Mood: Chagrined – with a soupçon of resignation. I had a series of embarrassing moments in the last two weeks – all involving someone quite nice. They’re not a big deal – mostly just me looking ridiculous. And in the grand weather pattern of embarrassing moments in my life, they are but a gentle breeze in comparison to the typhoons of mortification I have experienced and no doubt will experience in the future.

First words today: No idea. It’s almost midnight, and the only reason I’m awake is because I’m waiting for my laundry to dry and my bread rolls to rise. It was a long and busy and incredibly productive day, and I really love that feeling of going to bed knowing that you eked out all you could from the hours allotted to you.

(Note: At this point, I fell asleep kneeling by my bed, forehead on spacebar and drool accumulating on trackpad. All that eke-ing wore me out. I woke up in time to go check on the bread rolls, but the rest of this post was finished the next day, which is now the true today. Or whatever.)

Considering: this Ambrose Redmoon quote: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.”

Self Improvement: I’m getting things together, keeping up with laundry, working on keeping the house nicer, and trying to get more sleep. Tomorrow I start getting up early to go walk. If it lasts longer than a day, I’ll let you know. I’ve only ever been able to sustain a night time workout regime – but I hear good things about the morning workout. Dang, that was boring. Moving on.

Want: I still need new clothes – I don’t know that I’m loving my style right now. But I just did a quick search of retailers, and either I was looking in the wrong places, or I just don’t like any clothes right now. (Nudism, you might ask? So drafty.) All I want to wear is jeans, hoodies and chucks – not exactly the look of a professional. Not to mention the fact that it does nothing to help my figure – it has the rough effect of turning me into a gender free zone. I did find this ensemble on the J.Crew website though. You think a slouchy shirt and sequined pants would look good on me? HEY, ME TOO.

I dreamed: So I have this thing with dreams – I have to find what I’m dreaming plausible, or my brain just won’t go along with it. So it says something about my optimism about relationships that my psyche will allow dreams about competing in the Winter Olympics but refuses to let me dream about anything romantic. (FYI, it was ice skating, and all the professionals died in a freak accident and they had to air something, and I was the next best thing.) Freud would gnaw his own beard off out of sheer boredom if forced to analyse me. I may have slept through all the chastity talks in church, but my subconscious was wide awake and taking copious notes – which it then typed out and forwarded to all departments and taped up in the break room (of my brain).

Cooking: I stayed up late last night and made barbecue pulled pork and big, fat, buttery dinner rolls. Both were fine, nothing to write home about. But I loved, loved, loved being up late in the kitchen, the night air whispering through the window, and the rest of the neighborhood quiet. I loved methodically wiping down the counters, checking on the rolls in the oven, and finally, a few minutes after midnight, having the fruits of my labor right in front of me. Glorious.

Listening: This will surprise you, but I’ve been listening to a fair amount of country lately – the Dixie Chicks phase I was in kind of led into this – that, and oddly, Fleetwood Mac. Well, actually that totally makes sense, because I love the song “Landslide” and while Stevie Nicks is brilliant, I like the Dixie Chick’s version better. Is that heresy? Anyway, so I’ve been letting the country ooze in, mostly in the form of Tim McGraw and Rascal Flatts. Here’s the thing about country music – (incidentally, should I be capitalizing Country Music?) – it is so unabashedly romantic and gushy and heartbroken and bighearted and just… American. It makes me think of all the big, tough men I know that listen to it, and that makes me want to poke them a little, and see if the marshmallow fluff pops out. Because that’s totally adorable.

Reading: Race Matters, by Cornel West.

Blogs: I’ve been reading a lot of food blogs lately, with Tartelette being my favorite, but there are so many amazing ones, inlcuding Eggbeater, Sunday Suppers, and the very lovely Canelle et Vanille.

What I’m wearing: I’m still not sure about this category, and I’m afraid it’s by far the most boring part of these entries. I always wear black pants, and I’m usually wearing black flats. Although – speaking of black flats, if you’ve seen me at all this summer, you’ll know that I’ve become ridiculously attached to these black laser cut flats from Target. These shoes were an early casualty of the days back when I kept having to chase the puppy down and screech “NO, NO, NO, YOU FREAKISH MONGREL!” at her while brandishing a chewed shoe. My big toe actually pokes through on the left one. Has this stopped me from wearing them? I laugh heartily, because no, it hasn’t. (Do you see now how I can lean toward looking homeless?) I have stopped wearing them to church – at least, sacrament meeting, etc. To ward prayer and other activities the shoes do indeed go (if you don’t know what ward prayer is, and think it sounds like a religious insane asylum – you… are not far off).

I got totally side tracked there. I’m wearing a purple top, black pants and holey black flats. Yawn. But I don’t look homeless.

Song of the day: I wanted to post Landslide – but I just watched the music video, and beyond being full of disturbingly bad CGI, there are also black choker necklaces and staggering amounts of eye makeup. So, I’m going to go with this instead – because, guess what, we are going to be friends!

PS. I love Jack White.

I’ve never tanned – I have this thing about wrinkles – as in, I don’t want them. Ever.

But. A tan is so pretty. So I decided that in this summer, I’d get a tan.

And then I got busy. What am I saying? I just stayed busy. I managed a 45 sit in the sun some time back in June, but nada since then, and hence, no tan. No bronzed goddess me.

On Saturday, I finally tackled the den of clothes, pillows and cosmetics that is my bedroom, and in the process of trying to make order of the chaos, found a gradual self tanning lotion that I bought a year ago. The bottle promised a gradual tan over the course of a week. Slather it on daily, the directions said – it’ll build up slowly, gradually. At the end of five days, you’ll have a nice glow.

Sounds gentle, right?

So after my shower, and a thorough exfoliation of my limbs, I slathered it on, smoothed it in and expected maybe a subtle change, but probably nothing since it was only day one of the gradual self tanning process.

And then I went to bed. And woke up looking like an oompah loompah from the waist down.

People. I have orange feet. ORANGE. And my knees – don’t get me started on the color of my knees. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to not put it on my face, neck or chest.

To add insult to injury, I have little pale dab marks on my shins where the puppy licked the lotion off of me.

On a sunny April day in 2010, four of our little hens were killed by neighborhood dogs. The dogs pried their way through chicken wire and into the coop, killed two of the chickens on the spot, and made off with two others. A fifth hen managed to escape harm, and hid under the neighbor’s fallen fence. A sixth was found in a ditch – she’s a little bloody in the beak area, and is very stunned, but appears to be unharmed otherwise.

The victims were Henny Penny, Courtney Love, Tegan, and Lady Gaga. They are survived by their sisters Sarah and Tina Turner.

Kai and I buried Courtney Love and Tegan, but Lady Gaga and Henny Penny were not recovered.

Steps have been taken by Carlyn to secure the chicken coop, turning it into what is hopefully an avian version of Fort Knox.

Sad, sad day.

There’s a certain horrifying irony (if irony meant what it’s supposed to) that my very last post was about these poor little hens.

It may be too early to say this yet, but I think I’m teetering back to the side of health and the living. Not to be melodramatic, but it’s been a bit icky here for our heroine. But the sun begins to peek through the mists of illness, and comrades, I do believe I’m feeling a little more chipper. Before you get too excited, and drag me on a hike and a picnic, I should tell you that it took me four hours to fold two loads of laundry this afternoon – I literally kept stopping to catch my breath. While FOLDING LAUNDRY.

What was wrong with me, you ask? It started Sunday with a sore throat and a nagging cough, turned me into a snarling monster on Monday (sorry co-workers) and then morphed into chills and a fever by Tuesday. At the height of it, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and was shaking so hard I literally couldn’t walk. (Yes, I made it eventually. Thanks for your concern.) I’ve lost seven pounds since Monday, which hey, I’ll take it.

Anyway, that’s pretty much why I haven’t written anything in forever, and why I’ve been soooo boring. The saddest part about being sick this week (besides my absence from you, dear readers) is that the temperature was all the way up into the 50s – gorgeous weather, and I missed it.

Instead of frolicking in the great outdoors, I spent the week in bed, wrapped in every single blanket I own, trying to stop the shivering. In the interest of complete disclosure, you should know that when the shaking finally stopped, I intermixed bouts of self pity and pathetic hacking with a documentary watching marathon. Because apparently, given the choice of every movie ever made (well, that’s on Netflix) I choose to go with the documentary genre. Does this make me an old man? I certainly sound like one, with this raspy deep voice. Plus I really do miss the sunshine, because I bet it would feel amazing on my aching joints. Definitely an old man. Lovely.

Never fear, though; the earth continues to turn on it’s axis, and the days will get warmer, and soon it’ll all be sunshine, and maybe I’ll melt a bit and get my youth and femininity back.

I accidentally put my glasses in a puddle of toothpaste, and didn’t realize it before I put them on my head. Now there’s a small patch of toothpaste above each ear.

I’m feeling minty fresh.