Friday, February 28, 2014

Never Ending Mending

So. It's late February and I'm mending jeans. A lot of jeans. Unexpectedly.

Why unexpectedly? Oh, because this is snowpants season and these boys aren't outside rolling around on hills busting out knees. Or at least if they are, they have a pair of snowpants buffering impact on the jeans themselves.

Or at least you'd think so.

That's eleven pairs of jeans right there. Some with double knee blow outs. Whee... ugh.

But this? This is deja vu. I swear it wasn't that long ago that I tackled a pile this size.

Okay—I checked. It was around a dozen pairs in December(!). And the pile is already this large again.

That's it; clearly the mending pile breeds. Suddenly I understand.

Either that or my kids are ninjas and they're practicing an ancient art of destroying denim...

Oy.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Silly Little Games

I am competitive.

Not sports competitive, but competitive nonetheless. Break out a good board game (Blokus is the current poison of choice with the kids) and I will fuck up your shit, I don't care who you are.

Game. On.

No kidding.

Cards Against Humanity? I'm a twisted bitch, you just haven't seen it yet. I also have a remarkable vocabulary for all this sundry and inappropriate. Truth.

Is alcohol involved? Holy hell, watch out.

Monopoly has been outlawed. Let's not speak of it.

Seriously, I tend to avoid group games because this side of me is not one I particularly enjoy showcasing in mixed company.

Currently I'm engrossed in the idiocy of mini games on Facebook. Sober (of course). You know the ones: Candy Crush. Words With Friends. Farm Heroes Saga is (sadly) the current obsession.



I WILL GET THREE STARS FOR THAT GODDAMN LEVEL, I DON'T CARE IF IT TAKES THREE WEEKS.

The above is a depressingly common thought.

But I can't help it... those goddamn vegetables keep laughing at me.

I. Will. Win.


Monday, February 24, 2014

Our Favourite Banana Bread

Everyone has their favourite recipe for banana bread, and today I'm sharing ours.

Okay, you caught me: I'm not sharing this out of the goodness of my heart so much as a need to stash this recipe someplace it won't get lost (namely online) since its particular page of my (homemade) cookbook is beginning to disintegrate.

Yes, we use this recipe that much.

I can't remember where it originally came from, just that I substituted out the low fat options (read: applesauce for vegetable oil) and it became a hit.

Yeah, I'm a rebel. A whole egg, really-truly-butter-using kinda rebel.
::snort::

Anyhow. Here it is and perhaps you'll enjoy it, too.


Ingredients

1 egg
1/4c vegetable oil
1/4c butter, melted
1/2c milk
1 1/4c white sugar
1 1/2c mashed ripe bananas (3 to 4 medium, thereabouts)
1 tsp vanilla (or just free-pour like I do, heh)
2 1/2c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Optional: a package of mini Reese's peanut butter cups. Those bad boys turn this bread into candy, so be warned.


Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a single loaf pan with nonstick spray if your pans are inclined to be those kinds of jerks.

Combine wet ingredients and stir the bejeezus out of them, really mix up that mess until they're nice and sloppy.

Toss in the dry ingredients and stir until everything's moist (or evenly wet if you're one of those freakjobs who can't stand the word moist. Moist. Moist. Moistmoistmoistmoistmooooiiist. Heh).

If you're adding those badass mini Reese's cups, now's the time to do it.

Pour the mix into a single loaf pan and bake for 1h15m, or until a toothpick comes out relatively clean. I'm known to toss in more bananas than strictly necessary, so that toothpick is sometimes gooey if it's hit a banana chunk, but I'm okay with that.

Cool for about 10 minutes and then turn carefully from the pan to cool. Eat it now if you're so inclined, but beware of hot bananay goodness burning your mouth.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Olympic Sights

It's no secret: I'm not a sports fan.

I'm not even one of those girls who likes playing sports over watching sports—I'm more of an, erm, indoor girl.

(If there was an award for reading, I'd be a contender. I'm no sprinter, but what I lack in speed I make up for in endurance—I can park it and read for hours in a marathon session that'll leave my eyes blurry from fatigue far before my brain is down for the count.)

I'm not anti-sports, I suppose you'd say I'm unenthusiastic is all. Disinterested.

Unless, of course, it's the Olympics.

Yes, I watched Canada's women win the gold medal for hockey yesterday.

As in: I. Watched. A. Hockey. Game.

All right, maybe it was just a little bit—I caught the last hour or so, and damn, it was good.

And I've been getting weepy all week watching athletes from all over the world performing gestures large and small in memory of Sarah Burke. Truly. Tears—yesterday a halfpipe skier from France touched her helmet where a Sarah Burke sticker would have resided and I was choking back tears in public.

(Sarah's from my hometown. We went to the same school. She was in my sister's class growing up. She was a blonde bundle of smiles perpetually ducking out of school for skiing competitions, and her story is tragic.)

Anyhow.

Today, after having been at the top of the medal standings list and then dropping for a few days, imagine my pride at seeing that we've managed to climb our way back up to the second on the list.

Go, Canada, go!


Thursday, February 20, 2014

Happy Bloggiversary

It's been a whole year of this drivel. Really truly.

Surprising, yes?

And--as of the writing of this post--this silly little blog has received over 35k hits, from over 80 countries. Really truly.

Again: surprising, yes?

(Seriously. How does that even happen?)

So... thank you for entertaining my drivel. Let's see how long the spastic train wreck can continue, shall we?

Monday, February 17, 2014

Notes of Madness

Our youngest, L, is a bit of a giant ham. I'm not going to lie: I don't always get his jokes.

Occasionally our 6.5 year old gets his spark of silly inspiration early.

Like, one morning I woke up to find this note on the floor outside our bedroom door...


Translation:


Dear Mom and Dad
All babies are pregnant.

He thought this was hysterical. I'm still unsure whether I should be concerned...


Friday, February 14, 2014

Married Romance: WoT?!

I've stated before that Mr Lannis gets a pass in the romance department. Basically he runs by the rule that bringing home chocolate is never a bad thing.

He's smart.

Well, it's taken a while, but it's occurred to me that he's managed a great, giant, enormous feat of married romance... like, over the course of our marriage—past, present, future—I don't know if he could repeat the feat.

Okay, he could technically repeat the act itself precisely, but perhaps not repeat the scope of said feat.

He read The Wheel of Time.

The entire series.

Took him eight years, but he plowed his way through all fourteen books.

11,582 pages (if you're counting by mass market paperback).

(No, he didn't read New Spring, but after it took him eight years to slog through what was arguably not his cup of tea, you can't exactly blame me for not ponying up the prequel, now can you?)

Why did he do it? Why read all those bricks books? 

Because I love them so.

Not sure how he got that impression... maybe because the hardcovers line our shelves? Maybe since 2014 is going on four years attendance at JordanCon? Or maybe because the first birthday present I ever got him—waaaaay back when we were dating and had only known each other two weeks—was a paperback copy of The Eye of the World...?

Or, you know, it could be because I'm just a self-proclaimed WoT-freak.

He may have noticed that—maybe a smidge.

Whatever the reason, I didn't realize the scope of his romantic gesture until he'd finished A Memory of Light, the very last book in the series.

When he closed that book, replaced it on the shelf, turned me to and said, "Meh. It was good, but I wouldn't reread it. I still don't know what you see in it," then I knew.

This is married romance.

::swoon::

Happy Valentine's Day, Mr Lannis. Happy Valentine's Day.


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Cannibals

Mr Lannis says I project personality traits on our pets. I beg to differ.

Shakespeare was a misunderstood doofus.

Moghedien had no sense of self-preservation.

Minette is an aloof princess.

Hamster was a complete asshole.

Our fish are cannibalistic jerks. (They're also supremely difficult to photograph.)

These here be cannibalistic a-holes.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR FRIENDS?!



So. We got tetras. And three dwarf panda cory cats. And an oto cat (small algae eater). The catfish were all utility-based choices to help keep our tank clean.

In order to do that they'd have to stop disappearing...

Seriously.

The oldest kid wanted a sunken airplane for a decoration and I didn't realize that this would transform the aquarium into the Bermuda Triangle of fish tanks...

WHERE ARE THE FISH GOING?

When I first posted of our additions a friend (hi, Sarah!) mentioned I should be ready for many, many deaths.

Well, for deaths there need to be bodies... these bad boys just vanish...

Since January 26th we're down two cory cats, the oto cat, and a cardinal tetra...

Yes. We're down four fish, but apparently up one group of cannibalistic dicks.

Gah!

Monday, February 10, 2014

Impossible. For now.

I ran across this quote the other day and it felt quite fitting for where I'm currently standing re: costuming...






Truth.

Friday, February 7, 2014

When Sharpies Attack

I believe I mentioned we have fish now.

One thing I couldn't wrap my brain around was the matter of filling the fish tank (when cleaning it) with unsullied tap water. I needed a way to ensure the bucket I was carting from the water source to the aquarium wasn't being used by Mr Lannis others for soaps or chemicals.

I give you: The Fish Bucket.

In other words: a $3 bucket with a Sharpie makeover.



Clearly the intended purpose of Sharpies—to keep husbands and kids from torturing fish with needless chemical imbalances.

Here's hoping this works...


Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The Perfect Fabric Find

You know when you walk into the fabric store, hit up the clearance aisle with a particular costume in mind, and find the exact shade and weight of fabric you're in search of for your currently-still-imagined design?!

No? Just me?

All right then... heh.

This photo represents the PERFECT red (the photo's a smidge off, but not much). It's absolutely to the nose what I had in mind, design and all.



Brace yourselves. Winter is coming. It's costuming season.
 


Monday, February 3, 2014

Lonely

Crisp winter days are great.

No, really—they're not so bad as long as you don't need to go outside (aye, there's the rub).

Nice, sunny, vibrant, sear-your-retinas days of blue skies coupled with frigid cold...?

(We're talking -35c/-31F after wind chill factor C.O.L.D.)

Okay, not the greatest, but pretty darn good from a curl-up-in-a-patch-of-sunshine-with-the-cat-and-soak-up-vitamin-D perspective.

(Yo, seasonal affective disorder: We are kicking your ass this year. So there.)

Anyhow. And on these days, when I glance out our kitchen window, I can't help but sense melancholy emanating from my clothesline...

See? That's one sad clothesline.


Dude, I miss you, too. And not just because of the hydro bill, trust.