meal plan tuesday: august 6.

so yesterday was... how should i put this... crap-tastic. emphasis on both the crap AND the (fan)tastic.

i left my house at 6:30am and didnt make it home again until 9pm. thats 14.5 hours, for those of you can't be bothered to do the math for yourselves. everything inbetween was non-stop action and excitement, whether it was a full day at work, or discovering the joys of a speed trap when you're already running late, or being late on your first night of being the lead herder for 20+ four-and-five-year-olds at Action Camp. (love those kids. highlight of my day by far) and then when i thought i had already crammed in as much fun as possible for the day, i wrapped it all up by dropping a giant stack of plywood on my knee. once the swelling goes down a bit more, i have a feeling that this is going to be quite a spectacular, long-lasting bruise.

needless to say, there was zero time for meal planning yesterday. hopefully the rest of the week will be a little less action packed, but since i am still going to be working during the day AND brushing up on my cat-herding skills heading up the PreK-K group at Action Camp in the evenings, i have the feeling that (hopefully minus the cops and the bodily injury) the rest of the week is going to be pretty much the same kind of crazy.

i'm very thankful that they're feeding me every night at Action Camp this week, but since Mark couldn't be a helper this year he's on his own for dinners. good thing he has an awesome wife to at least point him in some semblance of a direction:

Monday: leftover potatoes.
Tuesday: leftover soup.
Wednesday: frozen raviolis in jar sauce.
Thursday: taco night.
Friday: egg sandwich.
Saturday - Monday: beach time!


PS if you think of it, be praying for Action Camp this week - this year is the biggest year yet, and there is a lot of work that goes into effectively sharing God's good news with all of these kids, which is something that the enemy is going to do his best to prevent!

cubicle buddy.

say hello to my little friend.

he hangs out on the plant that hangs in the corner of my cube directly behind my desk chair. he's been there just like that for a full week. i can't decide if he's the kind of friend that's got my back, or the kind that's just hanging around and waiting for the opportune time to stab me in the back. 

**shudder**

i'm not really sure i want to find out.

nothing says happy holidays like talking about puke.

recently, my brother-in-law had a vomitous experience with a cup of expired yogurt. it was four months past its expiration date, but according to him it still tasted really good. in fact, he was feeling so good after eating the yogurt that he went on to eat two plate-fulls of spaghetti. fast forward a couple hours, and he could tell that it was only a matter of time until he was going to be seeing all the contents of his stomach again. two sessions of kneeling before the throne of the porcelain gods and a total of twelve pukes took care of the spaghetti. the yogurt finally made its appearance around 1:30am with a series of three technicolor yawns, wrapping up the hork-fest.

now in light of this story, there is something that you should know about my husband: he thinks vomiting is the most hi-larious thing in the world. something about the complete helplessness of the vomiter and their inability to control their bodies, the contents of their stomachs, or the noises they are making in the process of heaving it all back up. he was laughing so hard while his brother was telling him the story of his hork-fest on the drive home after the Christmas Eve service that i had to remind him that he was driving so that he wouldnt collapse in a fit of giggles and steer the car into a ditch. watching someone vomit, hearing someone vomit, hearing stories about vomit - they all trigger bouts of uncontrollable laughter.

so now i know what you're all wondering: how does he react when I am the one puking? well the truth is that i dont know yet. i havent been pukey-sick since we've been married, and i dont think i even puked while we were dating or engaged. but we have talked about it - he says he will be as compassionate as he can, and he would hold my hair back for me, (this was before i chopped it all off) but he could not promise that he wouldnt be laughing the whole time. and that is the part that i am most worried about: when he laughs, i can't help but laugh, because when he is really hysterically laughing, its pretty infectious. and i just can't imagine that laughing while puking would be either an especially attractive or pleasant experience.

i probably just jinxed myself by writing about it on the internet, but i'm really hoping to make it through this winter without actually having to find out how this whole pukey-sick scenario will actually play out in our marriage...

safe to shower again.

so i mentioned the other day in my guest bathroom planning post about how my guest bathroom had gotten to the point where it was so very disgusting that my sister had recently refused to shower in it ever again. and honestly, i dont blame her. in fact, since Mark installed the exhaust fan in the master bathroom, we dont ever shower in here anymore either. you think we're all exaggerating or overreacting? think again:

stained tub + moldy crumbling caulking = vomit. 

so in order to keep everyone i know from boycotting visiting me based on the state of my guest bathroom, i decided it was high time to clean that mess. so i turned to my new favorite source for all sources of DIY house related tips and tricks: pinterest. and lo and behold, i found a recipe for a magic tub cleaner, using things that i had on hand at my house!

i mixed and prepared my ingredients, applied them to the tub, waited the prescribed amount of time, and even scrubbed everything down. and after all that... my tub smelled like vinegar and dish soap and only looked slightly less gross.

womp womp. the tub was super clean, but still looked super disgusting. not exactly the magic formula i was hoping for. it was becoming abundantly clear to me at this point that i needed to call in some reinforcement and resort to more drastic measures.

enter the husband and his tools, which he used to remove all of the nasty grout and the built in soap dish that i accidentally separated from the wall that one time because apparently it was designed to hold the weight of a bar of soap instead of a good portion of my bodyweight while i was using it as a leg-shaving footrest.

after letting everything air out for a while, he reattached the soap dish with some sort of liquid-nails-adhesive-in-a-tube and let it dry for a couple days.

ta da! the soap dish is back and functional for holding bars of soap. and i am under strict orders to never use it as a footrest again.

the final step was to re-caulk all of the areas where the nasty caulk had been removed, and all around the soap dish. its kind of amazing the difference a little bit of caulk can make.

of course, i forgot to take a true "after" picture, but trust me, its a huge difference. and with Saturday's addition of a new shower curtain liner, the guest bathroom is starting to look like you might actually be able to get clean in there, rather than coming out more disgusting than before you got into the shower.

of course, this bathroom still has a LONG way to go, and while we are dreaming of the day when we will be able to completely gut the bathroom and rebuild it from the studs, we are sticking to the same slow and steady baby steps method of home improvement that has worked for us so far. next step: paint!

lessons learned: drywall.

so as i mentioned last week, i spent my (gorgeous, sunny, HOT) weekend in the basement attempting to tackle the mountain-o-junk, our disorganized office area, and its less-than-functional closet. i made progress on all of those things, but none of them are quite done yet. because in order to truly finish any one of those projects, we had to take care of the elephant in the room: the moldy corner.

this corner of our basement got wet last fall during the hurricane. it was the only part of our basement that got wet, and we were happy to ignore it for a while. but this past weekend, i decided that it was high time we got around to fixing that, since it needed to be done if we wanted to paint the office. the hubs helped me with the icky demo parts on Friday night, but since he already had plans to be super busy all day Saturday working in the master bathroom, the rebuilding part of this project was going to be all me.

 this is what i learned from my first solo foray into drywall.

1. defective downspouts are never a good idea. this is especially true during a hurricane.

2. water in the basement + drywall = wet moldy mess.

3. bleach water will kill mold. it will also discolor your carpet. beware of drips.

4. dehumidifiers are da bomb-diggity. extra bonus points if they came with your house for free and have saved your basement multiple times in the past few weeks.

5. cutting drywall down to size is empowering and awesome. dont be embarrased to jump up and down and squeal with delight after you make your first cut.

6. don't get too cocky about your beautiful drywall installation. chances are, you forget to replace the insulation first and now you have to take it all back apart and start over.

7. always cut insulation from the kraft paper side. its easier and much less itchy. (and when your husband tells you this, just pretend that you knew that all along... you just like a challenge.)

8. you can push as hard as you want, but that screw is not going anywhere if your drill is set in reverse.

9a. your husband may tell you that taping and spackle-ing is simple and easy and that you'll have no problem with it...

9b. your husband is a liar. as soon as you proudly show him your handiwork, he will tear it all apart and tell you to try again tomorrow. to his credit, he will also apologize, which actually does help a little considering he just smashed all your drywalling hopes and dreams against the rocky shores of reality.

 10. if at first you don't succeed... just get your husband to do it.

still on my office/basement to-do list:
- finish spackling/sanding the corner.
- paint.
- install baseboard?
- get a new desk.
- move the futon into the office.
- put some boxes in the attic.
- figure out what to do with the zillion CDs we own.

sluggish.

as part of my post-vacation funkitude of re-acclimating myself to real life, i have had two weeks worth of sluggish mornings.

which is better than i can say for this guy, who has had a lifetime of them:

(haha see what i did there? ya know, cause i don't like to wake up in the mornings, and that's a GIANT slug on my porch? get it? i'm so funny.)

down on the farm.

this is (part of) my small group. we usually meet on Thursdays, but we got together this past Saturday to help out Becky with some work that she needed to catch up on at the horse farm where she works.

the farm crew: Abi, Becky, Mark, Me, and Alex.



we shoveled horse poop. we fixed fences with varying degrees of nail-pounding skill and success. in the rain. (that felt SO nice!) we fixed holes in the barn walls. we cleaned bathrooms. we combatted rats and spiders and biting flies. we raked and hauled and tossed hay. i ended up with giant broken blisters on both of my thumbs. by the time we were done, it was 97 degrees outside. we were hot and sweaty and dirty and stinky.

and it was awesome. we chatted and joked and laughed the whole time. we didnt even realize our own stank until we decided to go get something for lunch and realized that our options were limited to places that would not judge us too harshly for having horse poo on our legs. we ended up sitting on the ground in the shade outside the front door of the WaWa up the road. it was a really fun way to spend a Saturday morning.

and then i went home and showered and zonked out for a two hour nap. and that was pretty awesome too.

vomit worthy.

(WARNING: extremely gross content ahead)

Dear self: clean your waterbottle more often.

Love always, Mando

inside the bite cap of my Camelbak... bleecch