Kitty Deschanel

 Remember when Olive and Bernadette recently  flooded our new home ? We all had a good laugh (except when the water bill arrived...and the gas bill, because of course they used the hot water...and every time I look at our baseboards, which have warped right off of the walls). Despite this nonsense, do you know what I told everyone the next day? "At least our floors are clean." Ha, ha, ha, ha. All they do is sleep all day, so surely these two sweet pups would never cause any trouble. (The chair askew is a little hint that they cause sooo much trouble.) The morning after the flood, I got up early, making sure to give Olive and Bernadette plenty of time to romp outside prior to heading to work. All they did was sit on the patio and stare at me, longing to come inside to nap. Of course, the moment they were inside? Romp, romp, romp, romp. You know the pack of rambunctious dogs in the movie A Christmas Story who tear through the house and ruin the holiday turkey? These girls are

Let me start this post by stating, for the record, that I stay at Marriott hotels all the time. I'm in it for the breakfast and when a hotel doesn't include this, I stay elsewhere. I am a hotel waffle-making pro . Then again, making your own waffle is easy peasy, right? Behold, the tower of waffle batter goodness. How many gallons does it contain? We would soon find out. I always look forward to creating a decadent hotel waffle. The fateful Monday morning after the Summit County Parade of Homes was no exception and I was pleased to discover that no one was using the waffle iron, despite the crowd in the hotel breakfast room. It's no secret that I'm a social-anxiety mess, even with something as basic as navigating a shared waffle iron, so this was a relief and a great start to my day. I picked up my little plastic batter cup. I pressed down on the dispenser nozzle, as I've done 100 times. And then... The nozzle broke off. It just snapped right off

This is my  "Can you believe these are really my teeth?!"  face. Braces Before & After My mom insists I've done so much to my teeth that they're going to fall out. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY, MOM! For the record, my teeth are all icky and brown in the middle photo above for two reasons: I'd recently gotten my braces off. Teeth with braces are impossible to keep clean. In preparation for gum surgery, I'd been using a prescription mouthwash that removes any trace of white from your teeth. I've had a terrible smile ever since 3rd grade, when I fell face-first onto the road and fractured my front teeth. My dentist at the time did the best he could to make them look nice, but dental technology in the early 90s just wasn't what it is today. Plus, let's face it, a 3rd grader is rarely a model patient.  Fearing braces, which I was convinced would be painful (not to mention that I was more than awkward and dorky enough without

We've come a long way from the barren, post-construction wasteland of dirt we had a few years ago. Actually, it was even worse than it sounds. Dirt had to be hauled in and it was full of thorny weeds that spread everywhere. We've (okay, just my husband and his tractor) worked hard and our yard looks better than it ever has. Sexy Nerd is a landscaping pro! You know, in addition to being a beer brewer, Corvette restorer, woodworker, grill master, mechanical engineer, and installer of tile, wallpaper murals , and little cuts of wood that I insist he glue to our ceiling (photo below). I think I'll keep him around. Our Sandia Park, NM garden improves every year. I can't wait to see what everything looks like in 2023! Surprisingly, our plants have only had a minor impact on our water usage. Through supplementation with rain barrels, choosing native and drought-tolerant plants, and by locating plants so that they are out of the sun during the hottest parts of the day, our wate

Thank you to everyone for wishing me a happy birthday. I work with the best people - this German chocolate cake they surprised me with is so tall that it didn't even fit in its bakery box! They said that's not how you cut a cake. I said I'm old now so can cut a cake any damn way I please.  Stabby-style it is. My amazing work peeps (am I now too old to call my friends 'peeps'...) prepared an Italian birthday feast for us to share in our break room.  Fancy organic salad, a lasagna made from scratch (even the sauce - go Christie!), and ooey gooey, cheese-filled breadsticks.   Nothing can top that, right? Somehow the food was topped! I stepped away from my desk for a moment and when I returned, there was a tiny gift bag. Inside was a pair of Maggie Simpson socks. I ripped off my boring, professional black socks and swapped them for the pink and yellow cartoon baby socks. If you don't know, I love The Simpsons. And if you don't know that, we've clearly never