Happy Mother's Day!

I'd like to wish all mothers a Happy Mother's Day, but especially these mothers!

This is Justin's mother, Janice. She is a very sweet lady who loves her family. Janice is a good mother who loves her sons and especially loves her granddaughter. This picture was taken in 2003.

This is Justin's grandmother, Francine (Nanny). Like all grandmothers, she loves her children, but has a special love for her grandchildren. She also has two great-granddaughters that she adores. This picture was also taken in 2003.

This is Mama and her mother (Nana). Both of these ladies are fantastic mothers. Nana earned her angel wings on Mother's Day in 2001 after a valiant battle with cancer. She was such a sweet lady who is missed. She would do anything in the world for anyone who needed help. I'm not sure how old this picture is, but I'm guessing it was taken in the 80s.

This is my sister, Carrie, and our other grandmother (Mammie). This picture was taken in 2003. Carrie is a mother to a teenager. Mama and I think my niece is going to be a handful, just like her mother! Payback! Carrie is a good mother who loves her daughter. Mammie was a good grandmother who spoiled her grandchildren. Mammie always had good prizes for when the grandchildren played Bingo. She was also an amazing cook. Mammie earned her angel wings in 2008.

This is Mama. She takes after her mother in that she has an opinion about EVERYTHING, especially hair! Nana walked around and pushed hair off of anyone's face, even if it was supposed to be that way. It has become amusing to me as I've gotten older. Mama tries so hard to keep her opinions to herself, but I think it's impossible for her. She's a typical grandmother - she loves Carrie and me, but we think she loves her granddaughter more! I love you, Mama!

Happy Mother's Day!

The love of my life

In the past year, I have fallen in love. It was unexpected and sudden. Who is this new love in my life? I'd like to introduce you to Egg McMuffin (without Canadian bacon). You may have met before, but I'm now in love with him, so he's all mine.

I don't know what it is about an Egg McMuffin, but I could eat three or four. I don't, but I could. The one in the picture seems to have some over-cooked edges, which is not good. It also seems to have ketchup on it, which I've never tried, but makes me gag slightly at the thought. It comes with Canadian bacon, but I always order my McMuffin without meat since I don't eat pork.

About a year ago, I decided to switch from the occassional egg and cheese biscuit to an Egg McMuffin to save some calories. A regular Egg McMuffin (English muffin, slice of cheese, one egg, and Canadian bacon) has 300 calories. A bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit has 420 calories. According to McDonald's website, a slice of Canadian bacon has only 10 calories, which is shocking to me, so my Egg McMuffin has 290 calories, which isn't bad for breakfast.

I really wish McDonald's would serve Egg McMuffins all day long because I would be their best customer. Until then, I'll just have to have my love affair in the mornings.

Knock, Knock.

I'm expecting the following conversation to take place soon:

wild animal: (knock, knock, knock)
us: Yes?
wa: I've dug through your trash every night this week. Where's my dinner?
us: Ummm...we haven't been back to the Canton House?
wa: Well, I'm going to leave my grimy little paw prints on your filthy boxes each night until you feed me. (stomps away)

The Grill

Justin and I bought a grill a few weeks ago. It's been in our sunroom waiting to be assembled. Last weekend, we were on a roll and got it put together. Only one person received an electric shock.

10:30 p.m.:

After we had most of the grill assembled, I inserted the battery in the electronic ignition button. We played with this and watched the four main burner igniters spark. For some reason, the fifth burner, which is the side burner we assembled, wouldn't ignite. While Justin was making some adjustments, I decided it would be a good idea for me to press the igniter button. Don't ask me why. I don't know. He received a bad electric shock and jumped back several feet and looked at me like I had just chopped off his arm. He looked horrified and said "What are you doing?!". Justin said his arm tingled for a little while, but he was fully recovered by the time he went to bed. I also didn't mean to hurt him by turning on the mixer while his fingers were inside the beaters years ago. Once again, don't ask me what I thought would happen because I don't know. No permanent damage was done.

1:30 a.m.:

Canton House

We crashed a wedding reception Saturday evening.

Saturday, Justin suggested that we eat supper at Canton House. Canton House is a Chinese restaurant on Buford Highway that is in an area with a large Southeast Asian population. Most of the restaurants in this area are authentic. We've driven by Canton House many times, but had never eaten there. When we arrived Saturday, the parking lot was nearly full. Many of the vehicles were fairly nice (BMWs and Mercedes) so I commented that I hoped we could afford this place. As we walked up the steps, we noticed all the people there were dressed in very formal attire. I felt a little out of place in my jeans and sneakers. I was wearing make-up and had styled hair, so I wasn't totally hideous.

We walked in to find a bride and groom greeting all these fancy car driving, well-dressed people. Did that stop us? Noooo. We walked right in and asked if we could eat. The host said we could if we would do carry-out. We were happy that we were even being served so this didn't bother us at all. I got a quick peek of the dining room and it was stunning with all of the lovely flowers and fresh white linens. The bride and groom made me smile because they were so happy. I remember being like that on my wedding day.

We ordered and made a quick run to Home Depot while our food was being prepared. Justin quickly retrieved our food and we headed home to watch The Office on Netflix while we ate.

I ordered the kung pao shrimp and Justin ordered Singapore rice thread noodles. I must say, I was a little disappointed with mine. It tasted ok, but it smelled kind of weird. My shrimp tasted ok, but there were some things that I couldn't identify in the dish. I think some of it was cubed bamboo and waster chestnut, but I'm not sure. Whatever it was smelled a little funky. I ate until the smell got to me. I stopped eating the kung pao and just ate my steamed rice with some soy sauce. Justin even agreed that it smelled funny.

Justin LOVED his food. I tasted it and it was very delicious. It was much better than mine. His had some shrimp in it, too. Yummy!

I'd like to try it again, but I will definitely not order the same thing. One thing that amused us was when we ordered, the hostess made sure I understood that my dish was spicy and included peanuts. Kung pao shrimp is a fairly common dish in Chinese restaurants in the US. Most people have heard of kung pao (insert meat) and a lot have eaten it. She didn't bat an eye when Justin ordered Singapore rice thread noodles.

The rest of this post is devoted to the wild animal that went through our trash Saturday night.

After we finished eating the Canton House food, we took the trash outside so the whole house wouldn't smell. Sunday afternoon, we noticed the trash can lid was on the ground beside Justin's car. Upon further inspection, we realized the Canton House bag was ripped and the styrofoam tray that had Justin's left-overs was also ripped.

The paw prints left by the hungry wild animal.

These prints aren't as clear as the others. It looks like the animal jumped on this bucket, crawled/walked across the shelf to the box and then removed the trash can lid. I'm not surprised my food was left untouched by the critter. It smelled pretty bad.

We're thinking the animal might have been a raccoon or an opossum. We also could see the prints belonging to a huge squirrel. I think they're too large to be a squirrel, but the animals around our house seem to be mutants. We saw a squirrel and some birds basically attack a hawk in our yard one day. Hawks are birds of prey that usually eat squirrels and birds. It could have been a giraffe or dinosaur. Who knows.

Door Hardware

After we put together the laundry room shelf, we decided to install new hardware on a couple of doors in the house. Our house was burglarized in December of last year so we decided to replace the door knobs and locks on all exterior doors. A couple of months ago, we purchased the hardware, but never took the time to install it.

We have four exterior doors and replaced the hardware on two of them. The men who replaced the door in December put new hardware on it, so we've only got one door with old hardware.

This is the door in the kitchen/den that opens to the courtyard. The old hardware was gold in color and looked really cheap. It also felt pretty weak.

This is what the door looked like after the old hardware was removed. We would like to eventually replace this door, but doors aren't cheap and this one still functions.

When the side door was replaced in December, we realized the cylinder on the new door knob was upside down. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but the cylinder on the dead bolt was turned in the opposite direction - in other words, after unlocking the door knob, you would have the rotate the key 180 degrees to unlock the the dead bolt. This was not going to work for us. Justin contacted the hardware manufacturer and they sent the tool and instructions so he could rotate the door knob cylinder. He did this with no trouble. For some reason, all but one of the door knobs we purchased came with upside down cylinders. Justin put the tool to good use!

I'm not going to try to explain what is happening in these pictures because I really don't know. I know he removed the cylinder and rotated it.

Cylinder is out and rotated.

He is reassembling the knob.

The new hardware is installed! It is a very close match to what is on all interior doors in the house. That plate under the dead bolt is a reinforcer plate that should prevent the door from being kicked in like it was in December.

The front door also received new hardware. Before:

After:

One thing that is so appealing about this hardware is that it can be rekeyed in seconds with a little tool that came with the locks. Easy peasy!

There's a gorm in our laundry room!

We've got a corner in our laundry room that was serving no purpose other than accumulating junk and dust. Justin and I discussed shelving units that would fit in the corner. One issue we have is the adjacent corner houses the water heater so we still needed to be able to access it. There is also a floor vent and gas line that we had to consider. We measured the room and took those measurements with us on any shopping trips, hoping to find the perfect shelf. Most were either too shallow or too wide.

Enter Ikea. We visited Ikea a few weeks ago with Justin's parents and found gorm. Gorm came in many pieces and could be configured in several different ways. We took note of gorm's sizes and considered it . This weekend, we decided to bite the bullet and buy it. We purchased what we needed and headed home to put it together.

This is gorm just after we removed him/her from the car.

The corner. See the air vent? See the gas line that runs to the water heater?

Gorm being test fitted - right before we decided that we weren't putting it together correctly.

After we got it together, Justin made sure everything was super tight.

Yay! The finished product. We were afraid it was going to be too large, but it turned out to be just right. The extra storage space has already helped declutter the laundry room. It's definitely not fancy, but it's functional. Functionality is all we really cared about.