Many thanks to your steadfast support, my low sodium recipe site The Daily Dish has been awarded a $2000 grant from Mom Central Consulting!!!
I am overwhelmed and overjoyed and cannot thank each and every person who took the time to vote for me – once, twice or daily – enough. But I will try.
Congratulations to the winners and very best wishes to everyone who entered!
Now I’m off to celebrate.
Friday we got another foot of snow. Yeah, I thought spring was on its way too, but HAHAHHAHAHAHHHH!! We live in Maine. So yesterday (Saturday) we decided to put all this white stuff to good use. Via SNOW TUBING. We drove to Seacoast Snow Park in Windham. Only 25 minutes yet a world of fun away!
Here we are at the bottom of the hill. When we first started we were feeling perky and WAY EXCITED! So we hoofed it up the hill. I overheard a family walking alongside us saying it was GOOD to walk, that we were all doing it the old fashioned way. (Old fashioned = code language for WORK OUT)
Here we are at the top. I cannot tell you how much FUN!! it was cascading down. Snow spraying hitting your face, the wind in your hair. I felt positively giddy. As you can see, there’s not a huge wait for a lane. This is b/c there are 12 lanes to choose from. And snow tubing sessions are divided into 2-hour blocks. Only *so many* tubes are sold per session, so things keep moving. Single riders can go in any of the 12 lanes, but if you want to link your tube up with other riders, you have to choose the proper lane: 2 riders, up to 6 riders, or more.
The four of us hoofed it up the hill once and rode down. Then we hoofed it up again and went down again. After this we were TIRED. The hill’s not that high but it ain’t that short either. So we decided it was time to be carried. That’s right; CARRIED! Not on the backs of sherpas but via conveyor belt or rope tow! The conveyor belt works just like you’d imagine. You step onto it and stand with your tube as it whisks you up the hill.
We didn’t use the conveyor belt method. Mostly b/c all the double tubes had to be carried that way and the wait was much longer. As we were all using single tubes, we opted for the rope tow. The rope tow line was fairly short and the method more appealing. You sit in your tube and relax. A handle connected to your tube is looped onto a metal claw attached to the rope. You and your tube are yanked up the hill to the top, where at a specified location you toss yourself off your tube and proceed a few steps to collect your ride.
Here we are waiting at the bottom of the hill in the rope tow line. You can see the mechanism to the left, pulling the happy tubers up to the top. The wait was short and while waiting we listened to music over the loudspeakers. They were playing “The Q” – the Top 40 radio station here in Portland. Very toe tapping / booty shaking music, sure to put you in a good tubing mood. My younger daughter is a BIG Q fan – but that’s for another post altogether..
Me & “Greenie”
Here we are back at the top, waiting in line for Lane 1. Lane 1 is the best lane – single riders only – it’s curvy and has a mogul in one spot. Worth the short wait.
After this I couldn’t take anymore pics b/c my iPhone camera stopped working. Personally, I think it got jealous of the fun we were having and decided to stick it to me. So I didn’t get any shots on the rope tow, or while tubing down any of the lanes. But that’s probably for the best. We went a total of 9 times in our 2 hour session, mostly linked together in a big mass of four tubes. The added weight only served to increase our speed, velocity & fun — so together we FLEWWWW down the hill, Whoopping & hollering and having a BLAST!! I’m glad I couldn’t take photos — for once I simply sat back and enjoyed the ride. 🙂
A package arrived yesterday… WHAT COULD IT BE ?????!!!!!
Everyone who knows me knows I have been wanting a Dutch Oven for YEARS. I even had the gall to put a request on this blog (Stuff I Would Like to Have). My mom surprised me with one 3 Christmases ago but the lid was chipped and it had to be returned. The money from the Dutch Oven then went to pay for boots for my older daughter – b/c that is how life goes. But many thanks to my amazing friend Magdalen, I’m now the owner of a beautiful blue Le Creuset!!!!
THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU MAGDALEN!!!!!!!!! I AM ELATED! 🙂
PS: No give backs. Right?!
Yesterday, amid snow filled skies, a group of friends gathered to celebrate the union of two very much in love stuffed animals.
A marvelous time was had by all and the ceremony got me thinking about love. Isn’t it amazing how two different species of stuffed animals can come together to form a perfect union? I know some folks are really adamant about who can & cannot commit to one another, but really, who are we to judge the love a chickie can feel for a bunny, and vice versa? Or, say. the attraction a Buffalo can feel for a Donkey? Because surely you haven’t forgotten about MY FRISKY COOKIES??!
YES FRIENDS! hard to believe they’re STILL humping after all these years!! (But not as hard for us as for that donkey.)
Click to relive the magic (really, just read the original blog posts)
December 2007. Donkey & Buffalo find each other in a crowded tub of crackers.
January 2008. Donkey & Buffalo remain “attached at the hip”
February 2011. Three years later ….. and STILL GOING STRONG!
As if their long lasting interlocked state wasn’t evidence enough, I have further proof that the Donkey & Buffalo’s inter-species love is here to stay. Dear reader. What I have to show you may be shocking, but remember, it is NATURAL. Earlier this afternoon, when I fetched my animal crackers from their special box, they…. weren’t alone.
BEHOLD!!!!!
Animal Cracker —- OFFSPRING!!!!!!!!
The Donkey & Buffalo’s union has produced a (I don’t know what to call it) just in time for the grandaddy of all Love Ins, Valentine’s Day. Though he looks a little funny, his legs are a bit twisted and he appears to be moving forward and backward simultaneously, you cannot dispute the look of sheer unbridled JOY on the (whatever it is)’s face. DON’T JUDGE!!!! LOVE CONQUERS ALL
SO. To all you naysayers. I say PPpFFFFFFTTTTTT.
When I was little I was deathly afraid of spiders. So much so, that when I found a big ugly one on me in the night (circa 1983), I moved into my sister’s bedroom and slept on her floor for a whole month. And no, it wasn’t the least bit comfortable.
As I’ve aged I’ve gotten past the terror a spider can induce. I’ve matured. I’ve come to realize that spiders are small creatures who for the most part mean us no harm. We are the scary big monsters THEY cower in fear from and try to avoid. Part of this is hogwash, I know, part is rationalization. But for the most part it works. I can calmly shoo a spider away when need be – or even catch it gently in a cup, paper pressed against the opening, to escort it outside. I never kill spiders – they have their purpose after all, and I much prefer them to the biting insects they call food.
Anyway, the reason I am sharing this is b/c I spend a goodly portion of each day tending to a fire which consumes vast quantities of wood. I wrote about this whole wood situation before (feel free to refresh your memories here). We keep most of our wood stacked outside, but weekly my husband & I must bring in a new stash for burning. This wood is home to many, many spiders. For safety (and peace of mind) I wear protective leather work gloves while shifting wood, lest I get bitten by a startled arachnid. But I can’t get past the paranoid fear that one day I will encounter a brown recluse and wind up losing an arm.
I know this is paranoia at its best. These little spiders are terrified of me, stomping around in my heavy snow boots, cursing audibly with each heaving wheelbarrow of wood. But it remains so firmly planted in my psyche that any time I get a tiny unexplained cut on my hand, I watch it the same way an underpaid office worker watches the clock. I check it 60 times an hour, just waiting for it to change. IS IT GETTING BIGGER?? IT’S LOOKING BIGGER!! IS IT BUBBLING??!!
All of this is nonsense, of course. I scratched my hand sweeping up debris from the floor, or caught it on [insert whatever it was] but the fear remains. It doesn’t help that all this firewood we haul inside is stored in the hearth in our kitchen. The room in which I spend most of my time. And now that this firewood is stacked inside the warm & pleasant walls of our heated home, the formerly hibernating army of spiders living inside said wood is now WAKING UP. And converting my kitchen into their Spider Village.
In the changing light you see them. The vast network of spiderwebs dangling above our heads, crisscrossing the room from the windows to the doors. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been standing at the island, chopping or kneading or simply going about my business, only to look up and find a spider dangling inches from my face. Looking at me as if to say, “What’s for Dinner?”
For the most part I don’t mind living amongst so many many-leggeds. Sure a few of them are HUGE (we’re talking inches) but for the most part they’re very small. And they do in fact seem to be helping us with the bugs. Not that you’d expect a home in the dead winter of Maine to have an insect issue, but for some odd reason we do have them. Not gross ones, no cockroaches or big scary beetles or anything. No, we have ladybugs.
We noticed them right after we moved in. It was hard not to, seeing as they’d taken over our attic. At some point in the course of The Dole House’s long and illustrious history, these ladybugs took up residence and now, 600 generations later, we’re still sheltering their kin. It was odd at first, finding we had so much company. But over the past (almost) 18 months, we’ve gotten used to each other. We no longer think it strange, the small piles of expired ladybugs trapped between the window frames and storms. The ladybug corpses littering the window sills (which must be dusted periodically) or the occasional ladybug you find clutching onto a curtain. For some reason, our younger daughter’s bedroom seems to be the ladybugs favorite room in the house. Ladybug Land. Our little girl spends her nights counting the tiny red dots on her ceiling, watching them weave their way from point to point. They’re sweet really. Perhaps if you look carefully you’ll find another world living inside your home, too.