A little Rose

A wine snob, I am not. Five dollar bottles of wine can be damn good, and I've never spent more than ten bucks on any one bottle. So the $15 splurge (it was my birthday, I'm allowed) last weekend was unusual for me, especially considering it was PINK.

 

Good lord, me and pink just do not combine. Actually, it's rose, and comes from Monterey via Francis Coppola winery. A little bit of home (well, close enough), and from a director I don't hate. Worth a shot, right? 

 At the least I can use it in cooking later on. I find that "meh" wine goes great in beef stew. Besides, I was at CostPlus World Market, and had a $10 coupon in hand - so not much of a loss. By-the-by, I'm way more likely to spend a ridiculous amount of money with stores that have awesome customer loyalty things like birthday cash, and shopping rewards. I did not make it out of there under $70, and I'm ok with that. Hear me CostPlus? You're my crack, and I'm glad I have to drive more than twenty minutes to find you. Otherwise, I'd be broke (more so). 

Anyway, I tucked that bottle off home and finally popped it open last night.

Ok, so I took the photo this morning...

Being suspicious of things pink, I expected this to be overly perfumed or too sweet-or both. Instead I found it had a light, delicate balance of flavor. Mildly fruity with just the right amount of floral subtlety.I just really freakin' adore this wine. 

Two glasses in I had to force myself to stop and savour for another day. Waking up this morning, I seriously considered having a nip before breakfast. It's the perfect wine for an early glass, me thinks. Or for a summer day - make that any warmish day in Texas. Even now, I'm tempted to pour a glass and hang out on our back patio and watch the dogs romp around. It's not overpowering, like so many other rose wines I've tried. It stands well on it's own, and personally, I think pairing it with food would be a shame. 

I'll definitely have to restrain myself with this one, especially considering that CostPlus Work Market no longer carries the stuff (according to their online site, at least).

I may have to come up with a reason to go back and stock up, just in case...Well done Mr. Coppola. Well done, indeed.

Ikea, you're off my crap list

It's been over a month since I last visited the big blue and yellow. We had a right good plunderin' of the shelves, and I was momentarily taken over by a 12 year old girl when I saw this:

 It's beautiful, no?

She's exactly what I had been looking for, and the bonus light box was just freaking a.maze.ing. Those legs? Yeah, they adjust so one can have a drawing/drafting type table, or a flat-out craft space, AND there's shelf storage. GLEEEEEE!

I practically skipped down to the ol' warehouse to load up our cart with my new lovelies, only to find the legs had been out of stock. Sad face. We took the top home, anyway, optimistic about the re-stock date.

Skip to -now-

Finally, finally after a month of calling every.single.weekday, and obsessively checking the site, I find they were restocked yesterday (wooohooo!) but I was much too tired to actually drive down there.Hey, it's an hour away, and I get lost easily. So, today, I put on pants (big step for me) and drove my generous bootay to the magic Ikea shortly after they opened. Where, of course, I stocked up on waaay more than I intended to. To, like, the tune of $150 extra. My bad. No new shoes for awhile.

But but but! My long awaited legs are here! There had been a total of 16 in stock yesterday. There were 4 today. At, like, 11:45 am. So very glad I convinced myself it was a pant-worthy occasion. I also grabbed goodies from the GORM system to make a shelf that will, in theory, look something like this:

 I hope.

I picked up a lot of goodies this time around, and still had room in my car for more.



A photo of just how amazing my car is at hauling will go here, once blogspot decides to cooperate. Promise.
Look at all that room I still have left to pack in more swag! There's even room for an escort. 'Cause I can't be trusted to restrain myself should I visit again.

SO much goodness that will keep me busy for awhile! Plus, I did all by myself. Which is nice, because this near-crippling fear of driving anywhere alone is getting ridiculous. Of course, I was half-panicking the whole way there & back, but hey, I did it. Go me.

Now, for celebratory Ben & Jerry's.

Worst.Girl.Ever.

At least, that's what I've been told. See, I don't do frilly, foo-foo, or fancy very well. Seeing baby girls in pink riles me up (so sexist) and every time I hear or read "BFF" I feel like kicking a puppy. (You know I would never actually kick a puppy, folks. Maybe fwap a tail or nom an ear, though).

It's taken all of 25 years for me to learn about makeup primer, and I still struggle with anything more than a wash-n-wear hair do. I like feminine, sure, but if it's pink I'll probably spit upon it and throw it back in your face. Unless it's cute puppy paws. Pink puppy paws are just so kissable. I digress...

 In general, if it's pink and/or girly, it's not coming anywhere near me. Which is why I'm having a hard time with decorating blogs lately. They're all just so...foofy. There, I said it. Foofy blogs. Actually, I quite enjoy the writing style of many (too many?) blogs out there, and even the ones featuring kids n family life often hit the mark with me too. It's just those darn foofy things my inner tom-boy just can't get on board with.

 The nice thing is I often come across ideas that can be easily altered to fit my tastes. Paint that a different color, remove the ribbon, ditch the bird-on-a-candlestick, and we'd have something I can go along with. That's when I run into another problem - I really, really don't like clutter. Of course, I say that in part because there tends to be so much of it accumulating around my house, I try to cut down on the amounts as much as possible. Having an arrangement of vases on a table, for example, just seems a little silly to me. First of all, we don't have much table space to spare, and second, we have dogs. Three rowdy, playful, athletic dogs that given half a chance will clear table and counter tops of anything even remotely related to the possibility of being edible.

 So, cutesy arrangements just don't work. I either wants those vases full of flowers (that's a hint, Dear) or stashed high above doggy heads and clumsy elbows. So how to pull together a functional, stylish house without the overly girly accents or the bachelor-pad look?

I'm still trying to figure this out. Lucky for me, every time I ask my darling man his opinion on something, I get the same response. "Whatever you want to do, baby, is fine with me." Have I mentioned I love this man? Seriously.

 So, the current decor-related issues, are really lack of translatable ideas. That, and the restriction of not being able to put more than a "reasonable number of small nail holes" in the walls. Yay, renting. Thank goodness for 3M strips and ticky-tack! Though, both have failed to secure a metal sign to our 'stone' backs plash in the kitchen. We're fighting, and the back splash is winning...

Accident Prone

In the past week, I've been bit by my own dogs, suffered heat exhaustion, and stepped on/been swarmed by a fire ant mound. Twice. 

From these incidents, I've learned many things. The most important lesson being that I should just live inside a protective bubble. 

The dog bites: We had all three dogs out in the yard playing around with some tennis balls. All in all, it was going well. The girls would chase after the ball, vying for first-dibs, and Duke would just chase them thinking it was a strange form of herding exercise. He does love to herd. 

All was well and good until R decides to scamper off to take care of something around the side of the house. A few more rounds of toss-chase-fetch go just dandy, until suddenly the girls go after each other. Lots of snarling, growling, locking onto each others throats. 

With a tongue like that, I'm surprised she has room for teeth! 

The most vicious act she's capable of is tail-thwacking! 

So, basically, I panicked. There was no noticeable warnings before they went after each other-no stiff body posture, no warning growl, no nervous wagging or back-held ears. I couldn't fathom why they started to fight, and my panicky little brain knew what to do, but of course, the panic took over the common sense. 

When dealing with a dog fight, I *know* what to do. I've broken up several before. They were just never my dogs fighting, so  it was a lot less stressful, I suppose. Instead of being smart about the whole thing, I tried grabbing for the chest to pull Kira off, and got my hands chomped by both dogs. They then kindly went back to lunging at each other. 

R heard the commotion (and me, panic-yelling, which by the way almost never works to stop the fight) and ran over, helping me to pull the two apart. I drug Kira inside, and tended to my charmingly gushing puncture wounds. Other than some missing tufts of fur, both dogs walked away in-tact from the scuffle. From now on, only one at a time in the yard for fetch. 

Fortunately for me, the wounds weren't too deep, and they were easily tended to. By the way, if you do get bit, and you feel medical treatment is necessary, AVOID STITCHES. It is much better to let the wounds drain, on their own, than closing them up allowing bacteria to fester. Trust me on this- I was attacked by dogs and in need of stitches as a kid, and a nasty infection followed. It resulted in some muscle damage and a nasty scar, along with my harboring a serious distrust of all things Chihuahua to this very day. 

As for the ant mounds, I'm insisting R dump chemical (doggy safe, of course) all over those frickin mounds til they die.die.die. Sorry, but ants that attack gotta go.