Definitely NOT over.

I opened up the food cupboard today to find this…

After I cleared out everything from the bottom two shelves I found this…

You’re getting a post about Cheesecake Enchiladas tomorrow since I’m making them tonight to celebrate my victory in the battle. Unfortunately, I don’t think this means I have won the war. They’re here somewhere still. I can smell them.

Yesterday I attempted to play hostess for the first time and it was kind of a bust. That Husband was wonderful and tidied up the house while I felt all frazzled and crazy in the kitchen.

First of all, I made the worst mashed potatoes ever. Who even knew it was possible to screw up mashed poatatoes? One time my best friend in high school was unable to make chili from a can, and I believe this situation isn’t much better. First, I think I thought I bought red potatoes, when I really bought some other kind. I’ve never seen red potatoes that were yellow inside have you? Then I saw mentioned online somewhere that someone cooked their potatoes inside of the slow cooker. Genius right? I could dump them in, take my nap, wake up and mash away. Maybe they were just underdone, but they were awful. Of course my guests were very nice about it, the poor things.

I also thought I could make this lasagna:

If you read the recipe, you will come to a part that describes making a milk sauce mixture. This is where I failed, and failed horribly. The mixture was so terrible I couldn’t even use it, I just threw it out. I’m not sure where I went wrong, but mine was lumpy and thick and pasty. I also made the mistake of throwing in some soy crumbles because That Husband insisted it would be rude of me to serve a meatless dinner. Well it was rude of him to trick me into ruining the dish that way. The butternut squash was amazing, definitely the best part of the dish. Without the milky mixture I had to make my own cheesy sauce mix to lay on top to keep it from being a dry crusty mess (which it kind of was anyway). Overall, it was not my best work.

The saving grace of dinner was the asparagus I recycled from my last post and the cheesecake enchiladas I invented. I don’t have picture of the enchiladas yet, so I guess I will have to make one for myself tomorrow night even though That Husband will be out of town on business. Darn.

Please go ahead and tell me your stories of failed hostessing experiences.

Remember the ants from this post? Well they are back in my life. Actually, they probably never left, I just preferred to pretend like they weren’t there. They weren’t bugging me, so why should I bug them? (That Husband does NOT subscribe to this philosophy, he hate ants.)

That all changed when I was sitting at the kitchen table yesterday, doing my blogging, and I was attacked not once, but twice! They crawled up on my feet and bit me in between my toes. I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the carpet to discover they were everywhere. I looked behind me and saw that they had taken over the kitchen. Apparently ignorance is not the best policy when it comes to dealing with ants.

I swear these two were talking about me and laughing.

Now we are the ones laughing, after leaving then a little treat in the form of what TH calls “Ant Bacon Bits”

We will continue to spray the crud out of them with that magical formula known as Home Defense MAXX (why the double xx’s?), but I’ve heard that we might have to really take things to another level and ask maintenance to come in and rip up the carpet and spray underneath. I’m lazy, so I don’t really want to go through that much work, but I am getting really tired of wearing my croc slippers around the house all day long. Will those of you in the north hate me if I tell you it is still 75 degrees here?

Anyone else fought the ant war? Whats the best method of attack?

I love to sleep under lots of blankets. If you come over to our house you might hear That Husband saying something about “the weight of a thousand blankets.” It’s this strange inside joke we have developed between the two of us after I told him about sleeping at my Grandma Moo’s house in the waterbed underneath a pile of handmade quilts. Something about the weight was so soothing, and ever since then I have loved to sleep with lots of blankets on.

Unfortunately I also get really hot while sleeping, so I have to keep the temperature low to be able to keep covered by said blankets. We can’t have the window open because we live right next to the street with loud cars driving by all night, and we won’t use the air conditioning because we would rather spend it on things like a metal DDR pad worth several hundred dollars (yep, it’s being built for us right this very moment).

The ceiling fan would be a good option, if we could turn it up high enough for it to be effective. Unfortunately, when placed on the highest setting it shakes like a tahitian dancer. I have visions of us sleeping peacefully one night, only to be hacked to pieces by the spinning blades of death.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/2209337]

This video does not even do the shaking justice. Whenever one person turns the fan on while the other is lying in bed their previously restful state immediately becomes one of great agitation as they curl their legs up toward the window and yell out “Turn it down, it’s going to fall!” Yes, both the husband and the wife particpate in such displays of cowardice.

You would think that apartment complexes would have some kind of checklist called “Potential lawsuit waiting to happen” and they would go through each apartment to quickly assess the probability of being sued. Who turns this fan on, watches it turn so violently, looks at the checklist and thinks “Fan of death? Wonderful addition to our new apartments!”

I am tired of elections. My church has been attacked over and over, and I feel like I have to hide in a corner and not say what I really think because I feel like I am in the minority. Well I am not going to hide anymore.

I am not voting. Not because I don’t want to, but because I let the wedding take over my life and didn’t think about things like absentee ballots (or bills actually, I have two late fees on one of my credit cards from the wedding planning period). I don’t like McCain but I wouldn’t vote for Obama so I am not sure what I would have done. I feel irritated when I think about how I am missing the opportunity to make a difference, and I don’t plan on letting it happen again.

I’ll be watching the Proposition 8 developments very closely all day. I hope my cousins can forgive me for putting their written statement on my own blog, but it so clearly expresses my own views on the subject I couldn’t have written it any better.

For months we have been struggling with the social and legal complexities of this issue. Please don’t misunderstand, there was never any question in our minds about which way we would vote. But we struggled with how to talk about it with friends who don’t share our convictions. We’ve gone over the arguments for and against keeping the original meaning of the word marriage many times with family and friends. We have watched people polarize on this issue. Even people who we greatly respect vehemently oppose Proposition 8. We’ve seen our beliefs and religion criticized. We’ve worried deeply about what friends might be thinking about our stance or how they might respond to our vote.

There are many friends and colleagues?some whom we hold dear?who we know will completely disagree with our decision. We hope our relationship can remain unharmed despite our differences.

When it comes down to it, there is no reconciling our personal knowledge with the social arguments. So, we base our vote on the following statements of principle and belief, in [husbands] words, which are mine as well:

I know there is a God. It is a fact to me. I know that He is our father, and that He loves all of us. I know that He justly holds us accountable for our level of understanding of Him and his laws. I know that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children” (The Family: A Proclamation to the World). Therefore, I stand accountable to God to live by this principle; no matter how much the collective intellect of society, including my most trusted and respected friends, disagrees.

Now you know how I feel (again, big thanks to my cousins for writing things down so clearly). I believe that it is important to stand up for what you believe in. I can’t make this belief feel right to a lot of you, but it is what I believe. I believe in my marriage, and our ability as children of a loving Father in heaven to become something greater after this life.

I hope that by reading this blog over time you will see that my church, and its members, are not evil. We are good people, striving to make a positive difference. I hope that we can all have open minds and understanding hearts once this is all over. I hope that we can all remain friends.

Feel free to leave your true thoughts in the comments. I will only be moderating if hateful sentiments and anti-mormon links are included.

Tomorrow, thank goodness, it’s back to bills, cooking, laundry, and those burdensome thank-you notes.