I am very sad to see my old Chucks go, however I’ve been wearing them since the fall of 2006.  They had holes galore and were incredibly dirty (which I think caused them to get an extra scan at airport security when flying to L.A.), but were so comfortable!

But now I have these awesome new Chucks!

I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that I copied the style from a freshman at the high school at which I work.  He wears charcoal Chucks with red laces every day, and they look so cool I thought I would try them out for my next pair.

Of course, this means I can’t ever wear them to work.

The Broadripple McDonald’s is the absolute worst McDonald’s I have ever been to, and I grew up in the 80′s with heroin needles in the ball pits.  You see, I’ve recently become obsessed with collecting the Alvin and the Chipmunks figures they are currently featuring in their Happy Meals, so I stopped by the Broadripple location on my way home from work this evening and left rather pissed.

First, a Mighty Kids meal costs a dollar more in Broadripple than at the location out yonder by the Wal-Mart I usually patron.  (And by usually, I mean once a year because I’m not that into fast food.)  Second, after I paid for my meal, they told me they were out of the Chipmunks, even though they still had the Chipmunks display out.  If I were a bitch, I would have said, “No problem, I’ll just take one of those!” and made them get me the display Alvin.  But I’m not a bitch, so I just made a frowny face that went unnoticed.  Then I had to ask for a beverage, even though it comes with the meal.  Like they’re trying to save money by scamming people out of what costs them literally pennies a person.  Next, I asked for the hot mustard sauce, McDonald’s only redeeming quality in my opinion.  They said they were out of hot mustard, even though I could clearly see one last hot mustard sauce in the back of the plastic bin!  Finally, they did not offer unsweetened iced tea at this location.  Diabetes only.

As I was driving home (which was a feat in and of itself, if you’ve ever tried to turn left out of that McDonald’s onto Broadripple Avenue during rush hour traffic), I thought back to Dr. Phil.  Now, normally I roll my eyes at Dr. Phil because he looks and acts like a walrus.  But yesterday when I went to get my oil changed, I was forced to watch his walrus antics on the television in the waiting room.  And he actually said something poignant.  Well to be fair, he quoted something poignant his dad used to say: “There’s something about that person that I don’t like in me.”

For whatever reason, that quote popped into my head at the precise moment my anger toward McDonald’s peaked, and I realized it wasn’t McDonald’s at whom I was pissed – it was myself.  I was pissed because I allowed myself to let a multi-billion dollar industry con me into thinking I needed something useless.  Once I realized this, I didn’t want that Alvin anymore.

So this evening when I arrived home, I put on one of my favorite t-shirts to sleep in that I bought at a thrift store for a quarter years ago.

Before I take the Christmas tree down (Yes!  It’s still up!  So what!  Shut your face!), I thought I would post a little something for my favorite cousin.  She was with me when I bought these kick-ass ornaments:

“Little Red”

“Green Machine”

“Robby the Robot”

“Mr. Roboto”

My horoscope today was ridiculously specific:  “If you aren’t currently romantically involved, Aquarius, today you could meet someone who shows a lot of promise. Work might be involved in some way, and it’s also possible that this person has been living in your neighborhood for a long time. A friend could introduce you to each other. You’ll probably spend at least an hour talking, and will probably make arrangements to meet again.”

So someone I work with lives in my neighborhood and we have a mutual friend in common?  That seems like a tall order, especially since it’s 5:30pm and I didn’t meet anyone today, and I have no plans to go out this evening.

It opens like so to reveal the milk bottles the milkman has left from the other side:

Only I don’t have milk delivered, so typically it goes unused.  Then my mom came up with the brilliant idea to leave me gifts inside!  This only happens once in awhile.  But between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, she went crazy and left me eleven gifts.  I have dubbed them The Eleven Days of Christmas.

♫ On the first day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…a Terry’s dark chocolate orange.

♫ On the second day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…knee-high penguin socks.

♫ On the third day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…three French hen ornaments from Crate and Barrel.

♫ On the fourth day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey.

♫ On the fifth day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…a dark chocolate Choxie bar.

♫ On the sixth day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…homemade oatmeal cookies.

♫ On the seventh day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…festive holiday tea towels.

♫ On the eighth day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…adorable mushroom ornaments.

♫ On the ninth day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…a cashmere turtleneck sweater.

♫ On the tenth day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…salt and pepper grinders.

♫ On the eleventh day of Christmas my mother gave to me…

…Santa Pez with a transparent head.

1. I’ve been reading a lot in these recessionary times that gourmet cupcakes have become rather fashionable.  So I went to the only gourmet cupcake bakery in Indianapolis that I know of, and tried one out for myself:

Chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting – highly recommended!  But at three bucks each, I only recommended going the once for the novelty of it.  However, next to the cupcake bakery was the toy store, and I couldn’t resist taking this picture:

especially since I am in the process of giving my Legos to my aunt to save for my cousin for when he’s older.  It was hard to make the decision to let the Legos go, since I feel that Legos truly defined my childhood and adolescence.  But the bottom line is I haven’t played with them in 15 years, so it’s probably time to give them a new home.

2. I was casually reading Swamp Thing one evening while having a cup of tea (as us single ladies tend to do), and was shocked to my core when a bird flew full-blast into my sliding glass door.  After giving my heart a moment to resume beating, I ran to get my camera.  I thought the poor bird was dead, since he was laying perfectly still on his back.  But when I arrived back on the scene with camera in hand, he looked like this:

And there he sat for a good 45 minutes before flying off.  The creepiest thing?  A few weeks later I went to a friend’s house one Sunday afternoon and another bird (a much larger bird), did the exact same thing.  What can I say?  Birds will do anything for a chance with me.

3. The fall weather set in before my last bell pepper fully ripened, so I brought him inside with low hopes that he would ripen indoors.  But he could, and he did!

And he was delicious.

4. I made the leap and purchased a super-fancy HDTV.  While I completely adored my previous old-fashioned setup that had faithfully served me well all these years:

it became too much of a strain to watch widescreen programming on the 19″ screen from way across the room.  So I bought a new TV and a new TV stand:

But don’t shed a tear for my loss of retro just yet.  I’m setting up the old system in my spare bedroom in the hopes that it will encourage me to work out on the HealthRider my aunt gave me.  (P.S. Why yes, that is a Blu-ray player that I got for free when I purchased the TV!  Thanks, Sony!)

5. I signed up to take a metalsmithing class at the Indianapolis Art Center.  I needed something to look forward during the week, and a creative outlet for my weekly work-related frustrations.  During the first class, we learned to use the equipment and went over the supply list, so it was kind of boring.  The second class, we worked on our first project – a riveted pendant.  I sawed, filed, and sanded metal for 3 straight hours.  I hadn’t been that physically exhausted in a long time, and the pendant isn’t even finished yet!  But last Saturday, we learned to make a simple band ring.  It was really quick and easy to do, and I love how mine turned out:

6. I don’t mean to end on a sad note, but I do mean to end on an important note: Jonathan died.  He had a huge tumor on his neck which prevented him from being able to eat solid food.  I was giving him shallow dishes of whatever I could find that was pureed: applesauce, hummus, mashed bananas and avocados, baby food, pasta sauce.  He seemed to be doing OK with the new diet, except for some weight loss.  Then his tumor burst through his skin and I had to have him put down.  He was doing so poorly in the end, it was the right thing to do.  But he will be terribly missed!  I didn’t realize how much company he was until he died.  But let’s remember the happier times:

I’m so excited!  The peppers I’ve eaten off my plant thus far have truly been the most sweet and flavorful red bell peppers I have ever tasted in my life!

I’m done with raw foods.  Now that school has started, I can’t handle being on the raw food diet AND working full time at a stressful job.  It was fine (even fun) over the summer when I had nothing better to do.  But I spent this past weekend (when I wasn’t shopping for work clothes and doing work I brought home) making raw things so I wouldn’t have to prepare anything during the work week.  I’m completely sick of washing my blender several times a day and spending all my free time in the kitchen!  So tomorrow I’m going grocery shopping – at a REAL grocery store!  No more traveling to three different alternative grocery stores to get what I need.  No more buying expensive raw condiments, like bland raw almond butter.  No more $70 grocery bills.  I’ve never been so excited to make a grocery list before, especially since I get to purchase REAL hummus (as opposed to the ingredients for weird raw hummus made from sprouted chickpeas that ends up tasting grainy and flavorless) and REAL crackers (not expensive dehydrated flax seed crackers that cost three times as much for a third of the crackers).

But it’s not all sad news.  There are things I’ll still make, like raw fudge and chia pudding.  Plus, I’ve learned some tricks, like if you buy a lime and cut it into adorable wedges, featured here:

and squeeze a wedge into every glass of water you drink, you’ll end up drinking twice as much water as you did before.  As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing!”

Saturday morning I was awoken by the following conversation outside my window:

man: “Do you smoke?”
woman: “No….”
man: “Well, then your car’s on fire.”
woman: “Oh my god!  Why is it on fire?!?”

At this point, I went from being half asleep to fully awake in a matter of nanoseconds.  I jumped out of bed, looked outside my window, and fo’ sho’ – the trunk of her car was billowing smoke.  The man called 911, and props to the IFD for arriving in less than two minutes.  (No props shall go to the IPD, who strolled on the scene ten minutes later.)  The firemen popped the trunk, took everything out and laid it on the ground, and extinguished the item that was smoldering.  Then the woman looked over her stuff and said, “Hey, that’s not mine!” and pointed to a box.  I thought, “Terrific!  It’s probably a bomb that’s going to blow us all to kingdom come!”  But I guess the firemen didn’t think so, because they opened the box and it was filled with what looked like rags.  Then a guy on a bike rode by and told the firemen that two other cars were on fire just like this one earlier that morning in a different area of the apartment complex.  Enter the arson detective who started interviewing everyone standing around, which by this time was quite a crowd and included a woman who was in the process of moving in with the help of her father.  The woman looked young – probably 22, fresh out of college, and just starting out on her own.  Her father had many questions to ask the fire department and the police, while one bystander tried (unconvincingly) to reassure them that nothing bad ever happens in this neighborhood.  I think the consensus was that an arsonist had popped several car trunks, set some rags on fire, then closed the trucks and let the fires smolder.  I heard the biker say that one of the other cars that was on fire earlier was completely totaled from fire damage.

Welcome to the neighborhood!

My lemon seeds are sprouting, and it’s fun to see all the different plant varieties that come from the seeds of the same lemon.  There’s the fast-growing-with-two-large-leaves-and-two-tiny-leaves variety (center); the four-leaves-of-different-shapes-and-sizes variety (bottom); the three-leaf variety (top); and the slow-growing-and-shy-to-produce-leaves variety: