Green Thumb?

Okay, so I'm pretty excited right now, and not just because Big Love ended in the way that I both predicted and wanted, and not just because my birthday is fast approaching, and not just because I have a new ice cream scoop, and not just because I had a full weekend of [mostly] completing some house projects.

I'm excited because I'm taking on something new: plants.

See, I really don't understand plants.  Like I just don't get them.  I mean, I'm not a complete moron; I understand that they need water and sunlight, and I understand photosynthesis* and all.  But when it gets into all of this bull jive** about shade plants and sun plants and different kinds of dirt and pruning and bees and feeding and all of that--well, I just don't know anything. 

Last summer I planted some hydrangeas, and aside from my brief foray with hydroponics, it was a huge failure.  I kept forgetting to water the little bushes, and the hot Savannah sun just made the plants shrivel into little pitiful piles of wilted sadness.

But then I went outside the other day, and wouldn't you know it?  Those hydrangeas are some resilient little suckers.

So, inspired by my very, very slight success with the hydrangeas, and inspired by Cassie (who is basically a plant genius), I'm trying to find some actual success with plants this year.

But since I'm still a plant idiot, I got this little greenhouse thing from Target.  And it's kind of awesome--so far, at least.

Because, see, you start with these weird little pellets.

And then you pour warm water over them, and they grow BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!

And then they kind of look like all kinds of things that you will want to make immature jokes about, but that you won't because you're about to turn 30 in a week.

And then you add some seeds.

And then you run out of seeds, but try to find some in the refrigerator.

Then you cover them with dirt (or so I remember from the third grade), and then you put in your little plant markers, and send out happy thoughts.

Wish us luck!

 These are for Caitie, who is newly obsessed with spaghetti squash.

And if this goes well, we'll tackle this next.  Eek!

Any plant tips you'd like to share, friends?


*When Matt and I first started dating, I wowed him while we were watching Jeopardy! by knowing what ATP stood for.  Adenosine triphosphate, for those of you who are wondering.  He was impressed, as he should have been.  I was impressed that that was actually the right answer. 


**My students taught me this term.  Also, it is awesome.

This and That

1.  If Richard Blais doesn't win Top Chef All-Stars, then I will never watch that show again.  If Richard Blais loses to Mike Isabella, then I will never watch TV again.  Mike Isabella is so skeezy!

2.  There is a handful of movies that I will watch every time I see them on TV.  This list includes, but is not limited to: Groundhog Day, Father of the Bride (parts I and II), Forgetting Sarah Marshall, A River Runs Through It, and the first Sex and the City movie*.  Slate had a pretty cool article recently about what makes a movie re-watchable.  What movies can you watch over and over?

3.  Operation: Skinny Unicorn is going pretty well.  I have been eating much better (and much less!) lately, and have been feeling pretty good.  I say that now.  Last week I might have had a tantrum where I just kept telling Matt, "I'M HUNGRY!"  while throwing my body around like Paul Rudd's character Andy on Wet Hot American Summer.  Maybe I then threw myself on my bed and cried for several minutes and was just a big baby? 

This week has been much better, and I'm determined to win, because I need some new shoes.  Check out my favorite school shoes.

4.  I have tomorrow off of school because it's St. Patrick's Day.  Isn't that awesome?  And Friday is a teacher workday.  Unfortunately, I won't see a ninth grader until Monday.  Oh, shoot.

5.  Modern Family needs to come back with some new episodes.  I'm going through withdrawal!

6.  I've been completely obsessed lately with watching Brothers and Sisters on Netflix instant.  Why is it so good?  Also, it's kind of terrible, and the writing is the worst, but I love it anyway. 

7.  Mitch is still the cutest dog on the planet.

8.  I only have ten more days of my twenties.  That's freaky.

9. I want this flying car.

10. This week Matt and I went over to the dark side; we joined Sam's Club.  You don't have to scold me, but you can judge away.  And then be jealous of the 30-pack of awesome sweet and salty granola bars that we have in our pantry.

*I actually hate the Sex and the City movie, but am, for some god-forsaken reason, completely unable to tear myself away from it--especially the part where Carrie asks, after she was stood up by Big (except not really stood up--she's just crazy), "Will I ever laugh again?"  I really hate that movie, and should institute some sort of punishment for myself each time I watch it.  But isn't watching the movie punishment enough?

Phew!

Um, uh, did we get a pet rabbit?

And is this rabbit trying to tell us something?

 

Nope.  Just a dingo who wanted a little midnight snack.  Phew!*

*Um, also, I was so relieved that it was only dog food in my bed, and not, in fact, excrement.  Where did my life go wrong?**

**Also, it's not like we often have excrement in our bed.***

***Ever.  It's not like we ever have excrement in our bed. 

I Swear I Didn't Plan It!

So, I've been trying to get Matt to let me put a TV in our bedroom for about four years.

But Matt forbids it.

He says that if I have a TV in the bedroom, I will never leave the bedroom. 

And, well, I can't really argue with that. So I don't push the issue.

Now let's switch gears a bit.  Matt and I also never get money back from our taxes.  What we get back from federal we always seem to owe to state, so it's always a wash. 

But this year we did.  It wasn't anything too crazy, but it was enough that we thought it would be okay to buy ourselves a present or two.  Last Sunday, I dragged Matt to Target because I wanted to look for the complete series of Six Feet Under (birthday gift idea!).  As he does every time he walks into my home away from home, he made a b-line for the back to look at the TVs.  We've been wanting a nicer TV for our guest room for a while now, but it was just never much of a priority.  But there were a bunch on sale, and about 15 minutes after walking into Target, we were walking out of Target with a new 32-inch baby.  Fair enough.

So we set it up in the guest room, on top of the new Expedit.  Truth be told, the new TV was supposed to help with us losing weight (because I can rationalize any purchase with "it will help me to lose weight") because we could put the Wii in there and stream Netflix instant, which would make us (and by us I mean me, because Matt is an ellipting addict already) want to work out more.

Now here's the part I didn't count on.  We have a really comfortable bed in the guest room. 

Uh oh.

This has been my view for the last few days.

Mitch loves it, too.

So, anyway, I subconsciously manipulated my husband into doing what I want.  And I'm pretty pleased with myself.



If you need me, or Mitch, you know where to find us.

Weekend Fun!

Ahhh. . .what a lovely weekend it's been.  It was both restful and productive.  The weather was fantastic, the dog was as cute as ever, and, while we didn't really leave the house much, we had lots of fun. 

Grading essays kind of sucks, but it sucks less when you get to sit in

The Lagoon and look out the window at this cuteness.

Graded papers.

Dinner visit with our three favorite girls.

Husbands who are ellipting fools.

DELICIOUS chicken fajitas.*

And I don't just want to leave you with pictures and nothing else.  We made a really tasty marinade for our chicken, and it was a hit.  Here's the recipe for the marinade. 

Fajita Marinade for Chicken

Ingredients

Juice from three limes

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 jalapenos, minced

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Directions

Combine all ingredients.  Put into ziploc bag with pounded boneless skinless chicken breasts.  Marinate for two hours or more. 

*Operation: Skinny Unicorn folks.  Each one of these fajitas was 6 points.  Mmmmmmmmmm.  I ate three.

Dear Mary. . .

Sorry I've been MIA.  Nothing's really wrong, well, except for my absolute inability to complete a task these last couple of weeks.  As soon as I manage to finish some stuff, I'll have lots to share with you.

But I can't wait until then to share these little gems with you.  They're from Sapling Press.

And my personal favorite. . .

So if you just thought to yourself, "OMG!  Mandy's birthday is only two weeks away and I have yet to buy her a card and gift," then just get me one of these.  And maybe one of these.  And these.  And this.*

Well, shoot.  Now I'm being greedy. 

*Not really with the last one.  I'm terrified of needles.

Grilled Chicken Wings

Look!  I just got another tool to ward off murderers!

And now I kind of want to be a butcher.

Or a landscaper?*

Anyway, I got this new meat cleaver because we wanted to make grilled chicken wings for dinner.  Truth be told, I wasn't all that jazzed about making grilled chicken wings, but they were going to be the healthier alternative to our fried wings, you know, since I'm on a quest to be less fat.  When we started, I was rather unenthusiastic about the wings (but not the chopping part where I got to use my meat cleaver and make crazy eyes), so much so that I didn't document the process at all.  Fortunately, there wasn't much to document.  Oh, and they're out of control delicious.

So here's what you do.

1.  Chop wings like a psychopath.  Be sure to cut off the tips.  I don't know why, but you're supposed to.
2.  Toss the wings in a large bowl with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, some salt, pepper, and cajun seasoning.
3.  Grill the wings.
4.  Toss them again in a large bowl with sauce. (We used Frank's Buffalo Wing Sauce, but you could use whatever you want.)
5.  Eat.  You will get sauce all over your face and hands, so these are not to be eaten around polite company.

They're easier to make than they are to eat, and I think they taste better than the fried ones.


*I've always secretly wanted to be a landscaper, even though I don't know anything at all about plants.
**Oh, and for those of you who have joined Operation: Skinny Unicorn, it's 10 WW points for 8 wings.

Even the Devil Disapproves.

There's a whole lot of handsome in this little clip.  Start watching it for the handsome; keep watching it for the laughs.


Also: Seth Meyers is the next big thing, saith the Mandy of 2003.

Wrong Number

For some reason, I often find myself in situations where I'm privy to weirdly private information about others.  Remember the Wild Tiger, Lion Heart note? 

Well, lately, I've been receiving some text messages that were supposed to go to someone else.  But because the writer of said messages does not pay attention to detail--or can't spot it when someone's giving them a fake number--I get to have some entertainment.

Last night I got this message:

Just so you know newman is an always will be my life.  I swear an i mean swear i never wanted to hurt him.  That man has saved me so much.  I love him an always will.

This Newman?

I'm not gonna lie to you: I thought it was pretty funny.  And I thought for about two seconds about texting back or calling the person to tell them that they have the wrong number, but I decided not to.

And then today I got this message:

You may not wanna talk to me because you think i lied to you well i didnt.  When newman started to hit me pull my hair an tell me he will kill me yeah i did something bout that.

Winona Thelma Feldmann!

And now I'm really torn about whether or not I should let this person know they've got the wrong number.  On one hand, I feel bad for them.  On the other, I think it best to stay out of this crazy Newman business.

What would you do?

The Wheels on the Bus. . .

Today I had the rare privilege* of going on a field trip with hundreds of ninth graders.  It was about as fun as you would imagine a field trip with hundreds of ninth graders to be, especially since we were only going across town to the tech school, so there were no fun zoos or museums to speak of.  The only fun part was when, during the presentation on the early childhood development pathway, I tried to convince a couple of my girls that the robot babies were actually dead babies.  They didn't buy it.  They also didn't believe that the mannequin heads in the cosmetology room were severed heads of fugitives.**  Shoot.

One of the best (and by best I mean, of course, worst) parts of this trip was that I got to ride across town in a school bus. 

I hate riding school buses.

Hate hate hate hate hate.

And do you know why?  (I mean, other than the fact that they smell and don't have good climate control and they're uncomfortable and always chock full of screaming children?) 

I super hate school buses because, when I was in the tenth grade I had to ride the school bus to school.  And I hated it.  It took 45 minutes each way, and there were a bunch of trashy kids on my bus, and it was uncomfortable and loud and too bumpy for me to be able to get my homework done.  So I'd just sit there, bored and miserable.  If I was lucky, I might get to talk to some preppy girl about her newest pair of jeans from Abercrombie. 

Before too long, I realized that the only thing that would make the bus ride bearable would be sleep.  So I took to sleeping on the bus.  And then I took to lying on the seat and sleeping on the bus.  And then, on one fateful day, I took to sleeping a little too hard on the bus--so hard, in fact, that I didn't wake up for my stop.  And I didn't wake up for the next stop, or the next stop after that, either.

I didn't wake up until much later, when I popped my head up, only to realize that I was the only kid on the bus and that the bus was now on the highway.

Oops.

Both I and bus driver were pretty freaked out.  Fortunately--in a very embarrassing twist--the bus was headed to my brother's middle school.  I had to go to the office, call my parents, and get permission to, in my sixteenth year of life, ride the middle school bus home with my kid brother.

It was pretty humiliating. 

And that, my friends, is why I hate school buses.  But, really, doesn't everyone hate school buses?


*The universe hates me.

**This, coupled with the fact that they didn't believe that I was Jesus the other day, makes me think that I'm losing my touch when it comes to lying to children. 

Operation: Skinny Unicorn*

So, as I've mentioned here recently, I am currently so fat that I will soon be wearing tarps as clothing. Also, I'm about three bowls of Homemade Samoa Ice Cream away from exceeding the weight limit for my desk chair. My car is scraping the bottom of the road when I drive, and I'm kind of afraid that it's going to catch fire or something, and then I'll get into a fiery crash.**

And, by the way, I'm not at all confused about why I'm fat. I know that it's because I eat way too much and don't move around enough. Whaaaaaaaaaa? You mean that eating an entire loaf of French bread as a quick snack and then lying on the couch watching Teen Mom II isn't going to make me thin and beautiful? Well, shoot.

So, anyway, it's time to make a change, and I'm motivated to make this change (finally!). On Sunday, when Matt and I were heading to the beach, I was talking to him about how I wanted to join Weight Watchers. And then when I got home I talked to Shecky and she said that she wanted to join with me.

And, in our classic form, because we are ridiculously competitive maniacs, Shecky and I decided that we should make it a contest. So we are competing to see who can lose the most weight (in a healthy, non-crash diet kind of way). The sad thing about this contest is that Shecky and I, what with our tendency to cheat in contests such as these***, have had to lay down a few extra ground rules.

For example, if Shecky (who is prone to illness) gets so sick that she has to go to the hospital and she loses weight because of the sickness, that doesn't count.

Also, I am not allowed to mail her baked goods, or hundreds of Cadbury Cream Eggs.****

Our contest will end on August 1, and the person who has lost the most weight wins. The loser, then, must purchase for the winner a nice pair of shoes that the winner desires.

NOW, if both of us lose 40+ pounds (which would be hard, but is certainly do-able), then we get a much bigger prize which has yet to be determined. Any suggestions?

Don't worry, though. This blog isn't going to transform into some daily record of meals and tenths of pounds lost. And I'm not going to stop making delicious desserts, either. I'll just have to eat smaller bowls of ice cream and fewer cupcakes. You might see some more sorbets and yogurts, but I can assure you that none of them will be made with Splenda or Diet Coke.

So there you have it. My quest to be less fat. Wish me luck! (I really want these.)


*Unicorn because Shecky and I were/are both big fans of the Sweet Valley Twins and High books, and in college we considered ourselves honorary members of the Unicorns because we were basically bullies who loved to wear purple.

**Safety first, people.

***See, also: The Great American Girls v. Boys Keg Race of 2002.

****Foiled!