It's gonna be some good times!

This weekend my husband and I are traveling to his college roommate's place and are going to participate in a softball tournament. My husband is excited to see some old friends, play some softball, and just hang out.

I am excited to sit here:

And do nothing but hold one of these in my hand:

Amen sister.

In These Tough Economic Times....

Here you go....more FDIC info. Promise me though, if you have too much money in one bank, that you will let me know. And if you have too much money in one bank, why in the world are you sitting here reading my blog? I mean seriously!

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/107617/savers-should-manage-accounts-diligently.html?mod=banking-budgeting

No, but really, this information may be important for others you know. Your grandparents, or cousins, or great-aunty, or whomever you know that's just rolling in the dough-they need to keep their money insured and protected. Or maybe you could read the article, that way the next time you're at a dinner party and there's that awkward silence thing-you could just throw out a few FDIC facts and everyone will be really impressed with your massive amounts of knowledge.

Don't worry, you don't have to thank me. I already know.

Turn Your Speakers On

Have you listened to the music I have on my little playlist at the bottom here? I mean seriously, some of the best stuff. I just have a really good taste in music you see. When people ask me what kind of music I listen to, I tell them Country. But I'm not talking Rascall Flatts, or Toby Keith, or especially those idiots Big & Rich. I like real country, classic country, the good stuff, but especially what is called "Texas Country" or "Red Dirt Country." These are typically artists that come out of Texas or Oklahoma and it's a real Rock Country, alternative Country. Love it! Think Country music/lyrics with good-rock-guitar playing. Check out some of these guys if you want to hear true musicians.

Jason Boland

Cross Canadian Ragweed

Jackson Taylor Band

Casey Donahew Band - and again!

Aaron Watson

Ryan Beaver

Oh goodness, I could go on forever-but these are a few of my all time favorites and current obsessions. Please Please check them out. Yes these links are all YouTube videos, but go to their websites and you can hear so much more.

My name is Miranda, and I am a couch potato

It's time for me to come clean. I have a reality TV problem. Actually I just have a TV problem in general, but especially dumb Reality TV. My husband and I loveloveLOVE Big Brother. In fact, when the right person wins the POV or HOH or the right person gets evicted you can usually find us jumping around the living room-yes, literally jumping like two 14 year old girls who just got asked to the big dance on Friday.
I just got done with So You Think You Can Dance, and if you think watching my husband and I jump around the house is strange and amusing, good golly just wait til you see me in the midst of a good SYTYCD episode.

We still have Real World, Jon and Kate plus 8-who know's what will happen with that one, and then I will happen to get stuck on other shows that just catch my fancy one night. But now that summer is almost over, it's time for all the good shows to come back on. That's right, then I get into all sorts of stuff. I mean seriously, you should see our DVR list, it's frickin' ridiculous. Off the top of my head, these are the shows that I am excited to come back on with new episodes (and in no particular order-b/c I don't have time for that-Chelsea Lately will be coming on soon)

• Bones (obsessive is what you would call me)
• Big Bang Theory
• How I Met Your Mother
• High School Reunion (now that's some good bad reality tv stuff)
• the Mentalist
• In Plain Sight
• Gary Unmarried
• Brothers and Sisters
• Private Practice
• Grey's Anatomy(ya I know-real original)
• Friday Night Lights (not as excited as my husband though)

Oh man, I hope that's it. I hope I'm not worse than that. Because seriously, that's depressing.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I made the trek over to our new neighbor's house for the first time. We got to pretend to be adults, and I think the neighbors may have even fallen for it. We toured the home, drank some wine (lots of wine-they're my new best neighbors), ate a delicious meal-served course by course-on a dining room table (I know! get out!) and chatted about our lives and yard work and gossiped about the other neighbors.

It was delightful, and yummy, and fun, and nerve-wrecking, and so many other things. And of course, deceitful-you know what I mean, those funny little lies that you tell with your significant other to people you are just getting to know so that they think you are nicer, or sweeter, or funnier, or smarter, or richer, or whatever-er than you really are. Nothing harmful to your health or anything like that.

Well, that is, if you're not me. If you were me, you would actually do something as dumb as lie about something that is quite important that probably will come up in the future and is potentially kinda harmful! You see, I walked in to their beautiful front living room and their cute little cat came to greet me and I said, "Oh hello kitty" and they told me that they loved their cats, and oh-you're not allergic are you? and of course I said, "Noooo, not me."

Which by the way, is completely inaccurate!

You see, I am in fact allergic to cats. But, it just happened, it just came out of my mouth, the way that you tell your mom-I don't know what happened, someone must have backed into my car or you tell your new boyfriend-oh no, I just wake up looking like this. When, in actuality, we all know its not true. But mom's always know the truth, and someday that boyfriend will really see what you look like when you wake up, but how do I break it to the neighbors that I really can't touch their cat.

Now-it's not life or death, I can just take some good meds before I head over there, but then I'd have to leave it up to my husband to explain why I passed out in the middle of their salad course.

I'm not getting skinny this way

So Internet, I'm sure you're dying to know how my morning run went. Well you'll be happy to know that.....ya right, who am I kidding. It still didn't happen. Even after putting it out there for millions of people to see and hold me accountable (well, millions of people that are on the Internet, but I guess talking more specifically about the "Internet" that stops by here, maybe I should say tens of people.)

It would seem that I was pretty worried about going for my run because at some point in the middle of the night I apparently told my husband I needed a new shirt and then I wondered out to the living room couch and stayed there for the rest of the night. Apparently I was just trying to get a jump on things.

It didn't work.

I am going running in the morning. I am going. I am going on a run! I am, I am, I am. Ok? Hold me to it please!?

Because, though I appreciate my co-worker explaining that these extra pounds I've put on since I became a Mrs. is just contentment, I'm pretty positive they have a lot more to do with my compulsion for adding cheese, of any kind or texture-from cream to soft to aged to processed, to every meal that I make. The only kind of cheese that I don't want is the cottage kind on my behind......

Sorry for that mental image.

Things that make me feel domesticated, and happy, and married, and grown up.

• Getting the mail-kind of exciting, even though the bill stack is getting bigger
• Buying curtains and drapes and decorative pillows and such
• Having the trash barrels right outside the door in the garage, and making my husband take out the trash
• Buying baptism gifts for all the beautiful babies we have around us
• Feeling too old for and being tired of Facebook (....I was on facebook back when you had to be in college, and I could scroll through everyone of the groups or people in the K-State network, and I had to walk uphill both ways to log onto a dial-up Internet connection)
• Going grocery shopping for real food, like produce
• Being invited over to our neighbor's house for dinner, and buying them a gift-and then dropping off a Thank You
• Talking about our retirement fund
• Thinking that we could really have a kid, like on of our own, not just one we pick up and hold for about 12 min. at a time
• Donating for frickin' football tickets (don't get me wrong-you don't find many people who love football or game days or K-State more than me, but seriously-it's how much? for how many games?)-ok so maybe this one doesn't really make me happy, but it does make me feel like we've entered the real world
• Using real plates for supper, and maybe someday when we're really grown up, we'll actually eat at the dining room table
• Worrying about my yard and what my neighbors must think (well they didn't bring it up at supper, but they surely must mutter under their breath when they look out the window)
• Shopping at Home Depot with my husband
• Getting to use the word husband

That's Amore!

Supper last night was a definite yummy one. One of my most favorite meals to make is little homemade pizzas. Sometimes I will make a big batch of pizza dough, then I just throw it in the freezer and let it thaw when I need it-works pretty dang well actually. But on nights when I'm lazy (like last night) I just use the store bought kind. And it doesn't matter, cause it's pizza and it's yummy.

So my recipe for last night:
Preheat oven to 425.

Mix together about half a hunk of cream cheese with a couple dollops of 'out of the jar' alfredo sauce w/ red peppers (I will never go with the red pepper kind again, not worth it.) Spread that on two pizza crusts for my sauce.

Sprinkle ranch dressing powder mix and paprika on two chicken breasts, along w/ some salt and pepper and cook in skillet, about 3 min. each side. Set to the side.

Slice 1/4 onion and cook in some oil, letting the onion get all soft and yummy. Dump in half a bag of spinach and let wilt down-about 3 min.

Using two forks, shred cooked chicken and sprinkle on top of pizzas w/ sauce. Then sprinkle some shredded mozzarella cheese and finally top with onion and spinach mixture.

Put pizzas on a cookie sheet and place in oven for about 10-12 min. Take out and savor the yumminess that is this.

I'd love for someone to give me their opinion, or their version of their favorite homemade pizzas. Gotta love them pizza pies.

Word of the Day #2

Chiquahua~ you know, those little dogs that try to sell you Taco Bell. Only this kind is apparently spelled with a silent q. Those silent q's can be tricky.

Ummm....explanation please!

An individual that I know, that will remain nameless (not to protect them, but rather me!) recently made a $20 bet that there was in fact a silent q in the word chihuahua. Twenty Dollars! Do you know how many Fountain Mountains that would buy!? (well, if you get the first cup new, and then only get refills after-about 24-that's about 2 weeks for me, ladies and gentlemen-that's a lot.) Now I am no literary genius, but I'm pretty sure that the letter q is almost never silent in the English language. Now granted, there is such a thing apparently in the French language-but I'm pretty sure chihuahua is not French. Though you know, I've been wrong before-but I'm still pretty sure I'd put my $20 on it.

Watch out-I know how to hold a paintbrush

One of the first things I wanted to attack in the new house was the room painted black, that would eventually become my Mary Kay office. I knew it needed the most work, and Mark wanted all my Mary Kay crap out of the living room, the bedroom, the hallway, the kitchen, etc. So began the fun!



The before picture.... I mean, I figured I couldn't do much harm to this room.



Sorry sister- my husband has an obsession w/ closeups. But she was a great help (when I let her-I feel guilty having other people help-and at a loss for control, so it's hard for me to let others help!)



First or second coat, looks pretty good in the picture-but not so good in person. Still needed some help.

Four coats of expensive primer later!

Kinda hard to tell, but this is the first coat of pink paint. I freaked out, too close to Pepto Bismol for me. But I took a deep breath, and let everyone convince me I needed it that pink for it to look good with the furniture and such in it later.

Yep, no drop cloth. I wanted to drip on the carpet so that we would have a good excuse to replace the nastiness that is our carpet for the entire upstairs.

Oh my hero! Taping off all my stripes.

Hey baby-whatchyou doing later tonight?

We used the same color of pink, but this time with a High Gloss finish, as opposed to the Eggshell that we started with. This was a bit scary, because we had to remove the tape asap before it dried so it wouldn't pull off the paint, but we wanted to make sure we got a good coverage with the glossy.

Starting to see it.

*Big sigh of relief* It's beautiful!

Very Victoria's Secret bag-don't ya think?

It turned out better than I even imagined! Now I've got to get my shelving up and some pretty decorations. But I've already succesfully had 5 facials in the room, though we had to use my desk as a table because I'm still running out of room. But, it's coming together-just slowly.

And I'm still waiting on the replacement of the carpet.

Life is Good

Oh yea....

Only cost me 'bout $1.19 for my purified water

*found it here: thereifixedit.com

I'm too tired to write

Enjoy these pictures of the greatest thing that has ever happened to me....if you discount the massive amounts of white hair all over my carpet.

And yes, I realize that that carpet couldn't be much worse, other than it being lime green or yellow.

What am I doing right now? you ask-

I am currently running around my house in a last-ditch effort during my lunch break to get it halfway clean so that I am not ashamed to have people step inside my house, as opposed to just huddling on the front porch. And you should probably know, dear readers, that I am doing this dressed in my work pants and my bra.

Yep, sexy housewife.

I was doing dishes and whatnot, and I still have to go back to work, so I don't need any soap bubbles getting on my blouse before I go back to work. You know I wouldn't want it to cover up that toothpaste stain or wrinkled mess that I so painstakingly pulled out of the bottom of the pile this morning at about 3 minutes til I needed to leave.

But the worst thing is, I'm really freaking paranoid about this-darting from one room to the next. Because the last time I did this, my oh-so-kind neighbor happened to see my vehicle outside and stopped by and rang the doorbell to invite us over for a get-to-know-you supper. I don't think that was the kind of get-to-know-you he was expecting at noon on a work day, so I just hid in the kitchen until I was sure he was gone.

Normal day at the Meenen Manor.

I'm coming back like Brett Favre

I'm Baa-ackk! Mark and I finally broke down and just bought a new computer. Apparently the motherboard in my laptop was fried?! Something along those lines, I guess, I tried to listen but when you combine listening with computer terms and a know-it-all, thinks he's funny salesman-I only got about half of it. Basically I heard-it'll cost you at least $300 to maybe fix it and we could get a brand new tower for our desktop for $500 with a much, much better processor and so I did it.

Now I do have to say, I called the dear husband at home, before the purchase because I was doing the shopping by myself, and we were discussing it. And he was wanting me to wait until he was there with me, and I was not wanting to wait until he was there with me and then the most terrible thing happened (dunh dunh dunh) his phone died! Now you and I both know I did the best thing possible as a responsible and dependable spouse-I figured I would have ended up talking him into doing it my way anyways and just bought the thing!


But so now I am back, ready to unload a whole lotta recipes and "funny" stories and interesting peeks into my life. Ooh, and pictures of my dog. Heck ya!

Doesn't it feel like oh, about every 4 months I make a post like this-promising you all sorts of goodies but having no real goods. I'm all about comebacks, and getting your hopes up, and then crushing them! Sorry about that, if you think I'm un-dependable, you should ask my husband.