Marsbarn Designs...

A wee spree of health, would set us up nicely

Both children are home from school due to colds,
and slept in until after noon.  I, however, spent the
morning at school volunteering.
Yes, this is the way these things work sometimes.

All of the time, I hear people talk about the rain
and the darkness, and how it drives them mad,
and they simply must run away for a week or
two each winter to a place bright, warm, and
sunny to preserve their sanity. 

I'm feeling this way, but about these viruses 
and their endless snot and the coughs and the
tiredness.  Holy Cannoli, this has been a
horrible cold season. I'd like a couple of 
weeks of good health, please, for the whole
family. 

I am blogging more, during this down time,
which something I'm always meaning to do.
The cats are benefiting from all this extra lap time,
and I am catching up on my magazine reading.
There is the time spent cuddling, which is
tempered by the snot, but as the parent
of a teen and a pre-teen I'll take what I can get.

So, just tell me what kind of a travel agent I need to
whip up to send all the germs packing, and us back
to our usual stomping grounds of good health.

wintersweet

The wintersweet is blooming again.

It's a lovely year for the blossoms; it's the most number
of blossoms I've ever had.  And they smell so sweet.

They are such sweet little blossoms. Small waxy,
asymmetrical, on branches that are totally bare.
Little miracles, and something I look forward to
every winter. 

The power of reason and why my raincoat smells like coffee

This morning was one of those mornings 
where you decide that you desperately need
a hot beverage on the way home from dropping 
the younger child off at school.  So, you stop
at the bakery for a cup of drip coffee to-go,
which you never do.  To make more sense of
this departure from the normal, you buy a
chocolate croissant, and to make it a more
nutritional stop, you get an Irish soda bread, too.
To make this a necessary visit, you add a frozen
pie crust to your purchase, with the reasoning
that now you've bought what you need to make
a quiche for dinner.  With coffee, croissant,
soda bread, and pie crust in hand, you continue
your journey home.

You take a sip of your coffee.  And another.
Good, hot, strong coffee.. which you realize is
now running down your raincoat.  The paper
cup is defective, and leaks whenever you drink
from it.  So, you take another sip, carefully
tilting the cup.  It still leaks. Coffee drips
from the hem of your raincoat.  You shrug,
and continue to sip, after all, the coat is
waterproof, and already has coffee down
the front, why waste all of that wonderfully
careful reasoning that lead you to the bakery? 

I wait poorly

I am currently being comforted by a purring cat.
I'd like to think that Mr Fuzzypants has been
drawn to my fidgeting, and wants to ease my
impatient mind, but I think his attention has
more to do with coaxing an extra bit of kibble
from me.

Sweet G and I have been ill all week.  Today,
I finally (after weeks of this cold) made a
doctor's appointment.  I carefully timed it
after my school commitments, and then all 
went wonky.  Sweet G's cold suddenly morphed
into something that needed a doctors visit, 
a visit which Big E could take her to, but
conflicted with mine.  Yes, Big E is perfectly
capable of caring for the girls, but Oh My
Goodness, I HATE this waiting to hear what
the doctor said.  Thus the fidgeting, and
the comfort of a purring cat. 

The girl is back with her Dad. 
We're relieved to find out she has a sinus
infection, and that the blood she coughed up
today came from her sinuses, not her lungs. 
Oh happy days! 

The good, the great, and the viruses that don't play nice

I compose blog posts in the shower, 
but they seem to vanish like the steam.
So here I am, trying to get one on the books,
before it evaporates as well. 

January was a wonderful, tough, busy,
long, short, glorious, tedious, confusing
sort of month. February seems to be different,
and yet, the same.

I have had a head cold for all but about
two weeks since the start of the year.
Honestly, it's been two distinct, different,
but equally irritating colds.  The scientist in me
wants to know how so much snot can fit inside
my skull, what with the brains and all.
It hasn't all been snot, there was also that cough
that lasted for 3 weeks, and ended with me pulling
a muscle in my ribs.  Blech. Pain, illness, blech.
And, I haven't been the only one, everyone in
the house has had these colds, but I their versions
did not drag on quite as long.

Still, it has been a remarkably good year, so far.
A dear, dear, nearly lifelong friend came to
celebrate my new decade (and hers) in January.
The shop has been going gangbusters, despite
delays caused by my health (or lack there of).
The quilt project is making me so happy.   
There is so much to grateful for and excited about;
I just can't wait until the viruses are all gone,
so I can plunge in at 100%. 

a whirlwind of flavors and friends

There's been a fair amount of celebrating here in the 
last few weeks.  

That's a Chicken Tagine with prunes under the parsley
in the red bowl.  And below is a lamb fefta with duck
eggs and olives.  

 

Beyond the food, there have been friends, glorious
friends, and family.  The only thing lacking has been
a way to slow down our time together.   

I don't get to have an many of these dinners as I'd like.
We used to have friends for dinner more often, now it
is just birthdays and holidays.  Perhaps this is something
I need to work back to.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to Sweetheart G.
Happy birthday to all our mid winter friends.

Pausing to draw breath

Why, look at that... it's February.
We have passed my birthday and Sweetheart G's.
January is gone completely, and we are more than
a week into the second month of the year.

The school wide quilt project is moving forward with
speed, and my pile of quilt squares is growing at a
reassuring rate. Big E's chess club is in its second term,
and I think we're off to a smoother start than last time.  
The girls are starting their third term of the year, which 
means the school year is more than half done.  

 That I am also working my way through my third cold
of the winter, is probably not a surprise.  It's a happy
busy here.  I keep meaning to capture more of it, and
place it on the blog, but  my connection between
doing and sharing remains broken down.  That flag of 
"You should blog this" still comes up, but the resolve
to sit long enough to type it up is missing.   

When your Whovian daughter has a birthday

My older daughter is a Whovian.
A big time Whovian. 
So of course, for her gaming birthday party,
she needed Doctor Who themed cakes.

The 2013 versions of the TARDIS cake is a one story 
affair. It's a single serving of either scratch made
vanilla buttermilk cake or gluten free chocolate cake
with a buttercream frosting.  They measure 4 1/2" long
by 2" wide. 

These were a somewhat simpler affair than last year's
cake, with the exception of the yellow sugar I used for
the light and widows.  In a fit of passion, I used tweasers
to place each sugar crystal.  (The Doctor inspires a
certain amount of maddness.)

Last year's cakes were three dimensional, and honestly,
bigger on the inside.


These were small (say 5" by 5" bases) triple layer cakes
with alternating chocolate and vanilla layers. I made
and decorated cut-out cookies that were decorated
to be the sides of the TARDIS.  Then the cookies
where attached to the cakes via frosting.  I think I
made 5 or 6 of these cakes.  Each cake served 4 people,
and we cut them diagonally into triangles, so each
serving had a whole cookie TARDIS panel.  The kids
at the party started to complain that they didn't
each get a TARDIS to eat, but once they started
eating their quarter, no one could finish their
piece.  They all went home with left-over bites.
Thus, they were bigger on the inside.

Another year, I'd like to attempt a Dalek.  
Dalek's are cool!