgent Weekend Mulligan. He often gets up and groggily stumbles around the kitchen, spills coffee grinds on the floor, and accidentally steps on the cat. But then he stares at his dark, hollow eyes in the mirror and realizes he woke up too soon.

That’s when he just calls a mulligan on the day and goes back to bed with a plan to give it another shot a few hours later.

People, life’s too short not to sleep when you feel like it. So take a page from our book and when your first couple shots land in the rough, just yell mulligan and start again.

AWESOME!

I love it -MULLLIGAAAAAAN!