We gotta go to the crappy town where I’m a hero! (4:29)

If you are a Browncoat and you have not seen this video of Adam Baldwin singing Hero of Canton, do yourself a favor and watch it now. I’ll wait for you to come back.

In case you have not figured it out by now, this mug is part of my Geek Dottery series.

So is this mug I painted for Jen from Following the Road a while back, at her request. The pineapple is a Chuck reference. Big surprise, right? You can watch this video and this video to get in on the joke.

Guys, I know kung fu. Even though there have been a lot of great moments in Seasons 3 and 4, sometimes I think back to the sheer awesomeness of Season 2 ending with that line, and wish that it had all stopped there and any further adventures of Chuck and Team Bartowski had been left up to my imagination.

I tried an experiment, painting that tiny pineapple, and wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I was so happy when it worked just like I wanted it to.

Madge requested that I paint another geeky mug for Fish’s birthday, this one an X-Files/Big Bang Theory mash-up. I tried to make the colors of the mug match the greens and dark blues and purples that I associate with X-Files.

This last mug isn’t geek dottery, except in that I painted it as a gift for my friend Elaine, whose blog’s brilliant tagline is “where geek meets granola.” She wrote this heartfelt post for her daughters about how she wants them to know that they owe kindness to everyone, first and foremost, but that it’s not okay for anyone to take advantage of that kindness to abuse or hurt them or treat them with disrespect. Hence, the inside of the mug:

Ahem. I’d like to point out that this is a direct quote from Elaine’s blog, which I used on a mug with her permission. (Man, I’m such a square. I can’t even cuss in a photo covered with asterisks on my own blog without feeling totally embarrassed about it.)

I didn’t make it to the monthly Ladies’ Night at my usual pottery studio this month, and I really missed it. I’ve been feeling fairly stressed out lately thanks to Troy working long hours leading up to a deadline and a pulled muscle in my neck and blah blah family blah homeschooling blah blah life in general. Nothing is wrong, exactly; it’s just one of those times when life is a little extra challenging, you know? On Saturday Troy told me to get out of the house for a couple of hours, so I went to paint at a local studio. I sat all by myself with paint and a Coke Zero and dotted to my heart’s content for 90 minutes. When I went home I felt much calmer.

Thank you to all of you who keep supporting my painting habit by asking me to paint you mugs and bowls and things! It helps keep me sane.

p.s. The Firefly mug at the top of this post is up for grabs! If anyone out there wants to buy it, let me know and I can stick it in my Etsy shop as a reserved order.

This crayoned beach scene.

And the artist who drew it.

My new 35mm lens, with which Annalie took this picture of our cat Lily…

…and Troy took this self-portrait…

…and this picture of Annalie.

How much Annalie loves her gymnastics class.

Having good friends here to help out and keep us company while we wait for the baby to be born.

Remember my post on how Brenda and I painted flower t-shirts using freezer-paper stencils for party favors for Annalie’s 5th birthday? That post is being featured today in the InsideBayArea’s Kids Crafts Column, aPARENTly Speaking!

Finally! The dead tree in our backyard is gone! You know, the dead tree that had reportedly been dead for a couple of years before we moved here, the one that towered right over our deck and roof, the one that lost branches every time there was a rainstorm or a windy day, the one that we were promised six weeks ago would be cut down “on Thursday”? I guess Monday is the new Thursday because this morning a tree-removal crew showed up and a few hours later when they left that tree was nothing but a stump in the ground.

And a bunch of firewood for us to use this winter. Score!

Annalie sez: thumbs up for no more dead tree!
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Why am I showing you a photo of all* the dottery in my house? Because at the end of this month, I’m teaching a dottery-painting class at the local pottery-painting studio where I’m a regular! If you’re a DC/SoMD local and are interested, leave me a comment and I can email you the info. I’ve been painting at this place for years—it’s the same place where I painted when we lived in Maryland—and I’m excited to teach a class. I think it’s gonna be fun!

*Except for a bread tray, a veggies-and-dip tray, and a large serving bowl. And maybe a Christmas ornament or two. Basically this is all the dottery that was within easy reach in the cupboards.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR from bethany actually‘s Flickr photoset farewell fiesta.

Brenda and Toby hosted a last-minute Mexican-themed going-away potluck for us this past weekend, and it was completely fun. I’m not going into detail describing it, because most of what I’d say would probably be pretty boring, and I think the photos above give a good idea of what it was like. Also, Brenda wrote a wonderful post about the party that makes me smile and tear up a little each time I read it, and there’s no way I could top that, so I’m just gonna send you over there to read her post. Before you click over, I’ll just say this: we have awesome friends here in California, and we’re going to miss them a lot. Thanks, you guys!

Annalie and I woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the roof. I was awake before Annalie for once, but I stayed in bed where it was warm, listening to the rain. It wasn’t long before Annalie woke up. She immediately hopped out from under the covers to stand on the bed and peer out the window, then turned to me, all excited. “Mom! It’s raining! Can I go outside and play?”

Whaaaat? What do you mean, it’s not everyone’s first impulse to go outside at 8am and play in the rain in their pajamas? This does not compute.

I know some people despise rain. They dread days without sunshine. All I can say is, I sympathize but I don’t really understand. I love rain. I have done for as long as I can remember. Days when I wake up to rain are just about the only days when I’m happy to get up early. When Troy is home he normally lets me sleep in on Saturdays but if it’s a rainy morning he wakes me up, because he knows I won’t want to miss the rain. I’ll go to the kitchen and get myself a cup of coffee and then position myself near a (preferably open) window so I can watch and hear the rain.

Rain is my happy weather. It’s next to impossible for me to be in a bad mood when it’s raining.

Annalie loves rain too. I have many, many photos of her playing in the rain, jumping in puddles, holding an umbrella, even drawing with sidewalk chalk in the rain. Rain is fun! Not to mention the cup of hot chocolate she knows she’ll get when she goes inside.

Rainy days are also good for baking. Today I cranked up some Christmas music and got a whole bunch of my Christmas baking done, which means in the next day or two I’ll be getting a whole bunch of Christmas mailing done. And I only ate a half-dozen or so of the World’s Best Apricot Cookies. Maybe a few more than that.

Unfortunately I had to refrain from eating these pretzel pralines. They’re all going into gift packages soon. I only ate a couple of pieces to make sure they were good. Maybe three or four. You should make some and eat more, though, because they’re quite tasty!

Pretzel Pralines
based on Ideas in Food’s Pretzel Pralines (via Brownie Points)

• 2 cups sugar
• 2 tsp. kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
• 4 Tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 6 cups of sourdough pretzel nuggets (or broken-up pieces of sourdough pretzels)

Butter a large cookie sheet well and set it aside on a heatproof surface. (Note: Don’t do what I did and assume that you can just line a pan with waxed paper, because the waxed paper will stick to the bottom of the caramel-coated pretzels and you’ll waste a good 15 minutes peeling all the bits of paper off the candy at the end.)

In a large stockpot, begin melting the butter over medium heat. Combine the salt and sugar, then add to the melting butter. Add the vanilla. Stir constantly, watching carefully, over medium heat with a wooden spoon.

After a couple of minutes, the sugar mixture will begin to melt and the sugar will caramelize. Once the mixture is smooth and no longer grainy, add the pretzels and quickly stir to coat the pieces evenly. If you leave the pot on the heat too long the sugar will burn, but if you remove it from the heat the mixture will quickly harden and it’ll be nearly impossible to stir, as I learned the hard way. So keep it on the burner but work quickly.

Once the pieces are all coated, dump the caramel-covered pretzel pieces out onto the buttered cookie sheet. Using the spoon, quickly spread the pieces out in a single layer. They’ll cool fast. If you want, you could drizzle a little melted dark or white chocolate over the cookie sheet at this point. Then you can break them up into bite-size pieces and package them to give away as gifts.

Or you can keep them all for yourself. I won’t tell.

Today was a good day. Annalie and I hung out at home in our jammies most of the morning. We had peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch. After lunch, Annalie spent almost an hour telling me an elaborate story about how she was born in Mexico but her parents couldn’t take care of her so she had to live at a children’s helping place and then we adopted her, but not before her abuela taught her how to cook a soup with carrots…only they aren’t really carrots, they’re yellow onions and they have to be cut up very small. That last part she told me while she was using a paring knife to chop up five or six baby carrots into 1/4-inch pieces, which she then put in a bowl and snacked on while she watched The Electric Company.

We ran some errands, including the pottery studio, where I was just going to pick up a couple of mugs to paint later. But while we were there, Annalie said she wanted to paint something. Usually I’m lucky if she’ll paint for ten minutes, and then I’ll try to distract her with snacks for another half-hour before giving up and coming back another day to finish my project. Today I was able to almost finish both mugs (and would have completely finished them except I didn’t have information I needed to write something on the bottom of the mugs). Annalie knew exactly what she wanted to do, and spent 45 minutes painting one thing, then almost as long painting a second item. I offered to wrap my mugs up and take her home when she was done, but she said, “No, that’s okay. I’ll color with markers till you’re done.” And that was on top of earlier today when she was going downstairs for some reason, and she turned back and said, “Can I get you a snack while I’m downstairs? Or a Diet Coke maybe?”

As some commenters noted on my last post, 5 1/2 is just one of those ages where there’s a lot of questioning and challenging going on with most kids. And Annalie certainly does miss her daddy. We talk about Troy all the time and pray for him every night. We take a photo for him every day, and she’s always drawing him pictures or typing him emails. Goodness knows that when I am having a bad day, I’m often thinking Waaah, I want Troy! so it makes perfect sense that she’d be thinking the same thing when she’s having a bad day.

I’m sure we’ll have plenty more time-outs and talks about anger and not letting your temper get the better of you, but for now things are back to normal. Maybe even a little better than normal.

*Troy asked me what the title of this post meant, since it seemed like the day I wrote about had been a pretty good day. It’s actually a line of the song “Bad Day” from Barenaked Ladies’ album SNACKTIME!, the one they wrote with kids in mind. You can find the lyrics and play the song here.

The fabulous Isabel of Alpha+Mom read that Brenda and I took the kids to paint pottery last weekend and graciously asked if she could feature that idea and some of my photos in a column on their site. Of course I said yes: Visit a Pottery Studio and Paint Dottery.

Remember the Pay It Forward blog meme that I did back in 2007? It only took me TEN MONTHS to actually send the gifts out. I’m going to do it again, thanks to Jummy, and this time I hope to send the gifts out in a much more timely manner.

How it works:

1. Be one of the first 3 people with a blog (or Flickr or Twitter or Facebook account) to leave a comment on this post, and I will send you a handmade gift within 365 days!
2. You then need to post the Pay It Forward challenge on your own blog and make a gift also for your first 3 commenters and so on it goes.

I am willing to ship my gifts anywhere in the world, so everyone is eligible to participate regardless of what country you are blogging from! Just please make sure you leave a valid e-mail address so I can contact you for shipping information. The gift can be in any price range you like and you have 365 days to post it.

So, are you in? Leave a comment!

Although in looking for a link just now I learned that it’s considered unlucky to leave Christmas decorations up past Twelfth Night. Great. All our decorations are still up! Even my blog banner is still decorated for the holidays. Oh well, I still have to mail a few more packages containing Christmas gifts too.

But all our cards are mailed! Whew.

Anyone else still checking stuff off that Christmas to-do list?