Good morning, snowflakes! How is everyone? If anyone is looking for a bland and unsatisfying snack, might I recommend a semi-stale, untoasted, whole grain english muffin spread with some almond butter? It’ll quench your hunger, yes, but also leave you feeling deeply depressed and remorseful that you just wasted your time and snacking energy on such a boring, dumb morsel. GRR!
I’ll be starting my spin-off food blog annnny day now.
Anyway, what is up?! I know I’m stating the obvious here but it is flipping FREEZING. I’ve been wearing tights under my pants all week and I’m not going to lie to you guys…I LOVE it. It’s so cozy and everything feels all snug and secure. I’m might just do this forever. I want invisible full body spanx that just keeps everything feeling all nice and tight.
I realize this effect can be achieved naturally via something called “exercise” but wouldn’t it be so much better if you could just BUY it?!
If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be in my science lab, working on this invention.
JK, if anyone’s looking for me I’ll be right here, like always, talkin’ about myself.
So without further ado, why don’t we take a look at what was keeping it awkward this [polar vortexy] week.
These Jammies:
A college roommate of mine (Hi Alli!) turned us all on to this crazy superstition of wearing your jams inside-out the night before a snowstorm to bring on a snow day the next day. It snowed this week so I gave it a try … and it totally failed. Whomp. Not like I would ever get a snow day, publishing stops for no man or winter storm!, but Brian was really jonesing for school closure and I’m the nicest fiance ever so I bossily made him put on his pajamas the wrong way but alas: we were foiled.
Bill DiBlasio! I would take back my vote…if only I’d actually voted instead of being such a worthless citizen!
PS. the mismatched socks have no superstitious value, that’s just how I roll.
This Nail Polish:
So this was part of a themed gift from my brother and I love my brother and the gift and the polish IN the bottle, but once it was on my nails it was just TOO much. Too bright or purple or both. No bueno. I hated it so much I couldn’t concentrate. Seriously. I would just sit here all day distracted by the site of my garish fingers moving on the keyboard.
There is this wacky lady at our office who rumor has it took too much LSD at Studio 54 back in the day and now just toddles around the office wearing fur vests and cut-off jort overalls with stockings underneath and hats indoors (a peeve of mine, if anyone’s curious) (as always, no one was) singing in French and disturbing everyone she passes.
She’s a real treat.
Anyway, I found myself standing in the kitchen at the same time she was there (every morning at 11 AM she peels and eats an orange standing over the shared trash can and I KNOW I should avoid the area at that time, but I wanted tea!) and just in case I wasn’t already self conscious enough about my gaudy nails, Crazy Town McGee stops mid peel and squawks: “WOOOOW now THAT is some great nail polish!”
As you can guess, a compliment from this gal = you’re doing something very, very wrong.
I ran away from her, quickly, thinking I must immediately remove my nail polish, but first, I must take some photos for blogging purposes. You always see those photos on pinterest or wherever of a person’s nails with them holding something…I tried to recreate with my own hand and it was straight up impossible. I had to bend my arm in at this totally unnatural and claw-like angle to get my nails in the camera.
WHAT IS THE TRICK? How do they do it? Am I missing something? This seems like a skill that is ESSENTIAL to master if I want to be a successful human.
Here are the photos I managed to snap:
L-R: homage to Twilight, amazing crass mug from my assistant, some vitamins because I saw how rapidly this was spinning out of control, so why not make it extra weird, aaannnnd displaying my engagement ring with my hand pressed firmly against the wall.
I can have this made into a collage & framed if anyone’s interested?
Also YES I did this during work hours yesterday…how am I still employed?
These Meatballs:
Lately our grocery store has been having amazing sales on 3-lb packages of ground turkey so I’ve been stocking up and freezing it to have around.
Fuuuuck me I sound like such a grown-up. “Gotta run down to the deli, Bonnie, they’re having some serious sales in the deli section!”
Oy.
The first time this happened, I did the extra super grownup Real Simple Magazine move of separating the meat into appropriate sized portions and freezing so we didn’t have to deal with thawing and eating 3Lbs of turkey meat in one sitting but for whatever reason, this time I just shoved it right in the freezer whole hog.
Er, whole bird?
It turns out that a solid three pound hunk of turkey meat is NOT that easy to cut into. Just FYI. Brian is an Eagle Scout (!) and if you’ll allow me to get a little schmaltzy for just un segundo, one thing I just love about this guy is that he has a super cute butt. And another thing I love about him is that he always likes to try to tinker around and MacGuyver things until he can fix them. It doesn’t always work, but he always tries and it’s always so adorable and I just want to squeeze him and smooch his face.
Gross, sorry.
Anyway, his solution to the ground turkey sitch? The ol’ chisel trick:
Like Michelangelo turned a slab of stone into David, that sexy hunk of marble man meat, Brian turned our turkey log into two sexy hunks of meat meat, which we then grilled and ate, burger style.
Delicious!
We still had a full 2 lbs left in the freezer, so I decided to thaw it out and make a big batch of meatballs, about 14 of which we ate with spaghetti in one sitting (it was snowing! don’t judge) and the rest of which I planned to freeze for later consumption.
Like a grown-up!
I put the hot meatballs in a container on the counter and left them there to cool before putting in the freezer because one time, on Thanksgiving, I got into a big snit with my mom because she told me you should let your food cool before putting the leftovers away and I was all “Mooommm! Don’t tell me what to do!” (teenagers, am I right!) (JK, I was 28) and everyone knows you should always listen to your mother.
Except then I totally forgot about them and left them out all night long.
Pwomp.
The ever helpful Yahoo! Answers assured me that eating poultry left out overnight would surely kill me and so, into el garbagio they went.
SO MUCH EFFORT went into using up this godforsaken lump of turkey meat only to throw half of it in the trash. That’s the last time I ever try to responsibly bargain shop at the grocery store. Or just grocery shop at all.
From here on out we’re just going to Taco Bell every night.
(I’ll def need those invisible spanx then!)
This Appetizer:
Chips & Guac! There is this restaurant in my neighborhood that has amazing guacamole which they serve with either fried tortillas or soft tortillas. I went the other night & I guess I forgot the word “fried” and also the word “tortilla” because when I tried to order, it went a little something like this:
Waiter: “Hello, may I take your order?”
Liz: “Yes please. We would like some guacamole and the hard ones. Those hard things. Not the soft ones, the ones that are hard?”
Waiter: “Chips. You mean you would like chips?”
Liz: [red face shame] “Yes please.”
CHIPS guys! A new invention I apparently just learned about. They’re GREAT with guacamole!
This Coffee:
Purchased to keep me warm and energized during a 45-minute wait at the Post Office yesterday afternoon. Except I realized I forgot to put milk in the cup and I haaaate black coffee. I considered going back to Starbucks and just sort of serruptitiously putting in some milk but I had already gotten to the Post Office and there were literally 4576 people ahead of me in line and it was so cold out, so I just stood there and held this stupid, piping hot cup of coffee until it started to burn my hand, at which point I put on one of my mittens (indoors!) but then I felt weird and also I managed to get coffee allll over my white mitten so I took it back off and the coffee had cooled enough to hold and then just 27 minutes later, after the woman in front of me finished arguing with the teller about the availability of rare tiger face stamps, I finally made it to the front of the line, bought my stamps, came back to work and poured some milk into my now lukewarm, half-spilled cup of coffee.
Best $2.77 I ever spent.
Speaking of money, stamps are increasing by 3 cents starting this Monday, so if you have, say, a pile of save the dates laying on your bedroom floor begging to be sent out, go stock up on those stamps immediately!! I got stamps for STD’s (nope, can’t abbreviate that) and response cards (even though I just want to use internet RSVP’s but my mom thinks it’s tacky…more on that at a later date) and saved a whopping $7.50 by getting them this week before the prices went up.
How many doves do you think I can buy with 7 dollars and 50 cents? Like a hundred? Two hundred?
This Music Video:
Actually this is only awkward if you’re the kind of person who hates joy and pleasure because this movie is the jimmity JAM, y’all. I’m actually not that big into Disney films. In truth, I kind of find adults who are still super into Disney to be a little stunted and off-putting and as a feminist, I have a lot of problems with the whole Princess genre but as a human being with two ears, two eyes and one sentimental heart: I effing love them.
So the only awkward thing about this video is if A: you’re an adult who is super into Disney in which case I just offended your kind, SORRY! and B: the amount of times I have watched it this week which would be approx 673. And counting.
I urge you all to RACE out to the theaters this moment and watch this film. You won’t regret it! Unless you hate musicals or sisters or animation or FUN in which case you definitely will but you sound lame, so forget you.
And that’s that! What did we learn this week? Frozen is amazing, tiger stamps are hard to come by, fried tortillas are called “chips,” inside out jammbos do NOT guarantee snow days, purple nail polish is horrible and NEVER EVER listen to your mom when it comes to leftovers.
Good stuff!
Stay warm this weekend, kids.
xoxo Liz Ho
One Awkward Year 
