Welcome back, my favorite frozen friend!

As soon as I moved to Charlotte, I noticed a couple of things missing from life-as-I-knew-it. Tumbleweed, for one. And dry heat. And 7-Eleven. I've spent the last four years Slurpee-less and sad about it. There's some sort of icee thing sold at other gas stations, but it's not the same and I don't know why.

So I let out a yelp on Friday when I read in the local paper that "The Sev" is coming to Charlotte.

I can only hope it'll be here by summer.

Here's a photo from my trip to Thailand in 2004 when, on a particularly hot and frustrating day, a 7-Eleven on a tiny tropical island made everything right again.

Kale

I read a book recently about all the protein and other good stuff you can get from eating leafy greens. I'm a fan of spinach and lettuce, but have never known what to do with other more exotic leaves like kale and collard and mustard greens. But I'll say one thing - they're a lot cheaper than lettuce. So I got a giant bunch of kale and experimented tonight.

The less-than-appetizing picture above is "kale chips" that I tossed in olive oil and spices and baked slowly as Martha Stewart instructed. They're interesting. I'd rather eat a potato chip, but I'm sure I can find something to use these kale crisps on. Maybe as the crouton for a salad?

I also sauteed some kale Bobby Flay-style with garlic and a touch of vinegar and that turned out great. Had it for dinner. And washed it down with some candy.

It's a good thing I'm only cooking for one, because I don't know many people who'd be up for my culinary experiments!

Cinnamon surprise

My love of cinnamon bears is well known. They're nearly impossible to find in the South (though I've recently received a couple of leads that might bear sweet-cinnamon-gooey fruit, but they require some travel and I've not had the chance yet).

I usually stash them in my luggage when I travel back from Utah - the land of plentiful cinnamon bears in the regular and chocolate-covered variety. I am an equal opportunity cinnamon bear connoisseur.

But what a lovely surprise that a dear friend from church thought of me while visiting her family in Utah over the holidays and carried a bag of CBs all the way back to Charlotte for me. I got them at church today and had to summon all of my will power to avoid eating the entire bag on my drive home.

On a somewhat-related note, I notice that the BYU bookstore just laid off a quarter of their full-time employees, presumably because college kids just don't need to buy books so much these days with their ever-connected laptops and iPads. But the BYU bookstore candy counter also happens to be an excellent source of cinnamon bears.

Might I suggest that an increase in cinnamon bear consumption would ease the bookstore's financial straits? And I'm sure there's a dentist or two who could benefit from the same behavior.

Let's make 2012 the cinnamon-est ever!

I'm an heiress, who are you?

My fellow Downton Abbey devotees . . . take this quiz to find out which character you're most like. I'm Matthew Crawley, heir to Downton Abbey.

I Heart Candy

The best part about Valentine's Day is the seasonal candy. Why on earth don't they sell cherry ju-ju hearts year-round? I have to stockpile them for that inevitable hankering that comes along in July. And the closest thing I've found to cinnamon bears in the South (they don't exist here, it's a travesty!) is the cinnamon hearts sold at Valentine's. They're more like cinnamon gum drops than cinnamon bears, but they do the trick in a pinch. I never realized how seasonal - and regional - candy could be. . . and how that could really mess with my sugar addictions.

Racquet-ow!

I have a heating pad on my shoulder and my calves are on fire (no heating pad necessary for them).

Yesterday I played racquetball for the first time since, oh, I don't know . . . maybe it was that Racquetball, Bowling and Tennis class I took senior year of high school?

Despite the 20-year gap in play, I wasn't half bad yesterday, much to my pleasant surprise . . . and rather unfortunately for my friend who worked up a sweat chasing my wild swings.

The thing I love about racquetball is that - unlike tennis - you can be pretty terrible, but get lucky and keep a volley going. You never have to chase the ball down in the neighboring court or over the fence. The key to racquetball is knowing how to duck quickly!

Born to be wild

During my class at the gym this morning I was really hurting when we "Born to Be Wild" came on. The pain evaporated and I was smiling like an idiot through the entire track because the following image was running through my mind.

My hilarious 4-year-old nephew got a cardboard guitar that plays "Born to Be Wild" for Christmas and he's already got the moves down. Notice the knee slide and head banging and occasional lyrics he tosses out. At one point someone asks him why he has his eyes closed.

"That's what rock-and-rollers do!" he says, and keeps right on with the song.

My sister swears she doesn't leave the kid sitting in front of MTV for hours at a time, but I don't know where else he'd have learned these moves.

Maybe he really was just born to be wild.

Tied through time

People don't wear pocketwatches anymore. It's a shame. I looked high and low to find a chain that was the right length and weight for this beautiful watch with special history. The front and back are engraved with delicate flowers and the initials J.E.W.

Julia Etta (Saal) Wallace was my great, great, great grandmother - born in August 1857. Our names are similar, so are our birth months. And we sorta look alike:


Okay, maybe not. But the watch is lovely. The inscription inside says "JEW to MEW."

At some point, Julia Etta Wallace gave the watch to her daughter Mary Elizabeth Wallace (born 1884). That's my grandpa's maternal grandmother.

My mother had the watch but didn't wear it, so I asked if I could. The hands are slender, the tick-tick-tick hypnotic and the connection to women who came long before me is priceless.

Do my nephews have great taste, or what?

My sister says these awesome knee socks were my 9-year-old nephew's pick. Colby knows a good pair of toe-warmers when he sees one! I'm always in need of long socks to wear to bed in the winter - and around the house and under boots. I also got some psychedlic ones with flourescent skulls. They put a spring in my step.

Water torture

I was minding my own business Sunday afternoon, watching a funny new British TV show I discovered on Hulu when I heard the sound of water dripping aggressively onto metal. The good thing about living in a shoebox is it doesn’t take long to notice strange noises and locate them. Water was pouring out of the light fixture in my tiny washer/dryer closet. I grabbed a plastic bowl to catch the flow and ran upstairs to warn the guy who’s been remodeling my neighbor’s bathroom. (You’ve heard me talk about the elephant who lives upstairs. Well this past year she’s been living somewhere else so I’ve had a blissful reprieve from upstairs noises, until now.)

The contractor quickly shut the upstairs apartment’s water off and that solved the problem. He and his two sketchy plumber friends spent the next hour traipsing back and forth between my condo and the one upstairs, scratching their heads (and bellies) in consternation.

“We ain’t done nothing to cause this. All we done was change out one little drain and move the pipes over a bit.”

“I got no earthly idea-r why the water’d be coming down clear over here across the hall from the bathroom.”

They cut a hole in my bathroom ceiling. They found nothing.

The main plumber’s sidekick (possibly his son?) was clearly lacking a few marbles and had an impressive smoker’s hack that left me reaching for the Clorox wipes.

My neighbor’s contractor is apparently just a weekend remodeler because he can’t come back until Friday to fix the hole in my ceiling . . . and cut a much larger one above my washer/dryer so he can poke his head up in the rafters and try to figure out where the water’s coming from.

Adventures in home ownership. Tell me, why did I buy this shoebox again?

You can see the hole in the ceiling - I taped a plastic bag over it this morning because dust and insulation would fall out of it every time I opened the bathroom door.

P.S. You should check out "Spy" on Hulu.com. It's a much better version of the "Chuck" concept on American TV. Fun watching!

The dress makes the day

It's been 60 degrees all weekend and I'm sure in the scheme of things that's bad news for Spring and Summer weather forecasts. But it's great news for my wardrobe. I found this darling vintage dress at the thrift store a few weeks ago and figured I'd have to settle for admiring it in my closet until Spring sprung. Mother Nature must have been just as eager for me to wear it, though, and today's mild weather proved the perfect opportunity. This picture doesn't do it justice - the whole dress is a gauzy viscose, sheer black with pearly buttons on top and flowy off-white printed with delicate black flowers on the skirt. Dresses in this style make me so happy - especially when they cost $5.99 at the second-hand store!

One, two, cha-cha-cha

I had a nightmare last night about learning to dance from Louis Van Amstel – one of the professional stars on Dancing with the Stars.

Don’t get me wrong: I like Dancing with the Stars as much as the next fan of “there’s nothing else on so we may as well watch has-been Hollywood types make fools of themselves” TV shows. But I am not a fan of exercise classes that expect me to work up a sweat through dancing. I can never get the steps right fast enough – or remember the sequences long enough – to do more than get frustrated. It’s a brain workout, not a body workout. And when I’m at the gym, I want to turn my brain off and just let the legs pump.

So yesterday I saw a notice that this Dancing with the Stars expert Louis has a new workout program that incorporates dance steps and that he’s coming to Charlotte to debut it.

I shuddered at the thought - and then rather inexplicably had a nightmare about going to the class. All I can figure is that sometimes my subconscious fixates on stressful scenarios that play out in my dreams. Trying to keep up with a ballroom dance workout class certainly qualifies for the girl who misguidedly enrolled in Social Dance her first semester of college because she heard it was an "easy A" and ended up flunking.

Nurse, we're gonna need the paddles for this one.

Hello there.

I'm ready to try and resuscitate this blog. No promises, but I'll do my best to post regularly. I just spent a week hanging out with family in Utah and it's hard to imagine I could have anything even remotely interesting to post all the way out here in Charlotte - away from all the niece and nephew action. Here are some pics.