I haven’t been very good at updating lately, so I’m taking a break from this blog thingy. I’d like to finally finish the baking zine I’ve been working on for, oh, a year and a half. And fix and mend my broken clothing. And take the personal chef exam. And I’m also trying to seriously limit my internet time, since I’m easily addicted to tv and internet. That’s why I cancelled my cable tv! I’m going to only read my RSS feed and check my email in the morning, and THAT IS ALL. But I may be back someday.

Also, I deleted my myspace, okcupid, and goodreads accounts; I’ve gained at least 30 minutes a day! I still haven’t let facebook go though, but I am seriously considering it. I’d have even more time to be in the real world! In fact, it seems like a great idea. I’d miss looking at my relatives’ pictures though. I just need to learn self-control. Something I’ve never been good at.

It’s been a while, I know. I’m rethinking what exactly I’m doing with this blog. I think I need to either work a lot harder, or give it up entirely. I’ll probably go with the first choice though. My photography skills are rather lacking, so I might take a class to help with that. We’ll see. I also just don’t know how to use WordPress very well. I want to add a video that I made in Asheville, but I can’t figure out how to do it! Hopefully I’ll figure it out sometime today so you can see me having a conversation with some goats.

No, seriously. I somehow managed to back right into a just-out-of-the-oven cookie sheet. And this was no ordinary cookie sheet, friends. It was one of those Restaurant Depot super shiny gets hot as hell pans. There is now a giant welt on my lower back/top o’ the buttcheek area.
This should make tomorrow’s 3 1/2 hour car ride fun, oh yeah.

Also, today: emergency vet trip cause Wendy randomly had an allergic reaction to something; we’ll never know what, cause she doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak dog. Needless to say it was a scary experience, and the first time anything like that has happened to one of our animals. I just need to not worry too much while we’re gone. The likelihood of that happening again (cross my fingers) seems pretty slim. It was really terrifying to see her all puffed up and swollen-eyed and broken out in hives, though. Poor baby. She’s fine now, after some injections and Benadryl. I wonder what happened? A bee sting? Spider bite? Ate a poisonous plant? I’ll never know. I want to relax on my vacation instead of spending the entire time thinking about the animals.

They’ll be fine. Right? Right????

So, my new job has been okay. I’m more than a little sad that I’m back to working in a coffee shop, but there are no pastry jobs in the area, and the one that I did see an ad for (baker for 9th St bakery) pays even less than my coffee shop job and requires way more work! So, um, I might need to start reevaluating what I want to do with my life.
But until then, this job is okay. Yesterday morning I had a funny interaction with one of the regulars. He always comes in super early in the morning when I’m the only one working, and is real friendly, but I never thought anything of it. Yesterday we were discussing the holidays; I told him I don’t celebrate Christmas but that I’m excited to take a trip to Asheville to visit my sister-in-law. At some point after that he was all “So….does your…brother also live in Asheville?” My response, of course, was to say that I was going to visit my husband’s sister, to which his THEN response went something like “oh, sorry! I…uhh…early in the morning….mumble mumble….wasn’t thinking….right, uhh, see you later.”

Ha ha! Now, I have to say, it didn’t even occur to me that dude was trying to feel me out/hit on me till way later. It was 6.30 in the morning! But now I’m fairly confident that’s what was going on. The sad thing about it is that he is one of the VERY FEW attractive men I have seen around these parts since I moved here! How am I gonna get him to hit on me again without being gross about it? My four faithful readers, help me out. I think I might actually call Dan Savage to help me with my conundrum.

Moving on. My parents sent me a bunch of random stuff for Christmas. (Not a juicer, thank goodness.) Some of the randomness:

But the “greatest gift of all”:

WTF, parents? Seriously?
Just in case you have no idea what these lollipops are about, they are Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet. If you want to learn more about them, the wikipedia page on Zwarte Piet is actually pretty informative. Needless to say, it’s disappointing to me that my parents paid money for this, even if it’s an interesting cultural phenomenon (which hopefully will soon fade into obscurity.) Oh well. I don’t think they intended to offend, and now I get to take photos of them to post on the internet!

And lastly, I would just like to say that once your cat figures out how to get on top of the refrigerator, your life will immediately become 200% more annoying.

So, I went back to the salon today, and had the color re-done on my hair. (Side note: in the middle of getting my hair done, I had a full-blown panic attack. Now I can never get my hair done there again.)
Looks much better, eh? I know these aren’t the best pictures but it’s gray and rainy out and I don’t feel like editing.

Anyway. Now I need to not wash my hair for two weeks.

So, as I’m sure all 4 of my faithful readers know, I’ve been growing my hair out for a long time. Today I finally went to get my hair did. I wanted something fairly simple; a tiny bit of a trim, bangs, and some highlights, in magenta. Like Pravana magenta, if you know what that is. (If not, just google it, okay? I’m too lazy to find a photo right now.)

So, the bleaching part for the highlights took forever. Then, when the hair dye part finally happened, the girl doing my hair said something about how my hair wasn’t taking the pink, just the purple, whatever that means. So, I was a little nervous, but I figured purple highlights wouldn’t be too bad. She didn’t leave the dye on for very long – I don’t know if she was rushing because she had other clients or what, but the dye was not on my head for anywhere near as long as the bleach.
Anyhoo. So, dye gets washed out, and I get cut. I can’t really tell what the highlights look like, except to notice that they are about as far from magenta as I am from having a penis. Oh well. I am such a nice (stupid) person, I tell her not to worry about it. I don’t get my hair blown dry, so I can’t really tell anyway.

Then I got home. (And yes, I did switch from present to past again. You can’t stop me!)
And my hair dried.
And this, my friends, is my stylist’s interpretation of magenta:

faded teen rebel manic panic?

Magenta? Not even close.

After a fit of crying and general hysteria, I called the salon, and they’re gonna fix it tomorrow. I swear, if they fuck it up again, I will cut a bitch. Don’t fuck with my hair. I’ve invested a lot of time, angst, and bad growing out phases into this to have it look like teenage runaway hair.

The bangs are cute though, huh?

So, in case you were wondering what the hell happened to me, I got a new job. Not a job I’m excited about, so I’m probably not gonna talk about it a whole lot on here, except to complain. Ha!

I’ve also been doing a fair amount of baking in the past week; I made the favors for someone’s wedding. She wanted cow cookies because she was getting married at the Fearrington Inn, and wanted to represent the Inn’s mascots, the Belted Galloways. The cows are really cute, I went to the Inn in October and took a lot of pictures of them:

Obviously, my cookies weren’t going to be too realistic. The bride provided me with a cow-shaped cookie cutter, and I made, painted, and individually bagged 7 dozen cows.

So...many...cookies

I know these photos aren’t the best, but after two days of cow-cookie-making, I was in no mood to set up for a proper photo shoot. And after all the cookies, I also baked for Ox and Rabbit, my favorite store in Durham. (How have I not made a post about them yet? I need to get on that.) I made a bunch of cookies and cupcakes for their holiday party. For some reason (um, exhaustion) I only managed to take pictures of the eggnog cupcakes:

I also made chocolate candy cane cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, and some chocolate gingerbread cookies. Maybe Ox and Rabbit took some pictures at the party – I wasn’t there for much of it.
Then my mom and her husband came for a visit. It was actually okay. If I’ve learned anything in regards to my parents, it’s that if you have no expectations, you can never be disappointed. So we had an okay time. And some decent food, which I’m gonna have to save for a separate post. Thanks, Pop’s, for not sucking this time!

Also to come: racist lollipops, courtesy of my stepmom. Yes, there are photos. No, I will never actually eat them.

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What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   “You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
Boston
The West
North Central
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Inland North
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

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Kidding! I just didn’t take very many pictures. I did, however, get some delightful shots of my bro and Yoni in aprons:

would you just LOOK at that wrist