Let it wintry mix

I've officially been a resident of northwest Arkansas for 10 months now. The other day, one of my friends accused me of becoming a "northwest Arkansas snob," calling me "one of those people who think NWA is the end-all, be-all place." Guilty as charged. I always thought I'd want to end up here someday, but someday came much sooner than expected, and residing in the state's most extreme northwest county is even better than I expected. Great shopping, good dining (although neither in my actual town), and beautiful scenery.

My first autumn wasn't as gorgeous as I expected it to be (of course, to be fair, I did go to Boston this fall and that's kind of hard to beat). Last January, on my first night in the new house, we had a big snowfall. I love snow and was excited to see a lot of white stuff. There wasn't much.

Today marks the first snow of this winter. Granted, it's more of a wintry mix and heavy on the rain, but still... it's SNOWING. And I'm sitting in my warm house, watching the Christmas tree lights blink and drinking coffee.

Three days ago I was in Texas and it was 80 degrees. I love northwest Arkansas. So sue me.

Chocolate sin

Jen asked me to post this, so here you go. This cake is scrumptious, but a bit difficult, so if you're a lazy cook, stick with the Duncan Hines cake mix. My pal Estella gave this recipe to me; I'm sure someone somewhere needs to get the credit for it, but I have no idea who, so forgive me.

CHOCOLATE SIN

Butter
Flour
10 oz. semisweet chocolate, broken into small pieces
1/2 cup lightly salted butter, cut into 8 pieces (one stick)
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons Kahlua
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups whipping cream, well chilled
2 1/2 to 3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Place oven rack in lower one-third of oven; heat oven to 375 degrees. Butter and flour bottom and sides of an 8-inch spring form pan; reserve.

Melt chocolate with 1/2 cup butter. Keep chocolate warm over a pan of warm tap water.

Beat egg yolks in large mixer bowl at high speed, gradually adding 3/4 cup of the granulated sugar. Beat until yolk mixture is pale yellow and thick, 4 to 6 minutes. Add chocolate mixture to the yolk mixture; beat until completely smooth. Add Kahlua and vanilla; beat until blended.

Beat egg whites in medium mixer bowl at high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually beat remaining 1/4 cup granulated sugar into whites; continue beating until stiff but not dry peaks form. Fold whites gently but thoroughly into chocolate mixture. Pour batter evenly into reserved pan; smooth top.

Bake 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees; bake another 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 250 degrees; bake 30 minutes longer (total baking time is 1 hour). Turn off oven; prop open oven door and allow cake to remain in oven for 30 minutes. Remove cake from oven and cover top with damp paper towel. Let stand 5 minutes.

Remove toweling and cool cake completely. Dome of cake will crack and collapse; this is normal--press top of cake down lightly to smooth top. Remove springform and transfer cake to serving platter.

Whip cream in chilled mixer bowl on high speed until soft peaks form. Continue beating, gradually adding 1 1/2 tablespoons of the powdered sugar, until stiff peaks form. Dust top of cake with remaining powdered sugar just before serving. Serve cake at room temperature with whipped cream.

Back in the Natural State

After nearly 10 hours in the car yesterday, I finally made it home and back to my own bed. It was so great to spend time with my family, but I'm happy to be home. I managed to drive over 900 miles with a mere warning ticket for speeding, so I'm thankful for that, especially since I couldn't manage to find my proof of insurance.

We had turkey, dressing and all the trimmings on Thursday in Temple. Unfortunately, Jen wasn't able to join us since she worked 7 a.m. 'til 7 a.m., but Lon and I did take her a take-out box and watched part of the Cowboys game with her and her cowboy-boot-wearing doctor friend. Oh, and I saw a 900-pound woman. Made me wish I'd eaten less pumpkin pie and whipped cream.

Brady spent Wednesday night in the hotel with Granny and me, with Peyton taking his turn on Thursday. I was shocked, but Peyt made it the entire night with no tears and no requests to go home.

I've spent most of the day in bed, sleeping in and then taking a nap. Dinner's in the crock pot, but with the house cleaned and the halls decked, all there really is to do is laundry. And rest.

Peace and quiet? Not quite.

I'll admit it... I can be a bit neurotic. I cherish my privacy. I adore my peace and quiet. Don't get me wrong... I love being around people. I can be the belle of the ball (hence my "woo" gift), but when it's time to go to sleep, I need stillness, coolness, and zero noise.

A mere 60 minutes or so into our Avery sleepover last night, he awoke screaming. I don't mean mere crying. I mean tantrum-level, please-don't -call-the-cops-I'm-not-beating-him, screaming. After trying to get him to calm down for a few moments, I gave up and hauled the drama queen off to his mom.

This morning, after six hours of sleep, I decided to indulge in solitude, taking a bath and reading a book while my grandmother slept in. Should've locked the door, because my GM barged right in and carried on a conversation. Mostly about what time I'm getting up (do I look like I'm still in bed?). All modesty aside, who thinks it's okay to enter into my sanctuary while I'm unclothed? Just because she changed my diapers doesn't mean I'm okay with that. I'm really, really not.

Luckily I found a way to go to Wal-Mart alone. Those 2 minutes in the car were sheer bliss. Yeah, it's gonna be a long three days.

Now I'm off to roll some dough and make my cousin Lon some chicken rigatoni so he'll stop whining about it.

Tuesday in Texas

After several hours in the car, we finally made it to Temple. The trip didn't seem quite as long as last time. I'm not sure if I had clearer expectations, or if listening to my grandmother tell the same stories over and over again made it seem shorter, but I'm guessing the detour to Cheesecake Factory helped a lot.

All three boys wanted to come back to the hotel and spend the night for some reason, and since I'm not insane, I told them that they could take turns and one of them come over each of the three nights that we're here. Peyton disqualified himself from the who-can-act-the-best competition early, so Peep finally flipped a coin and Avery won the right to spend the night in a mediocre Hampton Inn with an 84-year-old and a spinster. Brady and Peyt were both crying when we left. It's been awhile since boys fought over me.

My GM has been riveted to the TV for hours, awaiting the results of Dancing with the Stars. Interestingly enough, I doubt she watched five minutes of presidential election coverage, but these results were quite important to her. Guess the oval office is not quite the prize that a mirrored disco ball is.

Jen took Memaw to the ER about an hour ago to have her weird puss-filled eye checked. Pink eye. Guess I need to wash my hands...

Oh, Christmas tree

The halls are all decked. The house is all clean. Even my garage is clean, as are all of my closets. It's been a productive if not restful first day of vacation.

I did a new color scheme on the tree this year, red and gold. It's been gold and silver for three or four years and I was ready for a change. Please ignore that I need window treatments. I mounted my iPod kitchen station this morning, so I suppose I'm officially staying. It's been in the box for 10 months.

In 15 hours, I'll be headed south to Texas.

Deck the halls

Another weekend has come and gone. But thankfully, I'm on vacation for a whole week, so tomorrow can be a sleep-in day. I probably won't be able to, but it's good to know I have the option.

Last night I worked at a charity event and got home at 1:30 a.m. which is, needless to say, a long time past my bedtime. It was a fun evening, but kind of challenging to work at the blackjack table for two hours. My muscles hurt from standing up so long and my head hurts from counting chips. Luckily it was for a great cause and no one noticed that I don't count too well under pressure. Vegas is safe from me for awhile.

I spent today finishing the holiday decorations that I started yesterday. Now I need to spend tomorrow cleaning my casa and packing for my trip. My week will be filled with three T's: turkey, Thanksgiving, and Temple, Texas. Tuesday morning I'll head south to spend the holiday with Lonnie, Jen, Huey, Dewie and Louie, and my aunt and uncle. My grandmother is riding down with me, so I'm praying for patience during that eight hour drive.

I'm still tired from last night, so I'm already in my PJs, catching up on my DVR.

Strike a pose

Last weekend, in between the sweet "I love yous" and the hugs and kisses, Hope asked me to take her picture. I said, "What makes you think I have a camera?" She replied, "You always have a camera."

She was right, of course.

Reason #417 why no man will marry me

Welcome to my closet. My master bedroom closet. As in, built for two. But it's full for one.

Tonight I participated in my bi-yearly ritual of switching winter clothes with summer clothes. Out with the white pants, in with the sweaters. And even with shucking the seersucker jacket, tank tops and swimsuit coverups, my closet is still stuffed. I really do need professional help.

Oh, and the big news is that, as of this morning, this crammed packed closet is officially mine. So I suppose I can fill it as full as I want to. Or paint it pink and adorn it with rhinestones. After all, by signing my name beside all of those zeros, I'm entitled to fix it up as I wish while I make payments on it for the next 360 months.

So I suppose it's for the best that I don't have to share my closet. Yeah, sometimes the nights are lonely, but I do have a lot of space for my handbags.

And the boy? He needs professional help, too. But for totally different reasons.

Countdown to Monday

Another weekend has come and gone. Thankfully I have a mere 40 hours to work before nine blessed days of vacation. Hopefully Jen can perform an extraction of my Blackberry when I'm in Texas so I won't check my e-mail incessantly. I have a serious problem with that thing.

The other good news? No traveling this week, unless you count Rogers. But I don't, because I spend more time there than I do in Siloam most weeks.

On Friday I met with a loan officer and then made an offer on my house. The bank has until 5 p.m. tomorrow to respond (it's in foreclosure, and I offered $27K less than it was listed for a year ago), so my fingers are crossed. My mortgage would be about the same as my rent has been, and I won't have to move. I'm sure the roof will blow off or a toilet will explore mere moments after signing on the dotted line, but oh the joy of taking the interest off my taxes and not watching my hard-earned money (okay, my money) being flushed down the toilet every month in rent for five more years.

After a marathon work lunch, I headed south to meet Paige and we went to the Miss UCA pageant to cheer on our friend Erin. She was the interview winner and third runner-up.

Taylor had a game in Fort Smith Saturday morning, so Eck and I went to watch. They have a great team, and it was fun to see Hope and Chance, too. Hope was in an especially good mood and was generous with the hugs and kisses and declarations of love. Not quite sure what that was about.

Five days. 40 hours. Then sweet freedom.

Bring on Turkey Day!

Dating and diet coke

Hmmm... turns out the anticipation of said encounter with ex is actually worse than encounter with ex. Especially when you manage to avoid each other. But it's been ten years... I really should let it go.

Especially when a really cute boy buys me a diet coke (he knows me so well) and tells me he's breaking up with his girlfriend. Things are looking up, friends.

My name is Lori, and I'm a shopaholic

Just returned from shopping for the perfect outfit for tomorrow. What says "I am over you" to one boy and "Don't you want me to be your wife" to another? Sweater? Pretty scarf?

I'm not quite sure when shopping became my addiction. Granted, there are worse things, but why is it that a new handbag calms my nerves? (Yes, I bought another one today... shame on me!) It gives me a rush. It also calms me. And luckily there was enough money in my checking account to fund my retail fix. One more credit card payment and I'm officially out of debt, save the car payment, student loan, big screen TV, and soon-to-be mortgage.

Perhaps that's why I love Christmas so much. It's a great excuse to shop.

Letting go, moving on

I hate feeling out of control. Unfortunately, today was one of those days when I had to rely on others to get things done. And I had to resort to my womanly wiles to get my way. And by that I mean baking cookies. So it's no bakes and chocolate chips for the nice web guy who got my pages updated way ahead of schedule. HTML=cookies.

The other thing that's out of my control? Running into exes. Especially exes who were jerks. Yeah, it's been 10 years and I'm still bitter, bitter, BITTER. But I've managed to avoid him for a decade and we live hours apart, so what are the chances of running into him anytime soon?

Turns out pretty good. As in he's on the agenda for a meeting I have to attend on Thursday. Blast.

If only I weighed 50 pounds less. Had a successful husband. Weren't still holding on to being angry. Perhaps he'd find me well adjusted, hotness personified, and letting go of it all.

I know that God's trying to teach me forgiveness here. Yeah, he doesn't deserve it. But sometimes we have to forgive for ourselves, right?

Being the bigger person is so overrated.

The only redeeming feature of this twisted little rendezvous is that I'm the only one of us who knows it's coming. He'll be surprised to see me. He tried to apologize eight years ago, but perhaps this time I'll listen.

Stay tuned.

Plus or minus

To continue with my previous diatribe about the good and bad associated with my job, I realized tonight that, even though I truly love what I'm doing and feel like I'm helping people, if the portions of my days were assigned a numerical score (add numbers for good stuff and subtract for not-so-good stuff), my end-of-the-day score would often be in the negative.

For example, I got to work this morning early and did my weekly report. +5 for being productive! I sent out admissions letters from last week. +5 for productivity but -5 for procrastination, so it's a wash. This afternoon I rode to a meeting in Branson to speak to some prospective students. 5 hours in a car with three virtual strangers in the rain has got to be at least -20. Macaroni Grill for dinner is a +10 or so, but a 13-hour workday is a minimum of -10, so all together, I'm at least 15 points behind for the day. Hmmm... all of my New England positive points are being negated by the overly-scheduled, impossibly unproductive days that have followed.

Rainy days and Mondays indeed.

New background

Okay, I'm trying out a new background on the ol' blog. I was tired of the blue, weren't you? And the turkeys are kinda cute...

The flyin', the witch and the whatever

Belated Halloween greetings from my awesomely cute niece and nephew, Chance and Hope. Oh, and my brother's not too ugly, either.

(Thanks to Dad for sending the pics!) Can you believe how much they've grown?

The facts of life

My world, it seems, is all about tradeoffs. Tit for tat. Ying and yang. Balance.

Oh, not balance between work and a personal life, mind you, but rather a balance between fun work stuff and not-so-fun work stuff. And you know what Mrs. Garrett used to say, "You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the facts of life."

Blair and Tootie aside, the facts of my life include the following list: (1) for every night I spend in a beautiful city like Boston on the company dime, I spend five nights in exotic locales like Pocahontas and Harrison; (2) when I spend six hours listening to a book on tape and it ends badly, it makes me really, really mad; and (3) I am destined to die an old maid because I only want to date boys I can't have. 654 miles and two tanks of gas later, I have a bit of clarity.

Yesterday I was a guest on a very large panel for a seminary/grad school Q&A with some college seniors, and one of the panelists made the statement to the students, "Enjoy the last few months of this year, because I can promise you, you'll never in your life have more free time." The students laughed, wondering how the old people who are no loner writing papers and studying for tests could possibly be more busy than they are, but you know, that statement is so true.

Where does all of my time go? It seems like Monday to Friday is so much shorter than it used to be. Granted, the time change has given me five extra hours this week since I can't seem to stop waking up at 5:30 a.m., but I don't feel like I accomplished more. Every day my to-do list gets longer, my patience shorter, and I have one less day to live on this Earth. My life gets consumed by meetings and lists and all the many things that seem so very important at the time that, a mere week later, I struggle to remember what the note on my calendar means as I do my weekly productivity report.

I talked to my niece, Hope, on the phone this morning and realized that next month she'll be five. FIVE. What in the world happened to the last 60 months of my life? I have more handbags and more gray hair, but other than that, what do I have to show for the past five years?

I really need to get a life. Perhaps I should write that on next week's to-do list.

Great expedition

I'm in Pocahontas. It smells like chicken here. I was in the car for five-and-a-half hours AFTER my 10-hour day at work.

Too pooped to post... sorry.

The long way home

Jen's probably the only one who cares, but I'll try to update my blog for the rest of the masses who might care about what's going on in my life.

I've been in Central Arkansas since Friday, and I got the brilliant idea to go home north by northwest this morning rather than my normal west then north route, which showcased the beautiful fall foliage but made my trip 4.5 hours from Little Rock to Siloam. It was a gorgeous drive, but by the time I got back to my beloved NWA, I napped through the entire Cowboys game. Turns out that wasn't such a tragedy.

To catch you up, I was a moron who gave myself a mere 24 hours to recover from anesthesia and being sliced open with a large knife, so I presided over a day-long meeting on Wednesday and marched into the very large home office of the world's largest retailer on Thursday to pretend that I'm a big girl with marketing prowess. Luckily both meetings went well and were very productive, but I was in pain for the whole two days that I pretended to be invincible. Sometimes the Superwoman cape feels a bit snug.

On Friday I stopped in Russellville to say hello to Alisa and Shauna before meeting my friend Erin for coffee in Conway to discuss politics, violence on college campuses and the need for responsible choices. Oh, and world peace. When you're getting ready for a pageant interview you have to work that in, right? Joe and I had dinner at Kobe on Friday evening (he brought me some gorgeous pink roses because he's amazing).

Yesterday I spent six hours talking to people from all over the state who want to be teachers. Okay, I talked to two. So it was a very long day, saved by the fact that two pals from the Center of Learning were there to catch me up on my former coworkers and eat lunch with me so I didn't look like such a loser. Then, last night, I went to dinner with my good friends Dave and Brent at one of my all-time favorite restaurants, Sonny Williams.

Now I'm home, punch drunk from the long nap and needing to do laundry. But at least inquiring minds no longer need to wonder what's new with me. Not much.