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Simple Pleasures

First I hope everyone reading this entry is morning is safe and that the hurricane didn’t treat you too badly. We were fortunate in that our power managed to stay on the whole night and aside from some to be expected shaking on the third floor of our 106 year old house, we didn’t get affected much at all. I spent the entire day in yoga pants, mostly sitting on my bed. I alternated between watching the first season of Dawson’s Creek and putting a little work in on a paper, a paper that isn’t even due until the 12th of November I’ll have you know!

Despite the fact that I did very little yesterday and went to sleep early, I am EXHAUSTED today. Residual adrenaline from worrying about the storm and everyone I’ve ever met is wearing off I guess. I’m sitting in the lobby drinking my coffee before work and I can barely keep my eyes open.

But, speaking of my coffee, that’s what I meant to talk about.

Is there anything better than when the person at your coffee shop memorizes your order? Every weekday morning it makes me so happy, to see the smiling face that greets me, asking: good morning! iced coffee skim milk 1 sugar?! and every time I tell her yes please and thank you she’s smiles like, perhaps the best part of her job is memorizing the orders of the regulars. It is a small thing, and it makes me happy. If my commute ends up changing come January I’ll be sad.

Rock Me Like A HURRICANEEEEEE

In preparation for Hurricane Sandy I have:

1. Gone to Target only to find them completely sold out of umbrellas. (Gonna be a wet commute today folks!)

2. Purchased a quart of milk after hemming and hawing over whether or not it would just immediately spoil if the power goes out.

3. Called my father to double check that I can still light my gas stove, even without power, should the power go off.

4. Bought a can of soup and some “just add water” pancake mix.

5. Changed into my sweats, indefinitely.

6. Filled the gas tank of my car, I’m not sure why this really felt like a hurricane preparatory measure, perhaps because I do intend to charge my iphone in there as needed, IF THE POWER GOES OUT BUT FATE DON’T THINK YOU HAVE TO BLOW THE POWER OR ANYTHING I REALLY, REALLY, LIKE MY ELECTRICITY.

7. Watched as much tv as my melty melted brain can stand, just in case….you know what happens.

8. Checked my email no less than 40,000 times per hour, praying for my night class to get canceled.

9. Began purging my freezer of all the delectable frozen foods, just in case. Anybody want a popsicle, pierogi, or some cheese ravioli??

10. Checked weather.com like it was my job.

Nautical Sunday

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself!

My dad sent me this link in an email last night at 10:47pm, he must have known I still have mega writers block. ❤

Never Ever Ever

Oh Taylor Swift.

Taylor Taylor Taylor.

I heard on the radio that your serial monogamist self is again going through a breakup. This time with Connor Kennedy.

I suspect that you have a whole team of people helping you write the album as we speak but I have a potentially lucrative idea for you:

Stay single for over a year and write songs about that magical experience!

You can write ballads about what it’s like to not share the remote, let your leg hair grow with reckless abandon in winter, and buy yourself leftover markdown chocolate on February 15th. Not a glam life by any means, but so many girls would have so many more songs to belt out in their cars.

House of Tatertots

This is Harvard’s dining hall.

Reaping The Rewards

Last night in class my Professor was outlining the “stages of friendship.”

She pointed out that kids in elementary school generally think of friends as people who they spend a lot of time with, or are similarly aged to them, OR are people who they see a certain reward involved with interacting with them

Immediately I was catapulted back to 2nd grade. My mother was the ultimate CHAMPION of making me have play dates with kids from my class that I didn’t really want to have play dates with. I have distinct memories of her explaining to me that I had to play with some people sometimes to be nice, because they didn’t have that many friends.

And obvs I hated this.

I remember one girl from class, Jenna, the same Jenna  who in first grade cornered me in the bathroom and told me that the pope was going to come and whisk me off to hell because I didn’t believe in Jesus. Jenna if you’re reading this, I’m sorry, you may be a very lovely person now but in elementary school you were simply not my cup of tea.

Jenna had come to Forest Park Elementary with one, very well established, best friend forever, this girl named Kathy. Their mothers were friends and they had, up until kindergarten, grown up together. Of course, as things tend to happen, Kathy branched out and added some more friends to her circle whereas Jenna was content to never have another friend ever other than Kathy. Que sera, sera.

So, my mother, being the altruist that she was, accepted playdates from Jenna’s mother, which I typically loathed. The only reason I would ever go willingly to Jenna’s house was when I knew her mother would be home. There was a very good reason for this….

My reward.

See, Jenna had an older brother and a whole treasure trunk full of his hand me down halloween costumes, supplemented with her own former ballet and ice skating costumes. Jenna’s mother (god bless her for knowing how to bribe children into being her daughter’s friend.) would devise for us, a game of “Halloween” wherein we would spend some time dressing up in different costumes and then we would venture down to the kitchen and we would “Trick-or-Treat.”

aka Jenna’s mom would hold out a plastic pumpkin from the top of the fridge filled with candy. We would fill our hands up with treats, run back upstairs, eat them, and then find a new costume and start the process all over again.

I enjoyed this a lot. Possibly more than the average kid, because it felt as if we never had candy at our house! I liked it so much that I tricked myself into believing, for awhile, that I actually did enjoy playing with Jenna. I have memories of more than one afternoon spent pretend trick-or-treating in her kitchen. I also recall one time where I had recruited more girls from our class to come to her house, after a grand opus of candy filled expectations. But eventually the novelty of the reward ran out, and nothing, not even promises of unlimited starbursts and sweet-tarts could make me wanna go to Jenna’s house for a playdate.

Sigh.

Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy. Nothing gold can stay.

Hehehe

The Muffnut Operative

Last night I sat in front of my laptop, willing myself to finish the last few pages of an essay.

In an effort to motivate myself I wandered over to one of my favorite food blogs, www.canyoustayfordinner.com and found a recipe for cinnamon sugar coffeecake muffins. I seemed to have all the ingredients and decided that upon completing my paper I would treat myself to baking these little autumn delights. What can I say? I tend to motivate school work with food based rewards and exercise with television based ones. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

With my goal in sight I quickly finished my paper and headed onto my reward. As I read the recipe I noted that Andie refers to these muffins as tasting like donuts. I went ahead and renamed them “Muffnuts” which works as a donut muffin hybrid OR a handy equal opportunity insult! Matt Damon, you have my full permission to use the word “Muffnuts” in your next Boston-based screen play. 

As I began to gather ingredients for the muffnuts I realized that I still hadn’t picked up baking powder. The last three recipes I’ve made has called for baking powder and each time I had to make this weird baking soda/cream of tartar mixture to substitute. I decided enough was enough, I would just run down the street Rite Aid and grab some!

Of course, I pulled up to Rite Aid three minutes before closing. But I was not deterred! I had my Muffnut dreams and I was going to see them fulfilled so I high tailed it to Stop and Shop. Of course the trip wasn’t as quick as I had hoped, I got stuck in a very long line at the self checkout. By the time I got home it was almost 10 o’clock, but the Muffnuts could not wait until the morning! I needed to make them tonight! I needed to make them now. 

I continued gathering ingredients only to discover that we didn’t have any cinnamon. I stood, paralyzed in the pantry, cursing the damn baking gods. NO CINNAMON?! I exclaimed, exasperated.

I then had a serious choice to make. I could call it a night and make the Muffnuts another day, or I could venture back out to the 24 hour supermarket and buy some ground cinnamon.

Maybe it was just because I had seen Ben Affleck’s new movie, Argo, earlier in the day, but I found myself bubbling with a kind of self-determination reserved only for tense Middle Eastern CIA operative hostage retrievals in the 1980’s.

“When we promise someone muffnuts, we are responsible goddamnit!”

So off I went, back to the grocery store.

I’m glad to report things turned out to be a happy ending.

One hour and two trips to the grocery store later, all of the ingredients congregated on the stove top. Ready for the Muffnut battle.

Dry Ingredients!

Wet Ingredients!

The recipe didn’t call for Vanilla, but like Ben Affleck, I am a rebel and I always do what is right even if the higher ups tell me not to.

Wet, meet dry. Don’t be like me though, I always do this but the dry is supposed to be slowly added to the wet and not the other way around. Thankfully nothing disastrous happened as a result.

Batter up. Heh.

Why yes, that is a heart shaped muffin tin. I know, I know. I’m adorable.

Ready to fulfill their Muffnut destiny after a 16 minute bake at 350 degrees.

This is me, dipping a Muffnut into a literal vat of melted butter. If this offends you, just think of it as a bowl full of world peace and sunshine!

Then rolling it around in a bowl of cinnamon and sugar. If this offends you, then I suggest you take your judgey self elsewhere. The Muffnuts do not appreciate your judgement, I will have you know.

Finally. Though things were dicey there for awhile, we have two dozen cinnamon sugar Muffnuts, ready for hungry, paper-writing, mouths. They were DELICIOUS. By the way. Big Thanks for Andie @ www.canyoustayfordinner.com!