Author: Vicki

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Cookies for Carl

This is a photo of peanut butter cookies that I just made for my good friend, Carl. He loves cookies and I always take a dozen over to his house when I am baking.

peanut butter cookies
The recipe I use for these cookies is my own, but it is adapted from a recipe I found online. Their recipe was called Peanut Butter Blossoms, because we put unwrapped Hershey’s Kisses in the middle of each cookie right after it comes out of the oven.

My secret for this recipe is which peanut butter you choose. Some people might be tempted to buy the cheapest brand of peanut butter, or something on sale. But I ALWAYS use Peter Pan Creamy in this recipe and they are simply DELICIOUS!

I think its about time I make a batch of Oatmeal cookies with raisins and chopped walnuts. That always hits the spot with a glass of ice cold milk!

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Ballerina Dreams

I remember being a little girl and being in the parent waiting area with my mom while my sister took ballet lessons. We could watch through a big, one-way mirror to see what the class was doing. I loved to watch my sister’s teacher dance to show the students how they needed to do the different moves. She was so graceful and so disciplined. I wish I could have taken ballet lessons.

I have this weird thing about my joints. It is especially noticeable in my elbows. Everything bends out way more than other people’s joints. Because of this, which I was born with and can’t do anything about it, the dance teacher told my mom that I could never be a ballerina. The way my elbows let my arms over-extend is not attractive or graceful. In ballet, the arms are almost as important as the feet.

It was humiliating to be told I was too ugly to dance. That hurt my feelings and self esteem for a very long time. But my sister doesn’t have this same problem with her joints, and she took ballet lessons for many years. She was very good at it. I wonder if she ever thinks about that and has has happy memories about dancing?

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Bad Hair Good Hair

Every morning this week when I’ve woke up and started getting dressed, my hair has been a crapshoot as to whether it will be a good hair day or a bad hair day. I have not had two good hair days in a row for over 2 weeks. That makes me think I need to go see my stylist and get a new cut and style.

I used to have very long, dark hair. Fixing it each morning only took a couple of minutes, unless I wanted to do something fancy, like a French braid or a loose bun. I didn’t have to worry about getting many haircuts. Just once in awhile to deal with split ends. The worst thing about the long hair was the way the bathtub drain would get clogged up!

Now my hair is short and I have to see my stylist every 4-6 weeks. Sometimes I have to go twice the same month, which really wrecks my budget.

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Fishing with Owen

This weekend I plan on doing something new and fun. I need to get out of the house and out of my rut. My friend, Owen, suggested that we take a drive to one of the big lakes and try fishing. That sounds like fun if we can get a boat. If he just wants to stand on the shoreline and get bit by mosquitoes for 10 hours then he’ll have to do that on his own. Not this girl!

I would love to rent a decent sized boat and hire a guide to take us out on Nickajack Lake or one of the other big lakes further north. My idea of fishing involves floating on the water, having a cooler with some cold drinks, and some pleasant company to talk with for a few hours. If the weather won’t be rainy or risk of thunderstorms, that’s our plan for Saturday.

Now to think of something fun to do on Sunday, too!

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Baking Bread with Charlotte

I was invited to come to a cookware party by my good friend, Miss Charlotte, so I went with a skeptical attitude and a tight fist on my checkbook. Turns out that I’m not really interested in the line of cookware that she was offering and I didn’t buy anything that night. But while at the party we did get to chatting about cooking and baking and different shortcuts and kitchen tips.

Miss Charlotte invited me to come back one weekend and spend the day baking with her. I think that would be great – I love to bake and it is even more fun when you have someone there working alongside you.

Net weekend we are going to spend Saturday afternoon together in her kitchen making some different breads and rolls. She wants to donate the finished products to a church function the next morning. So I am looking up bread recipes online and finding two that I want to try. We are not using a bread machine to make these – they will be completely from scratch, hand rolled and raised, and then baked with love. I can’t wait to see how they turn out!

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Spring Cleaning Chores

There’s no more denying that Spring is really here and I really need to get started with the Spring cleaning chores. It is so easy to put them off – especially when I live alone and rarely have company. So if it is just me, do I really care that the windows need to be washed? Do I really care that the linen closet needs to be emptied out and restocked?

Well, the answer is that yes, I DO care. I just would rather watch a good movie, read a good book, or play a few games on the computer when I get home from work. I would rather take one weekend and designate those two days as Spring Cleaning days and just get it all done with.

So I guess next weekend is the designated Spring Cleaning project. Unless something better comes along that requires my attention.

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Wrong Text

This morning I got a series of strange text messages on my cell phone. They started out being short ones, saying, “I love you” and “I can’t wait to see you again.” And I was freaked out because I didn’t recognize the phone number and I was not expecting anyone to say that to me. Maybe my mother! But not any guy or co-worker, for sure!

After about a dozen of the texts that I did not answer, I was getting annoyed that they kept coming every few minutes. For one thing, each text message received costs me 20 cents. And for another thing, the texts were never signed with a name nor addressed to a name, and they clearly were not meant for me.

It occurred to me that the person was texting them to the wrong number and might not stop until someone replied. I was sorely tempted to reply “F*** You!” and see what happened, but it might have been a guy stalking his girlfriend and if she was to actually say that then the stalker might escalate the interaction with something violent and the poor girl would not have any warning or any defense.

So I called the number and said this is Vicki and I have no idea who you are sending all these texts to, but I know you aren’t intending to send them to me, so check the damn number and quit sending me all these texts or I will report you to the police.” And I hung up – I didn’t even want to hear the other person’s voice. And they stopped.

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Did the Easter Bunny Find You?

The Easter Bunny was at my house this morning. He left me a basket with chocolate eggs, yellow marshmallow peeps, and a big bag of jelly beans. I have never tried these jelly beans before. They are the Jolly Rancher brand of jelly beans, with fruit smoothie flavors. Sadly, that means no black liquorice jelly beans. But some of the fruit smoothie flavors sound nice! I love Easter candies – this is one of my favorite holidays – all good food and sweet things! Happy Easter!

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Monday is a Long Way from Friday

For some reason this Monday seems to be dragging on forever. I feel like its been three days of work, problems and interruptions all rolled into this one day. I hope the rest of the week is not like this. I don’t think I could bear it.

Is it just me? Or is everyone feeling a little stressed? Is it the time change to daylight saving time? Is it Easter coming? Is it all the pollen from the trees and grasses in Spring?

I don’t know, but usually I love Spring and Easter time, but right now I’m just anxious and worried and tired.

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Nothing to Eat or Drink Past Midnight

Tomorrow morning is a big day for one of my dogs. Surgery at the veterinarians office for a fractured tooth. Oh My gosh – when the vet showed me her tooth I almost passed out. It fractured and has gotten abscessed and she must be in miserable pain. I’m so glad I took her to get checked so they can fix it now.

The weird thing about surgery is that she cannot have anything to eat or drink after midnight tonight. Since they have to knock her out for the surgery, if she eats anything there is the risk of her vomiting and then choking. That would be devastating to me to have something like that happen. I love her so much. She will be able to go a day with no food and I’m sure the vet will give her an IV so she doesn’t get dehydrated.

My poor girl – tomorrow is a big one but when it’s all over she will feel so much better!