Hmmmmm....
Let's consult the angry lesbians upstairs, shall we? (Do you remember my calling 911 adventure? Turns out, what I thought was a man and a woman with a teenage son, is actually two women - I figured out the teenage son was a girl when I realized she had boobs, and not the man kind - who really should not be in a relationship if the sound of their fighting is any indication.)
What time did you ladies begin bickering? About 11 pm, right.
And what time was it that you finally stopped throwing each other around and screaming? Uh huh, it WAS 12:45 am, I remember that now.
So, 6 hours later, I was awake! YAY!
I grumbled my way out of bed as the man I married kissed me good bye and went on his merry way. I looked at the bed, and I said "I will run errands today, and you know what? I'm not going to make you before I do!" I've had issues with leaving the apartment with my bed unmade. It's just not kosher with me. But that's how grumbly I was, people. Are you understanding?? I went and ate breakfast and decided that a grumbly morning did not require a trip to the gym. At that point, I ran back into my room, apologized to my bed, and proceeded to make it.
While all of this excitement is happening, I'm googling ways to make pulled pork sandwiches using a slow cooker and communicating with my sister, of the older kind, about how her and the tall man that she married like to cook pig. Turns out they use their smoker. Don't we all wish we had a smoker at our beck and call? James and his...ways of making food taste good....for Thanksgiving...and sharing it with the rest of us....ugh. He's so selfish (James is my brother in law by the by). Moving on, I was becoming very frustrated because there wasn't anything I found that said 'Just dump all of this stuff in your slow cooker and out comes awesome pork!' which is how I prefer all of my slow cooker recipes to work.
Off I go on my errands. This is getting more and more exciting, isn't it? As I was parking at Sam's I thought to myself 'Sandi, it is a grumbly morning, and if anything makes a grumbly morning better, it's looking at the Christmas stuff in Sam's!' And I was right. Because they have giant wreaths there and martini glasses with penguin faces in them and a whole plethora of trees that are twinkling. You would all be so proud of me too because I actually stuck to only what was on my list, which, if you've ever been to Sam's, is difficult. Hence the reason why my mom always went without my dad. (Also, she didn't like sending him to buy fireworks because she would say "Alright Bob, you can spend $$. And nothing more!!!" But dad would always spend $$$, which is very easy to do with fireworks, and that's why we always went with him because we knew it would be great fun and we would get a lot of fireworks and sometimes he would take us to get snow cones afterwards) I was very proud of myself for sticking to my list and budget, and also having viewed some Christmas paraphernalia, I was in a jolly mood when leaving Sam's.
Moving on, I went to Wal-Mart to get the rest of my groceries. This is not my normal routine. I'm an HEB kind of person. Quite frankly, it's cheaper and awesome and they're only in Texas so once again they're awesome. (My mom likes their green beans best. The canned ones. I know. I think it's cute and odd too.) BUT, I've been hearing all this talk on baking blogs about these new fangled m&m's that are exclusive to Wal-Mart. EXCLUSIVE! And I had to find some. Let me preface this by saying, I don't like candy corn, but these, these m&m's, they are something else. Observe:
Also, after all of the hemming and hawing I'd done earlier over what to do for pulled pork sandwiches, I decided to cut out the middle man (me? my slow cooker? me. no, my slow cooker? probably both) and bought this instead:
(the one in the middle)
I was in such high spirits, what with my cart having things like candy corn white chocolate m&m's, pre-cooked pork, and heavy cream for making caramels, all tucked safely inside it's unsanitary, cage-like-ness, when I remembered that I was at Wal-Mart and that's why I was waiting 10 minutes for someone in front of me to purchase 5 items. Not my favorite place to check out. Here comes the grumblies! (Also, they didn't even put good Christmas stuff out yet! Are they not part of the same corporation as Sam's?!)
But then things were good and ungrumbly again because I went home and made homemade sandwich buns, for which to eat the pork sandwiches for dinner, and also THIS! Do you see now why I had to get those m&m's? I'd never had chocolate shortbread before which was really a travesty because it's really delicious. (Not if you leave it out overnight uncovered, though, and then it becomes quite dry...)
Things were definitely climbing far from grumbly for the rest of the day until about 6:30 when cabin fever kicked in. I wanted to DO something! There was NOTHING to be done! It's quite boring to be poor actually. Maybe not so much poor, as just not spending money all willy nilly. Which is what I wanted to do, but I couldn't! The loans! The student loans! They must LEAVE! I looked at Mike and I said "This is going to be like going off sugar." We used to sit around and say 'Wanna go see a movie?' and then we'd go see a movie. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but you have to sell a kidney or a child to go to the movies now-a-days. So I wandered around my apartment, putting away things that were already put away, sweeping things that had already been swept, and then I looked at Pete, who hadn't been running or jumping all day, and I said "We're going to take him on a walk!"
So we did. And some ducks yelled at us. And after the walk I declared that it was time for a treat, so we got frosties with french fries and chicken nuggets (really, a frosty is the best dipping sauce for Wendy's fries and nuggets) and I looked at Mike and said "$6.55 for a date night? You can't shake a stick at that!" And we went home and watched 'The Office.'
So all in all, I think the roller coaster ended on an upswing. Which is good in the sense that this is an analogy for which to compare my Friday to a roller coaster, but if you were really on a roller coaster, ending it on the middle of an uphill climb probably wouldn't be the best of ideas....
I watched one of my musicals while baking yesterday, and for you Groban fans out there, why don't you drink this in?
(Sure, he's singing about communist Russia - it was 1979 after all -, but I like to think that he's thinking of the US of A while singing it. The song gives me chills no matter who sings it. And with music written by the two B's from ABBA, who WOULDN'T get chills??)