So Mr. S. doesn't have to look at underwear...

Good afternoon!

Friends, I'm exhausted. This was a wild and woolly weekend for

me.  I won't bore you with all the details, but I will say this:  Oscar themed fundraiser at my church Saturday night and Oscar themed party at a friend's Sunday night.  Yep, I'm all Oscar'd out!

Two things happened over the weekend, however that were connected in a very roundabout way and were very funny to me, so I have to share.  The first, which was going to be the original topic of this blog, was a little rant I went on late Friday night. Hubby thought it was hysterical and, upon further review, so did I.

Let me set this up for you.

We all have a dream...this is Hubby's.

The Friday night before the big youth group fundraising dinner at our church is the night Hubby and I go out and shop for all the food for the dinner.  Hubby cooks all the food for the dinner. Now, one would thing Hubby would keep it simple, you know, chili, spaghetti, some other ground meat sauced based something you can slap on a starch and call it dinner for 70.  But no.  Hubby pulls out all the stops every year and spends two solid days planning, shopping, and cooking.  And Friday night is when the magic of the shopping happens. 

I call it the magic because every year there's an ingredient that's 1) odd and 2) we can't find no matter how many food selling outlets we go to.  One year it was parsnips. We cleaned out all of the grocery stores in the Greater Waukesha area of their parsnips because we needed 20 pounds of the white tubers for a soup Hubby was making.  And, since we always shop late at night, we sort of looked like insane people running into stores and yelling, "DO YOU HAVE PARSNIPS?"

(For the record, your average high school aged night grocery checked doesn't know what a parsnip is.)

This year the weird ingredient was ox tails.  Again, the soup.  Ox

tail soup. Hubby actually scoped out our local Woodman's a few weeks ago and yes, they had ox tails.  Whoot!  But, on Friday night....they did not.  And the search was on.  We had to hit a couple of stores quickly because they were not 24 hour stores and time was running out.  But even, after scouring the 24 hour stores, we couldn't find ox tails.  It was during this quest that I went on my rant.

As most of you know, once February 2 rolls around, I'm pretty militant about people who still have their Christmas lights up.  This year, however, I've been lax, and so have the people of Waukesha.  It's nearly March and there are many, many people who not only have their lights up (yes, we are included in that bunch) but they are lit...and they still have their trees up in their homes!  Friday night, as we were cruising through Waukesha and noticing just how many people still had their lights up and on, I started in with the following:

"Ya know, I get why people are keeping their lights up.  Christmas

blew. There was no snow. It was brown and ugly.  And then mid January we get pounded and we continue getting pounded until here we are, almost MARCH and there's a foot of snow on the ground and it's twenty below and it's dark all the time.  EFFING WINTER!  GO AHEAD PEOPLE! LIGHT THEM UP!  If it's going to be winter until May, then God love you, keep those Christmas Trees up and keep it merry and bright.  EFFING STUPID WINTER!

(For the benefit of my Sunday School kids, yes, I said EFFING, not the actual other word.)

I didn't realize I'd even said it out loud until I heard Hubby laughing at me. That's when I realized I had to share this with you fine folks because I'll admit it:  Winter has beaten me.  I don't know about Global Warming, but I know this:  We don't get actual snow until January, Spring doesn't happen until June, and Summer runs from July until the five nice days in November when we get fall. But Winter...winter pop up any time.  Like in October it'll be horrible cold.  And Thanksgiving it'll be freezing rain. And in March we'll have one 80 degree day surrounded by a month of freezing temps. It's been so cold for so long that knowing it was negative six this morning, I didn't even care about finding my mittens.  Effing winter. 

So I knew I was going to write this blog today, once my weekend was over and I had a little time to breathe.  What I didn't anticipate was getting stopped in the hall after church yesterday by a fine gentleman. I know his wife reads my blog, I was not aware he did...until...

"YOU!" he walks up the hall quickly, pointing at me. Now this is a tall fellow, he's about eighteen inches taller than I am. And we were the only two people in the hall.  So...yeah.

"Oh, hi," says I.

one more just for fun!

"You and your underwear and your blog.  Now I have pictures of underwear all over my computer!"

In my defense, I did put a warning up there...but still, I felt responsible. I don't want anyone to have a problem with my underwear.  (And wasn't that the point of last week's post?)  So here it is, the thing that's going to clear Mr. S's computer of underwear pictures.  I am, first and foremost, a public servant.

Meanwhile, if you've still got Christmas lights up: TURN THEM ON!  LIGHT THEM UP!  I'm going to turn mine on tonight.  Make Winter as pretty as we can because it's all we can do!

As for the oxtails...yes, we did find them.  Turns out, one of our young church members works for Robert's Specialty Meats in Waukesha.  We got there at 9 Am Saturday, and our friend Kyle hooked us up!  (We should have gone there in the first place!)

The soup turned out great and pretty much was the hit of the menu on Saturday night.