Dear Courtney,

Doin'?
This is my first completed embroidery project...& it's all yours.
I hope you thoroughly appreciate his crazy eye.

Love,
Sarah

P.S. - Here is the kitten:

We nap together. Kbye.

Bear cat.

There was no flood. Just a lot of dreariness, which the lettuce enjoyed just as much as I did.

Courtney suggested that I plant lettuce in an old shoe rack, which turned out to be the greatest container-gardening plan ever!

It gets a bit wilty during the hotter parts of the day, but perks back up in the evening.

Here is a photo of a dirty hippie preparing to eat a gigantic cake pop:

(The cake pops were fun to make...and a huge hit at Marvin's work.)

And here is our de-cluttered living room:

Tomorrow I'll try to post about all the great things that have happened this past week, but for now I'm going to leave you with a glimpse of Mr. Eko - the cat that most people have never met. He tends to hide behind the fridge or under the sofa when company comes over, but the rest of his time is spent talking a lot, annoying Derby, trying (but failing) to turn doorknobs to places he'd rather be, searching for the most comfortable lap available, "drinking" with his paws, and looking like a bear cat. He answers to both "Bear Cat"...and "Rain Man," God bless 'im.

P.S. - Here is a picture of a real bear cat for reference. I hear they like to eat bananas.

Morgellons!

This is just what I was afraid of. Should have known petitioning and a letter-writing campaign wouldn't have such immediate results.

A few of you heard my story about the customer with the parasites under her skin that wouldn't respond to prescription treatments. The doctors had "never seen anything quite like it." Well, I was catching up on my Natalie Dee the other day and came across this comic:

"What's Morgellons?" I wondered...
A search led me to this website, which told me that Morgellons is a chronic infectious disease of unknown origin. Symptoms include "itching, biting and crawling sensations, “filaments” or fibers which emerge from the skin, skin lesions which range from minor to disfiguring, joint pain, debilitating fatigue, changes in cognition, memory loss, mood disturbance and serious neurological manifestations." The disease has been brushed off for years as delusional parasitosis. This is what the "fibers" look like magnified:

  After extensive tests on the fibers, "scientists, including a police forensics team drew a blank as to their origin, despite comparing them to more than 90,000 organic compounds. Meanwhile, at the State University of New York, Vitaly Citovsky, professor of biochemistry and cell biology, found that the lesions of Morgellons patients test positively for the presence of agrobacterium, a bacterium used in the commercial production of genetically modified food – but not normally found in skin sores."

FREAKY.

So I wonder if the parasite customer has Morgellons disease. No good.

On a lighter note, this is the reason I want to learn to embroider:

Yes, Christopher Walken. More cowbell.

I'm a winner!

I entered a contest on Abi's food blog and won a gift certificate to spend at Bake It Pretty. The last thing I won was a lint remover at a girl scout event back in the early nineties, so I was beyond excited about this! I ended up getting these insanely cute cookie cutters to add to my mama's collection:

I'm pretty sure she doesn't have a snail, mushroom, or mustache yet.
I got a few supplies for some upcoming projects too.
Thank you, Mrs. Porter!

Last night was the first bicycle ride of the season with the more standard Bike Gang from last summer...plus and minus a few. After four consecutive days of riding, I am feeling the burn. And Marvin is already complaining about my rapidly shrinking gut. Poor chubby chaser. I hope he survives the summer!

And finally a moderate portion of nerding out: this week's LOST was amazing once again. I'm glad Richard Alpert finally got his own episode. And that things are beginning to be explained. (I'll keep my mouth shut, for any Losties that might have fallen behind.)

You wear those suspenders, Richardus!

Post V-Day Post.

For Valentine's Day we intended to make a heart-shaped wheat crust pizza together from scratch, but we ended up having adventures instead. There was a visit to Goodwill and then a road trip to the skate shop in Conway and then a little hangout with Courtney and an intense search for rain boots, which failed. There was also coffee and a bunch of parakeets and music and Moe's. I forgot to wear my red and white ribbon in my hair.
Marvin gave me a mini-wedding cake.


Since we didn't have a "real" wedding, we missed out on the tasty cake and he decided it was about time to make up for lost dessert! Mmmm. He also got me a dozen cranberry macadamia nut cookies from Catherine's Cakes, which are the most delicious cookies in the world, but he accidentally ate eleven of them before I made it home from work. He told me about the accident sheepishly and I laughed. A lot.

I gave him a Frankenstein Danzig Kewpie doll that I found on Etsy.

Here are some of the treats I made in honor of a formerly hated holiday that I'm just beginning to enjoy:



Peanut butter fudge cupcakes...and celebrity valentines inspired by Elsie.

Here's a link to Class Class. I've already learned a thing or two.

Happy Birfday, Marvin!

Today my sweet, sweet boy turned twenty-six. I am so happy that he was born!!!!! I left work early to make him a carrot cake.


There were so many candles on the cake that after he blew them out, smoke lingered for a solid fifteen minutes. Talk about being ANCIENT!


Marv requested his usual birthday hibachi dinner at Fuji. Lauren, David, Heath, and Josh partook in the festivities. The chef chose a particularly large piece of broccoli for me to try and catch in my mouth and asked, "You like the big ones, eh?" and then when I opened my mouth to have broccoli thrown at me, "AAAAAAH!!!! SHE LIKE THE BIG ONES!" I chose to just get a little embarrassed instead of making a crude joke about my husband vs. Asians. Hooray for my filter! Not so hooray for me being capable of coming up with a racial stereotyping penis joke as a defense mechanism.

I got a bunch of bargains with the $25 Hobby Lobby gift card from my boss: two 16" x 20" canvases, 100 tea light candles, a bamboo wind chime, a cute-ish mushroom decorative plant stake thing, modeling clay, and some freeze-dried space ice cream! I had intended to spend it on maybe some fancy baking supplies or an ant farm, but the 50% of sale flyer sucked me in. (And I thank it.)

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARVIN EDWARD REILLY, JR!
[Here is the mention of you being awesome at Modern Warfare that you requested. I love you!]