Apparently someone asked the Bodacious Brit this morning on a business call if Dallas was handling the snow well. “What snow?” he asked, bewildered. It’s raining here today, yes, and the temperature is starting to drop, but the only snow we’ll see are a couple of possible flurries between 7 and 9 PM before the precipitation stops. And it’s going to be 48°F tomorrow, and the ground is too warm for anything to accumulate anyway so we’re fine.

Parts of Arkansas, on the other hand, are supposed to get whacked by Snowmageddon today. I’ve got family up in Mountain Home who are looking at a possible 9 inches of heavy, wet stuff, which is problematic because one family member requires home care and this will make that challenging. So for all of you in Arkansas, I hope that you’re all stocked up and staying home warm, dry, and safe.

As for me, I made two store runs this morning, took Jessie to the vet for her shots, then went back to the store for additional items for dinner (shepherd’s pie, perfect for the weather and it gives us lunch for tomorrow). Grandma here is now inside for the rest of the night, tra la.

So I’ve been listening to old episodes of Pod is My Copilot for the last six weeks or so while they were on hiatus for the holiday (they just dropped a new ep tonight, whee!) and just for giggles I went through my iTunes and found episodes of the podcast I did with my BFF Patrick, my friend Jerry, and my sister Stacy.

My God, we were funny. We had the Don’t Quit Your Day Job Players and did skits all the time, Stacy was our newsgirl and would write news flashes for us, and we had a lot of cool people on as guests. Which got me to thinking that maybe, just maybe, if all the stars align and I can talk the usual suspects into it, we might be able to do DQYDJ: The Next Generation.

Must think on this some more…

This lovely evening has mainly consisted of making Italian Wedding Soup for dinner, washing everything fabric in the guest room (and brush-rolling the duvet—you would not believe how much of Jeremy’s fur I got off that damn thing. Could have made a whole new cat, no lie), listening to old episodes of Pod is My Copilot while I work on the Garden Paths quilt (closing in on finishing Column 3, which leaves two columns to go), and idly pricing tickets to Sarasota in April because I would really like to go somewhere with Lyndon before we completely forget how to behave in public. I would also like to see Taylor, Taffy, and Rodan again after listening to them referring to my old podcast and reminding me how much I miss those goofballs.

(And in case Patrick reads this, yes, I want to see you again and Stacy and I are working on a plan so sit tight.)

Seriously, though, I am getting the urge to go somewhere, anywhere, I don’t particularly care anymore. We went to Arkansas in November and there’s a strong possibility that I may need to go back in the next couple of weeks, but I want to go on a proper vacation trip where I can hang out somewhere warm, get loaded without having to worry about how I’m getting back to the hotel room, and relax.

In other words I am jonesing so badly to go on a Disney cruise, you cannot believe. I clearly need to finish a bunch more books and sell them so that I can fund all this (along with the assorted repairs that need to be made to this place, but right now we’re talking about fun stuff).

Speaking of fun stuff and its exact opposite, I had an experience today in JoAnn Fabrics that may be too much for those with sensitive stomachs so feel free to stop reading now.

All good? Okay. So there I was in the upholstery aisle looking for wefting cord so that I could make piping for the Cuisinart cover I want to make (Lyndon was so adorable when he came down this morning and saw the Kitchenaid cover. “You made a mixer cozy!” he declared. “How have we gone for so many years without one? You are such a clever petal”) when I felt a certain rumble from my midsection.

Now, this was a self-inflicted wound as I’d pounded down thirty-two ounces of water before I went out shopping and I should have known better. But as I stood there in the upholstery aisle horribly aware that I was about to have a Code Brown, I felt the first little spurt.

Clenching my sphincter as tightly as I could, I speedwalked to the back of the store to the restrooms, threw the fabric I was clutching down next to the door and headed in. There were two stalls, one for everyone and a handicapped stall. Someone was in the handicapped stall so I hit the standard one, dropped trou, and sat down as the sewage spill began with a vengeance.

When everything was done and it was time to clean up, I realized something rather appalling—I was in one of those cursed stalls where they put the big toilet roll holder right at knee level, and I was already sitting on a low toilet. I won’t go into details but let me just say that I’m damned glad I had the knee surgery last year because that was the only thing that let me get into attack position, so to speak. When the occupant of the handicapped stall made her exit I flushed, quickly pulled my capris up to a point where I was decent but nothing was touching everything, and shuffled into the bigger stall to continue the job.

I recently watched a TikTok from a guy who had this exact thing happen to him. I didn’t laugh because I’ve been in that position before, but I have to admit I was damned tempted to pull out my phone and make a short video explaining what was happening. Let us hope that my GI tract will get its shit together (literally) and stop trying to spray like a firehose Real Soon Now.

Look, I’m a Democrat. Anyone who knows me should know this, I’m not going to change, don’t try proselytizing about one of the other parties and we’ll be fine.

But we literally finished the last election two months ago and already I got a breathless email from the DCCC screaming that ALL THESE DEMS ARE IN DANGER FOR THE SENATE AND WE MUST FLIP THE HOUSE!!!!! RUSH A DONATION TODAY!!!!

Really? Really, motherf*&^%*^%? The next election isn’t going to happen for another goddamn *checks calendar* 22 months and the moneygrubbing has already begun?

I don’t donate to the DCCC, by the way. I donate directly to candidates I like because this kind of behavior annoys the living shit out of me, especially when Dems screw up like they did in NY and lost the House because they thought they had a lock and didn’t have to campaign. That’s how we wound up with George Santos or whoever the fuck he is.

Anyhoo, looks like I’ll need to start sending all of the political begging letters directly to Trash again, tra la…

The traditional Taking Down of the Outside Lights is done, and I bagged all the old dead solar walkway lights, the half-dead net lights, and the disintegrating plant pot that’s been sitting outside our door and trashed everything. Which makes me feel virtuous and productive until I take a good look at the yards front and back and realize how much work I’m gonna have to do out there in the next few months before Spring starts with a vengeance.

Mulch. We are in desperate need of mulch in all of our flower beds, at least eighteen bags’ worth, and Muggins here will be the one who will be hauling it back from Home Depot and spreading it (yes, we have a lawn service but things like mulch spreading costs extra and we don’t have the spare cash for that right now).

Trimming the lantana. Assuming that it survives our brief freeze last month I need to trim back the T/r/i/f/f/i/d/s/ lantana in the two back yard flower beds and hope that they behave come spring.

The back yard proper. We have lost a ton of dirt in the far right corner of the yard due to subsidence and we need to lay down more soil if we want to have a hope in hell of grass this year. I’m estimating at least ten bags of dirt need to be spread, maybe more, plus grass seed. Once again, I will be strapping on my braces and singing hosannas to my knee surgeon for the ability to do this work.

The old tree bed. We have a round brick enclosure out front that used to surround the live oak that we had taken down a couple of years ago. We never had the stump pulled and I dumped a few bags of dirt and mulch in there to cover it up but that was about it. What I’d like to do this year is install the sundial I bought last year on the stump, add another couple bags of dirt and mulch, and plant some sort of light-loving low flowers that can spill over the walls. Need to muse on this some more.

I was standing there making Paul Hollywood’s Holiday Leftovers Chelsea Buns recipe, as you do, only I was using tomato sauce, sauteed onions, and cooked mild Italian sausage to make an pizza version (yes, I know I just re-invented the calzone, go away) and thinking about how I was going to sugar down some blackberries and pomegranate arils for ice cream afterwards, when I thought about my mom and how astounded she would be to see me making this kind of food.

Mom didn’t have time to get wild and crazy in the kitchen. She was raising three kids, working full time, and dealing with a home life that was not ideal. So throwing some frozen veggies in a pot to boil and roasting some sort of protein with mashed potatoes or french fries on the side for dinner was perfectly adequate—it kept us fed and it was easy to clean up afterwards. Plus she didn’t like cooking all that much, although apparently she was much better than my maternal grandmother who thought that ketchup could be used as a sauce on spaghetti.

I remember Mom bringing home a pomegranate one day when we were little and cutting it down the center, then handing us toothpicks so that we could pick out the arils and eat them. They were delicious, mind you, but that was also a lot of work for three somewhat uncoordinated kids. There was no way she could have known the easy way to de-aril a pomegranate by cutting off the top, cutting down the four or five seams on the side, then opening it like an orange and popping the arils off into a bowl.

But she was a good baker and liked making Chruściki at Christmas (at least I think she did—we were too eager to eat those powdered sugar-covered delights to ask how she felt about making them). I don’t know if she would have tried many of the recipes but I think she would have enjoyed the Great British Bake-Off. And I’m pretty damn sure that she would love these Pizza Chelsea buns.

I just finished a post on the other blog about having planned out so much for this weekend only to watch a good half of it fall by the wayside. Which happens—sleep cycles get hosed, emergencies occur, and some times you just aren’t feeling it and say, “Fuck it.”

Except that I have this inner critic who rails at me if I don’t get shit done on schedule. And no, I don’t have ADHD (I’ve been tested). Instead, I have an internalized group of Eastern European female ancestors who tell me that I’ll bring shame on my family if my house isn’t clean, I leave craft projects to moulder, my husband isn’t fed dinner regularly, and I don’t churn out a minimum of six books a year.

Maybe it comes from being a latchkey kid, I dunno. When I was in sixth grade or so my mother had an argument with my grandmother who had been babysitting us. Mom then announced that Grandma wouldn’t be babysitting us anymore, my sister and I were old enough to look after ourselves and my little brother after school, and we would have chores that we were expected to do before she got home.

So we’d come home from school, S would tidy up, dust, and vacuum the living room, I would clean the kitchen, unload the dishwasher, and sweep the floor, and our brother would take out the garbage. After that we were expected to do any homework we had and let my brother watch The Three Stooges on Channel 32. I’m not complaining about this, mind you—it wasn’t difficult and didn’t take that long. But the whole idea of “You have to do your chores no matter what” got so ingrained in me that one day I came home with a stomach virus, cleaned the kitchen, puked in the sink, then cleaned that up before staggered up to bed.

So I’m not comfortable if my mental list of chores aren’t done, but I’m also in my mid-fifties which means my body usually hurts when I wake up and on some days I don’t want to go outside and fix the fence or take down the Christmas lights or stand for a long time while I knead dough. And yet they have to be done, and not doing them makes me feel like a slacker.

I probably need therapy. I wish my therapist friend in Florida did telehealth because I would pay him for sessions without hesitation.

Lord, I need a cleaning service, I really do. Pretty much all this month has been taken up with digging out this house and turning it into a place where you can welcome people without them recoiling in horror, waving furiously at the dust.

Or to be more specific, my sister’s coming for a visit. I haven’t seen her since January 2020, and she’s vaxxed and really wanted to come down for a long weekend so I said do it, hence the deep clean of the house.

The worst part was probably the guest room, which hasn’t been used for its regular purpose in four years and has instead been a designated Final Destination for junk that needed to go upstairs, be sorted through by Lyndon, yadda yadda yadda. But no longer is that the case. Sunday Lyndon pulled all of the junk out of there, lifted the bed up against the wall and vacuumed thoroughly underneath it. I then took down the drapes and a wall hanging and washed them, washed the window, dusted/washed every piece of furniture and decor in the room, dusted the ceiling fan, vacuumed the carpet again and then shampooed it. When I put the bed back down, I discovered that the J Crew had left a few pee deposits here and there before they were permanently barred from the room, so I had to get rid of those. Luckily I have a gallon jug of My Pet Peed, which lifted everything out of the mattress and made it like new again. Today I went through and organized the closet, which included washing everything fabric that had been stored in there and hanging up a mothball bar to fend off moths. The room is currently a thing of very bare beauty, as I’m not putting on the new bedding/mattress cover until the morning of my sister’s arrival.

The weird thing is, while this has definitely been a huge time sink I feel so much better knowing that it’s done. I don’t actually like having a dirty house, and the guest room has been preying at the back of my mind for four years. Now that it’s tidy and smelling nice, I feel like I can relax.

Well, once I finish cleaning the rest of the house, that is. Technically, I still have the kitchen, upstairs bath, craft room, my office, master bedroom and master bath to do. Realistically I’ll get the kitchen, upstairs bath, and my office cleaned. The craft room will be vacuumed and if I can get the master bedroom/bath done, great, but those rooms are the least of my worries right now. I can always clean them after she goes home.

Now the question is, once I get the place clean can I keep it clean? Stay tuned.