Mishmash

7:28 a.m.

Apparently it takes me almost a week to recover sufficiently from two Christmases and travelling and families and a family portrait and being horrified from the ravages of holiday fudge on my hips causing an annoying but helpful Salad Week to, um, blog.

Hi!

I'm back.

We had a fairly nice holiday. Exhausting. And I missed the dog. But nice. Justin met my sister (who, by the way, got all four wisdom teeth cut out last week and went back to work THE NEXT DAY because she is SO badass and hardcore) and they got along swimmingly. He saw my hometown for the first time, and experienced some delightful hometown holiday decorations in the court square:









































And! I got many lovely gifts. Such as an mp3 player, which I am hoping will make time on the treadmill a little more bearable. And a little less Absolutely Horrible. Stupid holiday fudge. I also got some gift certificates to Dick Blick, and look! A new easel!





















I LOVE THIS NEW EASEL SO MUCH. Isn't it cute? Isn't it hot? I haven't licked it yet, or proposed marriage, but I'm close. Sooooo close. It has a shelf, and is super sturdy, and doesn't fall over like my old easel. And! It came in ONE PIECE. No assembly required! Which is good, because I am the world's worst assembler. Usually when the instructions say "Estimated assembly time: 10 minutes" it takes me about six hours and a lot of swearing and sometimes throwing parts and maybe a little crying. But! ONE PIECE! Heart!

This meant I had to clean my studio frantically Saturday the day the Hot New Easel arrived, because an un-vacuumed carpet wasn't Hot New Easel-worthy. Obviously.

And!

















I bought my mom's Taurus while we were in Missouri. It's a 2001, which brings me up to owning a vehicle from this century. High class! I never thought I'd own a family sedan. A Taurus. You know. In fact, I was pretty nervous about buying it because it's so long. And. It's a family sedan. And a Ford. And a Taurus. (But then again, the '95 Escort was a Ford and we had some good times.) But my parents cut me an awesome deal, and I knew the car history, so. I bought it.

And you know? I really really really really like it. The gas mileage is better than I thought it would be, and the ride is so smooth! (Compared to the Escort and the Jeep, I probably would have thought a pogo stick's ride was smooth, but. Still.) I love driving it, and it does well on the snow. Heart, Ford Taurus! Heart!

I AM SO FANCY.

Also, sick of snow. Sick of winter. And winter has just started.

Saturday we had 70 mph hour wind gusts, which blew snow around, tiny sharp shards of snow that felt like sand when they hit my face. Stinging, stinging snow. And it's been cold. And the several inches of snow on our street has been packed down enough and melted just a little and refrozen on top enough to make it an Extremely Treacherous Layer of Death Ice. The coating on top is shiny. That's what I'm saying. SHINY.

And one day this week the high is two degrees.

(I realized that every time I go outside I get incredibly pissed off. And we have months of this left.)

(Hooray, Wyoming!)

Time to start the week.

Kisses,
black sheep