Birthday Awesomeness

Who is awesome? I am awesome. This you should already know from reading my blog. Since we are on a budget I made girlfriend a slew of coupons for her birthday. Did I take a picture to brag on myself before I gave them to her? Of course not! Grrr! I'll have to get her to forward me a picture of their obnoxious cuteness to share with you all. When she opened them the first thing she said was "Awww!" followed quickly by "Do I have to give them back to you, or can I please please keep them?" (We decided she can keep them and I will initial the back after she uses it) I also baked her a red velvet cake (her faves) from scratch. Scratch people. Like scratch scratch. I've never made red velvet cake before and naively thought to myself, "It's cake. How hard can it be?" Seriously, that is one freaking laborious cake. It took me a solid 5, count'em 5, hours and I had to wash all the mixing bowls in the house TWICE to make the cake, marshmallow cream and icing. If that's not love then nothing is. Here is a picture to make you jealous you aren't living with me and getting delicious birthday treats :-)

Fun Childhood Fact

Girlfriend and I went to church with her mom for Easter Sunday and when the little kids went up for the "children's talk".

Me: Aww, I use to love wearing little ruffle socks! I'm glad they're still in fashion.

Girlfriend: Was that before your lengthy suspender phase?

(Yes, I wore suspenders as part of my "dressy" clothes for many years. Don't judge me, I was awesome.)

Me: Before and during. Dress shirt, suspenders, ruffle socks and loafers. Standard church outfit for MANY years. Eventually the ruffle socks changed into black or brown dress socks and I insisted on my shirts being pressed with creases just like Dad. You know, for a grown up look and all.

Girlfriend: (trying to contain her laugher-we were in church and all.) Yup. Completely understand why your parents were not surprised at all when you came out.

Me: Hey, they let me dress myself. I was just expressing my awesomeness.

At lunch Girlfriend very excitedly shared this bit of information with her mom. She knew about my suspender phase, but not the rest of the ensemble. Not cool. Not cool at all. THANKFULLY Girlfriend's mom loved it and asked about my hair. For the record-pigtails when I really little with fancy ribbon barrettes, then MASSIVE headbands (whatever it was the style) and finally down or half up/half down.

They called it mean; I called it funny

I played an April Fool's joke on my kids today. They LOVE word searches and today I gave them one to work on that was all about animals. The room was stone silent for over 15 minutes with an occasional huff or puff because they were having great difficulty finding words. After about twenty-five minutes I told them to clean off their desks and line up for PE. As they lined up they were complaining, "It's way too hard Miss _____!" and "I can't find ANY words!" and "Please give us a hint!" to which I responded, "You've had a lot of trouble with it? The words are right there at the bottom. Oh yeah, that reminds me-April Fools." Moans and groans ensued. I giggled.

They called it mean; I called it funny.

Replacement

Grumpy Gus is being replaced tonight with Positive Pollyanna. While there are many many things that suck, there are also things that are inherently awesome. I bring my top six to you tonight.

Things that are awesome:

1) Rainbow cookies. This may be a regional thing so for those of you who know what I'm talking about move on to #2, all others let me further expand. They are the most delicious cookies that melt in your mouth. Look at the picture and salivate.

2) Snuggly pets. That's B. He's awesome. This you should already know.

3) Dusting. Unexpected company coming over in 5 minutes and the house is a mess? Dust a table. You have a super power to make a room look spotless in 10 seconds...if only it lasted past company.

4) Just Because Flowers. Nothing is better than a random I love you flower from the person you love. (This one is from Girlfriend because quote "I just wanted to watch you smile from the kitchen.")

5) New shoes. They're clean, they smell good, and the inside are squishy pillows for your toes.

6) Making things from scratch. Creating something from "nothing" is a very cool skill. Not only does this make YOU awesome, when you feed others something you made from scratch they tell you you are awesome.

7) Compliments. (See #6)

Making it OURs

This should come as no surprise: I am a control freak. Girlfriend is the exception because I am more than happy to let her make decisions for us. Her furniture is now at my house and we have been trying to re-arrange the living room to work but it has been a futile attempt. She had asked if it was okay with me if the couch was not centered to the room and initially I said that was fine. I really thought I would be okay with it. I don't know what I was thinking. I am SOOOO not okay with it. Tonight I measured all the furniture and the room, made everything on graph paper and moved stuff around until I liked it then send Girlfriend a picture text to get her input. She likes the changes and this is now our project for the weekend. And they say you never use the things you learn in school....

Here is the new layout in case your curiosity was burning inside:

In other news, this conversation excerpt was too fun not to share. Girlfriend and I went to lunch with our friend after "helping" her shop for clothes. Yes, we were in public. No, we were not quiet.

Me: I'm banking on you being able to support our family. My teaching salary is never going to be enough.

Girlfriend: Hold up. I have to birth them AND pay for them?!?! If I'm being the woman in this situation you need to man up.

Me: Woman please! After they're born who is cooking dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the house and going over homework. Mmm-hmm. That's what I thought.

Friend: Wow. Your children have no chance.

Me: That's what I'm sayin! Her salary needs to provide for us because CLEARLY mine is going to be their future therapy fund.

Day 2...

Yesterday I made cookies and several of you requested the recipe. I am more than happy to share, but I cannot take credit-I found it at Simply Gluten Free. It makes 2 dozen cookies-Mix 1 cup of peanut butter with 1 cup of sugar. In a separate bowl mix 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Mix this into the peanut butter mixture. Scoop 1 tablespoon of batter into your hands, roll into a ball and roll in sugar. Last do the criss-cross thing with a fork to flatten them out. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes and let them rest on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack (don't try and move them before this, they will mush all apart). Finally, take a picture before your Girlfriend eats them all!

Today we were snowed in again and here is a recap of our day:

We began our day with watching Public Enemies and since B wanted to snuggle right in the middle, we messed with his hair. We can't help it, he has GREAT hair! Which one is your favorite?

This one is my masterpiece titled: B from Whoville.

This one is Girlfriend's masterpiece titled: B the alien.

After the movie and hairstyling it was time for B to go play in the snow. Poor baby, he kept sinking down into it with every few steps but after a while he just took to jumping like a bunny.

After playing in the snow it was nap time again...these snow days sure do take it out of you!

I've already received the message that school is canceled tomorrow and we are waiting on Girlfriend to hear word from her work. I'll keep you updated on our exciting days.

It must be love...

Girlfriend asked for cinnamon rolls for breakfast so cinnamon rolls I deliver. She does not have any food allergies so I could have just ran to the grocery store and picked up some pre-made rolls but then I can't have them and that would just make Sunday brunch suck. Instead I busted out my cookbook and made them from scratch. I started all the prep-work around 4:15...it's currently 7:25 and I just took them out of the oven. Now, granted they did proof for an hour and a half, but still-if that isn't love I don't know what is. In case you are wondering I've made them today because the idea of getting up at 6am to mix the flour, let it rise for an hour and a half, bake them and make cream cheese icing was simply not appealing. What is appealing is making everything tonight, reheating them in the oven tomorrow morning and seeing a huge smile on her face. (sorry, that last part was uber-vomit inducing). Happy weekend!

Hawaii 101

Girlfriend and I just got back from a week in Hawaii (hard life I know) and while we were there I kept a running list of things I felt you should know because as you know, I love lists. Here are my observations for you, listed as we noticed them throughout the week:

1. Sand.

I've been to the beach on several states on the Atlantic coast and at every beach the sand has been small fine grains that attach to your skin and stay for eons. Not so much in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Girlfriend put it best when she looked at me while laying on the beach and said, "I feel like we are laying in really clean kitty litter." At first I thought she was kidding but she was right (as usual).

2. Pigeons.

Pigeons are everywhere. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean there is an abundance of pigeons. they are freakishly allowed everywhere as well. I've always considered pigeons to be flying rats and was less than thrilled that they were just walking around, hanging out in restaurants...and no one else seemed to care. How is that not a health issue? I mean there they were stalking my food, flapping around, and yet no one was bothered by this. This is Roger by the way, he sat with us while we ate ice cream.

3. Rainbows.

Rainbows are the staple of our community identity. Not so much in Hawaii. As Girlfriend said in exasperation, "Freakin' rainbow misdirection!" after we chatted with two hot surfer girls we thought were family. Nope. Just Hawaiian. Even the buses mess with your head. You're not getting on The Gay Bus, just The Bus.

4. Cockroaches.

While hiking Diamond Head Crater we saw several cockroaches. How did they get to the top of a volcanic crater in the middle of the ocean? They truly are everywhere and will outlive everything else.

5. Cacti.

I've not considered Hawaii to be a desert, and in my mind cacti only grow in deserts. Yet, there they were chillin on the side of rocks all over. Please enlighten me about this because all I've ever learned in school was that cacti grow in deserts. I'm confused...

6. Ya.

"Ya" is the Hawaiian equivalent to the Canadian "Eh?" Girlfriend and I started using towards each other, as it is an awesome way to end a sentence, ya.

7. Pretty.

No matter how many times you pass places you will repeatedly said, "Wow, it's so pretty!" The whole freaking place looks like one giant postcard making me reach out and touch plants to make sure they were really real and not fake.

Breakfast Heaven!!!

It is a serious blogging week people, I'm not sure what is up but don't expect this frequency to last. I was looking for a recipe just now and stumbled upon a site that I'm shocked I didn't know existed. I'm all up on different websites for food-I cook a lot from scratch (like scratch scratch) and am always looking for a new gluten free vegetarian recipe to make Girlfriend try out. Tonight I stumbled upon this beauty Mr. Breakfast.com their motto is, "All Breakfast All The Time" which is essentially my food motto. I about crapped my pants when I found 130 recipes for waffles. Waffles people, 130 different ways to make waffles!!! Guess what I'm doing this weekend?!?!?!

Concert Recap

I haven't had internet access since last Thursday (complicated story that's really not interesting at all) but now that I'm back I would like to start by recapping the Coldplay concert I went to with Girlfriend and our two other friends we will call Matchmaker (the chick who set us up in the first place) and Socially Awkward (Matchmaker's on/off/on again girlfriend...the name says it all).

S) If you have never been to a Coldplay concert-GO. It was fantabulous...so awesome I had I to make up a word. The entire time the energy was amazing. They even came up to the lawn where we were and performed a few songs. It was seriously one of the best concerts I have been to in quite a while, and that is saying something considering how many concerts Girlfriend and I have been to this summer.

H) If you are sitting on the lawn, you should be able to sit in a "Lawn Chair" and not have them confiscated at the gate for being too tall (Sidenote: this was NOT mentioned anywhere on the website and there were a LOT of angry people taking it out on the poor workers stuck at the guest services tent. If this happens to you, please don't yell at them it's not their fault and they didn't change the rules.) Oh, did I mention that there was a downpour the night before and the ground was soaked? Yeah. That probably didn't help the situation.

O) If somehow you do sneak your "too-tall-for-the-lawn-lawn-chair" in, don't sit in it. We will all talk about you, point, and make up silly songs including, but not limited to-Big Man in a Little Chair; Security Breach; and Big Man in a Little Chair That's Too Tall a.k.a. the remix...we got there early and had some time on our hands. Don't judge us.

W) If you are on the very crowded lawn, do not act like you are in the front row and flail about all willy nilly. If you flail about, do NOT under any circumstances smack into my people. Girlfriend got smacked twice but she didn't tell me the second time because I would have lost it. I was already steaming mad after the first time and she refused to let me do anything about it. Later in the night she told me she wanted to switch spots so she could talk to Matchmaker for a minute. Crazy Flailing Girl later slammed into me with all of her weight and nearly knocked me down. Well readers, my roots came out...my Jersey roots...ending in me cursing a lot, getting up in her face, demanding she move two steps to the left and warning her not to touch me again. I was, shall we say pissed and let her (and everyone in our area) know. Apparently I was quite loud as this became the mantra of Matchmaker and Socially Awkward in the car ride home as they repeated, "Jersey! Two steps! Two steps to the f*cking left!" at the top of their lungs and then dying in laughter. Whatever. She moved and I won. :-)

Concert Conclusion:

Coldplay rules. Lawn chair rules suck. Give me my personal space or I will go ape-shit on your ass.

Awesome Website

I don't know how I am just discovering this website now, but I am. GraphicJam is AWESOME!! As your friendly helpful gay, I'm passing it on to you for your enjoyment-just in case you have been like me and living under a rock...I've also added graphics from two awesome posts they have that fit my life quite well :-) Enjoy!

Happy Weekend to Me

I know it's not the weekend, but my weekend was so awesome that I don't mind reliving it for your reading pleasure. Now before you get your hopes up, no...this is not some late sappy Valentine's Day post. It's a I-had-a-nothing-out-of-the-ordinary-but-still-awesome-weekend-post complete with pictures.

It started on Saturday when I got to sleep in (Woot!Woot!) and my head found the perfect, and I mean PERFECT spot in the pillow. It was so amazing that for once, I didn't make my bed in the hopes that my head would be able to re-find the spot (no such luck).

Can you see the head divot? Yes, I really took a picture to remember the perfect pillow shape/spot.

It then continued when I bought myself flowers. No reason in particular, I like flowers and these spoke to me. Not in a crazy the-flowers-have-voices kind of way, they spoke to my soul.

I dig them. Hopefully you can see why they spoke to my soul too.

On Sunday I made my favorite breakfast. Pancakes. Not just any pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes. I made them from scratch and they were even more delicious than they look.

Here's hoping the rest of the week is as great as my weekend...obviously it has a lot to live up to. Happy Monday y'all!