Working my @ss off

So-I have to confess something. I drink a lot of Mt. Dew. Like-a lot. And I also will drink a lot of water, so needless to say, I do have to make a couple or three or four trips to the lady's room during the day. Not to mention the fact that I have the world's smallest bladder. Seriously, ask anyone of my family or friends or Mark even-actually don't ask Mark. You don't want to get Mark started. He'd get all pissy and complain about how he has to forbid me from having caffeine for about two days before a trip that would require me to be in the vehicle for longer than an hour. So just don't ask him, take my word for it.
Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is I spend quite some time in the lady's room and maybe I just have a weird handicap-but I cannot rip off a piece of toilet paper for anything! I try to tear it, pulling it against the edge of the holder and it just keeps unraveling, leaving me with about three feet of paper on the floor. I'm sitting there, trying to roll it all back up, hoping no one walks in and sees my feet with a wad of paper surrounding it. I mean, is this just some kind of industrial strength tp that's mainly working to scrape the skin off my butt? Is anyone else having the same kind of difficulties? I think it's time that all us workers should stand together and demand a higher quality tp-our rear ends depend on it!

Lord knows mine does.

Go State!

So tonight is K-State vs. KU at Lawrence. I'm already nervous. Tonight I'll be kind of pacey and moody and I'm guessing that within the first 10 min. of the game, I'll tell Mark just to turn the channel. I'll come back to it later, when it's more decided and I don't have to fret so much. I don't like fretting, it's bad for my health.

Happy Birthday Honey

Today is my wonderful husband's birthday. Happy Birthday Mark! I love you. I hope that your 24th year is wonderful and that I can help you to reach all of your goals and dreams.

Enjoying

My uncle showed me this clip at Christmas, I don't know if there's a better way to link it, but I'll try.

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/EllenMediaPlayer/#topofpage

Go to Real People, then almost to the very bottom of the page, and click Ellen talks to 88 year-old Gladys Hardy from Austin, TX

Pizza Burgers

So tonight for supper I got out my handy dandy little food processor (on a side note: I need to use that thing more often) and I chopped up some mushrooms, onions, pepperoni, tomato paste, some Italian spices, and a little oil. Then I mixed the puree in with ground beef and some bread crumbs and made hamburger patties. It smelled so great! Then I spread some pizza sauce on a bun, covered the patty with mozarella cheese and put it all together. It was definitely yummy. Kind of a different texture, but I liked it enough-and Mark did say he like it, so I guess that's a positive. Next time, I might just use the pepperoni and onions as toppings instead of changing the texture of the burger, but still getting the same taste. I'll let you know!

Christmas with Cody

What's For Supper?

Tonight we had knip again. Knip is the old German recipe that my husband's family loves to make. The last time that I wrote about knip, I had three different people who googled knip come across my blog. I use a statcounter that shows not only how many people visit my blog a day, how many are first time or returning visitors, but also what the keywords are that people use to search and then come across my blog and click on it to read it. So, after the last blog I wrote about knip, someone in Hutchinson, KS, someone from Illinois and someone from Minnesota all took a look at my little blog. How cool is that? I love knowing that. Too bad they only looked at it the once, I must not be exciting enough.

Floorplan!

So, as we have been talking about building a new house, we've spent hours upon hours reading and re-reading the Wardcraft magazine. We're not limiting ourselves to Wardcraft, it's just that they have an easy to read catalog with lots of different floor plans in it. My favorite, absolute favorite! is the Alexandria 1-as of late. It seemed that each time I'd look at the magazine, I would come up with a different favorite. At first, all that I wanted was some separation between the dining room and living room. Call me old-fashioned, but I like walls and formal dining rooms and hallways and everything. I still think there's ways to make a house open, but I just don't really like the idea of the kitchen with the bar open to the living room open to the dining room. That is very modern right now, just not my style. But there's lots of other stuff that I want. Iwant a beautiful kitchen with an island and a pantry, a master bedroom suite with a nice walk in closet and a separate bathtub, a room close to the master that could serve as a nursery or a Mary Kay office! I'm picky about where I want the utility room, the doors, the bathroom. So, I knew I had to give up something, and when I decided to give up the "planned" separation between the dining room and the living room (realizing that separation can be created) I found this plan:





I love the little den close to the master bedroom, of course I would move the doors. And the utility room and the bathroom would need to be switched so that the garage could be on the side of the house, not the front. The master bathroom could be a little larger. And of course, the kitchen, oh Lordy, the kitchen! If all I had was the kitchen I would be happy. The last thing I would maybe do is not do the Cathedral ceiling. I know that sounds weird, but my mom's house has the Cathedral ceiling and it always sucks to try and dust up there, around the open wall that is separating the kitchen from the other rooms, and of course, where do you decide to stop painting. You'd have to paint the kitchen, living room, all of that the same color.

It's almost a record

I'm home for lunch from work right now-and all I want to do is lay down, curl up, and take a nap. It's just been one of those days. Since I can't do that, I think there's a pretty good chance I'm going to stop and pick up a pop before I head back. I feel like I deserve it. Plus I didn't have a pop at all yesterday and I just won't get one tomorrow. That's cutting back, right? I haven't broken my New Year's resolution, cause I just said I'd drink less Mt. Dew, I think I'm ok. Right, I'm still good.

Ok, it's decided. Mountain Dew, here I come!

Birthday-palooza

My husband's birthday is next Saturday. So, this means that today is the beginning of Markapalooza. It's a whole week in celebration of Mark. My younger sister's birthday was today, and we had chili and opened some presents, and just kind of hung out. It has to suck having your birthday so close to Christmas, it all kind of gets lumped together. I'm still exhausted from all of the family stuff from the last couple of week, let alone trying to do more stuff this week with both our families and have some fun with friends. The presents are always an after thought, and then you don't get to open any presents for another year. My birthday is at the end of June, which means I've typically had to celebrate it in the wheat field. I never got to take treats to school. It was pretty rough growing up with a summer birthday. It's strange how important the time of your birthday is. And I don't mean by ways of astrology, but how it affects the kind of presents and parties you get! I suppose when it comes time for Mark and I to start having babies, we'll really have to do some careful planning!

Rockin' it out!

Tonight we're heading to Wichita for a CCR concert. No, not that CCR. I'm talking about Cross Canadian Ragweed, a Red Dirt country style band. There is no better way to experience a concert than smashed towards the front, barely able to understand anything over the blaring rythyms, screaming the words at the top of your lungs along with the girl next to you , who for the next two hours will become your best friend.

The Red Dirt music is basically a rock and roll rythym, with amazing guitars and country lyrics, with heart and soul and quite a few drinking songs. It's Texas country, Red Dirt music, alternative country, outlaw music, or whatever you want to call it. So, I leave you with this link as a small taste of what you can enjoy from these guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psodrlWM8VM

I'm a Toys 'R Us kid

Mark and I have been living in this tiny house since April of 08 (that's last year now!) We both hate paying rent and are so ready to be in a house that is our own. We know want to be in a house, and for it to be soon. But that's about all that we have decided right now. We had previously made an offer on a house with 80 acres that was close to Mark's family's farm, but we were outbid. At that point, Mark was really disappointed and when we then started looking in town, nothing could quite compare to what we both wanted for our future-a home with land, out in the country, where we could raise our children close to friends and family.



Today, our dilemna is figuring out our next step. We have two ways we can go. One: Buy a home, here in town, something that will be more easily affordable, something that we could sell in a few years, but that we could stand and maybe even do small projects and work on, so that we could make a good profit. We also may be able to start buying some land if we have a smaller mortgage payment. OR Two: Build the house we want on the land we want, and do it now. Interest rates are not going to get much cheaper, if at all, and we would be where we want to be. We're young and will not be in a position where we're 80 and just paying off our house.



So what to do, what to do. I think the major problem is that Mark wants to be near the farm and that trumps all. I am unbelievably scared of making such a huge investment all at once. I'd rather buy something a little smaller now, work on our equity, and then make the move later. But later is always scary too. Who knows what will happen-maybe we wouldn't be able to sell a house, maybe we'd get so caught up in life at that time, we wouldn't follow through with our dreams, maybe interest rates will have skyrocketed, maybe maybe maybe....

Sometimes, it just sucks being a big kid now, and having to actually step up and follow through with all those lofty goals and plans you made while going to school, getting engaged, and dreaming. All of this "exciting, fun, new stuff" is totally overrated. I have a hard enough time deciding what's for supper, how am I supposed to do more than that!?