Cuz I know you need a laugh.

Busyness is never an excuse for anything so please pardon me while I don't make excuses that don't exist...
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Anyway.
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Right. Now that that's out of the way. I thought I'd give y'all a dose of my laughter. And by my laughter I mean things that have been making me laugh...not...yeah...not that. I love to laugh (isn't that on my profile and About the Lass pages? I think so.) and I love to make other people laugh. I laugh at myself and at other people and I think having a sense of humor is the biggest sanity-saver we've been given in this world. Having friends who possess good senses of humor is the second biggest sanity-saver, and thank God I have both. I literally do thank Him--often. I'm going to sort this post by category so here we go:

Me without You (Singleness)

10 Things to Never, Ever, Ever, Ever Say to a Single Person

I’ve been single most of my life. I have never really dated a lot compared to most of my peers. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my heart ripped out of my chest and found myself in a daze of “heart break warfare” complete with sleep binges and nights filled with ice cream topped with my own tears. Sadly, Taylor Swift wasn’t around then to really make me feel understood. But, that was one time and I’m lucky I only had to experience that once. But through my life, family, friends, nail technicians, and even strangers often always find a way to bring up my awesome single life.

 10 Things to Never, Ever, Ever, Ever Say to a Single Person Part Two

9. Have you tried Christian Mingle? Have you seen the couples on those commercials? They wear clothes from 1999 and the guys all have comb overs. 

 I laughed indecently hard over these two blog posts, sent to me by my awesome friend, Katie. Katie is my life-saver and we sent each other things like this to make ourselves laugh and avoid self-pity, lonesomeness, hilarity, bitterness, forlornity, etc. (And I'm only half-kidding when I say this)

 (Excercise/weight-loss) Flubbery

From the Movies and Pinterest Sarcasm & Wit :

Thurrrrr y'go. Laugh, snort, chuckle, snerk. You know the routine. 

(And if you didn't read those single posts, go back NOW and do so.)

Catch you kids later!

Queso with Strangers: How Moe's Made My Day

Today was not an unusual day, except that Moe's Southwest Grill was giving out free queso. And really, any day when something as expensive and addictive as queso is free is most definitely a day to write on the calendar and love thoroughly. I'm a thrifty gal, and of course I couldn't justify driving 25 minutes to the nearest Moe's just to get a free something that isn't exactly good for the waistline.

Thank heaven I remembered I had to lesson-plan and do some grocery shopping.

Sarah (la sister) objected that she had lesson-planned at Moe's last time so we young, aspiring teachers parked in the no-man's bit of the strip mall and popped into Starbucks. Unfortunately Starbucks - which also boasts the qualities of being expensive and addictive - wasn't having a Come Love Us Because We Give You Nice Things For Free day.

Boo-hoo and sob. 

Since I'm not being paid for teaching right now, my wallet was quite literally empty except for a plethora of dimes and quarters; I would like to say paying with change is hipster or preppy, but it's neither: it's penny-pinching college-student at its most honest. (And I'm not even in college. Oh boy.)
    I fumbled with my coins, trying to sift the dimes from the pennies and willing it all to come to $4.22 (Please explain why those divine Raspberry Mochas cost your birthright). Sarah finally took pity on me and handed me a couple quarters to help out. The poor dude behind the counter waited patiently and didn't laugh at my teetering stacks of coinage piled on the counter; he actually told me it was all right that I was holding up the entire joint. (I'm not sure I believed him.) Raspberry mocha in hand, I retreated to the outdoor patio where I was soon buried in the delights of planning how to teach a passion for writing to my young students.
    The sun was warm and jovial, and life was good despite my new position as Queen of Awkward; in fact, I had pretty much decided that it couldn't get any better when a young Asian man wearing sunglasses came from across the parking lot with a bag from Moe's and established himself--queso, burrito, laptop and all--at a table nearby. I chattered to Sarah about this and that (probably in a louder tone than I realized, being the talkative sort.) She answered with a lazy, comfortable monosyllable now and then.

 "Come on," I said, "Just let me know when you're finished so we can go to Moe's and get our free queso." I didn't think anyone was listening--aren't I the only one who notices other peoples' conversations?

The Queen of Awkward was wrong, of course.

Our neighbor turned around with the hugest, friendly grin and raised his cup of queso in the air like Bacchus's horn. "Yeah! You really should go get some.
    I started laughing, which is my way of saying "You totally just made my day right now," and Queso-Man joined in.
  "You know," he said with another dazzling smile, "it's not very crowded over there right now. You should go." And he turned back to his laptop and resumed his lunch, and life should have proceeded as normal.

 Except for me it didn't. For me, it was one of life's lightening-bolt moments. He and I laughed over the oddity of being fellow free-queso-lovers, and in that laughter something transferred; some tiny, fragile, gossamer connection. One slender thread linking perfect strangers together: a moment woven into timelessness.
And now I want to be that person who holds a vat of queso aloft like a champagne flute and butts into a conversation. I want to spend the tiny moments of life like a sociable spider making webs of a thousand infinitesimal connections. People complain of wandering through their lives in aimless solitude; they vow the world is vacant and void - and so it might seem to a webless spider.
  But the guy with the smile and the queso knows different; he knows, as I've learned, that community is not a lumped-together achievement that comes one day and lasts the rest of your life. Community is a thousand threads spun from a thousand moments. It's the thing that keeps us connected in our frail humanness. It's love - the practical love Jesus always had the time for...my queso was the Canaanite woman's jug of water. The spider's web is an intricate thing and it does take work. It's talking to a person you've never met before about the simplest, most silly thing like queso, or the weather, or someone else's electric-yellow platform heels. My partner-in-amusement had no way of telling that I was feeling penniless, awkward, and ashamed of my blood-from-a-stone Raspberry Mocha; all he knew was that he liked queso and so did I, and it was worth the effort of spinning one more thread.

 So here's to smiling at strangers. Here's to outdoor tables, awkward moments, Asian gentlemen, unexpected connections, community, boldness, and the simple, over-looked bits of life.

Here's to free queso.

Indian-Summer Kiss

"There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood;

Touch of manner, hint of mood,

And my heart is like a rhyme

With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time."

-Bliss Carman

There are so many beautiful things to love right now.

There are maples with veins so red you hold your breath, knowing that soon the red in the veins will spread to the body of the leaves and turn the treetops scarlet as Rahab's thread.

There is a bit of a moon hanging low and copper over the field across the way in the pre-dawn hours, when you stay up too late and ought to be in bed but step out on the porch instead just to look at the majesty for a moment.

There are nights and nights of open-window weather which is enough to set the soul right again. Very little can be all that bad when a dark and beautiful chill is seeping through the screens.

There is the smell of mown grass baking hay-sweet in the riot of hazy sunlight, the aroma rising up to fill your nose when you make the trek, barefoot, to the mailbox.

There are cookies--smacking and powerful and punching with the amount of fresh ginger baked into them--cooling on a rack in sugar-sparkling rows.

There are books on the most fascinating aspects of history sitting on the shelf waiting for the moment in the day when I lay aside everything else and take one with me to the porch.

There are lazy evenings at the county fair in the company of friends, everyone pretending, for this moment, that nothing has changed; that no one has moved on; that we are all children again with nothing to do but squash together on the bleachers and watch bull-riding in almost horrified fascination.

There are free photo-prints arranged in a happy cloud on the wall, summoning un-looked-for memories from the recesses of your brain.

There are dewdrops silvering the roses and kittens squirming wiggly-warm next to their mothers, and late-night Sherlock marathons in the itty-bitty house across the land.

There are cotton-candy-eating sessions and then high-from-cotton-candy sessions afterward where we are much less brilliant conversationalists than we like to think, and we collapse against the counter waiting for the chicken-wings to get out of the oven and then, having seen them safely through the inferno, go straight to bed without eating any.

There are phone-calls after phone-calls, setting the pace for the business as a merciful storm--so much abundance of provision in that respect that Saturdays are work-days.

There are hugs to be given, and back-rubs to receive and dusty country roads to drive with the windows down and the music up.

There is feed to buy, and goats to chase off the berry-bushes, and scuppernongs to pick and suck and eat with the sour-zing running up and down your jaw like a trapped tickle.

It's Indian Summer, y'all, and God is just so amazingly good to me.

There's none of it at all!

"The funniest thing about it is the way it likes to grow:

Not at all like proper children which is always very slow.

For it sometimes shoots up straighter like an India-rubber ball

And it sometimes gets so little that there's none of it at all."

-Robert Louis Stevenson

Though Robert Louis Stevenson was, of course, referencing his shadow, I think this quatrain fits well with the current state of my life. (and probably the lives of many of you gals who are graduated.) It seems like we're either sitting with so much free-time we're about crazy, or the schedule merits none at all. I'm about to enter a none-at-all stage, and I'm looking forward to it.

Since we're a "political family" (i.e. don't sit around with our heads in the sand), autumn is not so much pumpkin-spice lattes as it is campaigning. And in Virginia this year we have a really vital race. The spot for governor is up for grabs and the nation's (collective) eye is on the race; whoever becomes governor will swing Virginia one way or the other which will effect national elections in the next few years. You'll likely remember me speaking of the SAT's last year (student action teams) with Generation Joshua; they have called for two early SAT's in addition to the normal ones over election-week, and are trying to gather 200 students for each round! I have volunteered as a leader for those two (as well as the normal one). That means that from the 19-24 I will be in Northern VA, and from October 3-8 I will be in Southern VA. In addition to this, we have our beloved County Fair this weekend, a family camping trip planned for the week after the second early SAT in October, and the girls go to camp mid-October. (I am not taking that full week out of my time for obvious reasons. :D) Of course after October comes election-week with the normal SAT. I'm really hoping and praying that we can get Ken Cuccinelli elected as our next governor; he's a Catholic, homeschooling father with excellent values who stands for everything I am concerned about as a young, intelligent, and voting single woman. Please be praying with me that the fondly-termed "Operation Shock & Awe" will change the course of Virginia history--most candidates whose races our SAT's helped push through election day credit GenJ kids with tipping the final scale. I know it has worked before and I pray these kids' efforts will help push Ken Cuccinelli through. I am SO excited! If you've never done something like this you can't understand the energy and thrill of working so closely with the stuff that changes American history. Seriously now. Get involved with politics; if the country has lame leaders, it's really our fault.

Off the political topic, I am also teaching English Literature to Leah and creative-writing lessons to Leah, Anna, and our cousin Emily. (This will have to be slipped here and there through cracks.)

Also in the background is my online shop, The Warren, which hasn't exactly taken off with a bang because of the fact that I've had no  time to publicize it. So if any of you felt like helping me out with that...(blog buttons, mentioning on your blog, following The Warren on Facebook... :) The business is finally beginning to boom (after three years of nil), praise GOD, and we are having to work Saturdays to keep up. I am still doing billing and occasional office-related things in addition to going out on the work-crew now and then. (the other girls and Benj still carry the brunt of that.) This month I got to do it all at Starbucks. (hence the picture above. Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate is divine.) Oh yes. And I'm writing a Cinderella-novella (25,000 words) which I have to finish, get critiqued, edit, and send into author Anne Elisabeth Stengl's contest by December. The reason I'm pushing to do this is that the best five stories will be published by Rooglewood Press in an anthology dubbed: Five Glass Slippers. Of course A.E. Stengl will get all the money from it, but the winners have have glory, honor, and free publicity in connection with a very successful author in the Christian-fiction circles. So I'm writing my best and shoving it in the ring and we'll see what outcome the Lord has for all that! It would be a lovely break into the realm of publicity for my writing which is currently-unpublished-but-seeking-to-remedy-that.

So yes. I'm bonkers. This fall is bonkers. And I'm loving every minute of it. ^.^

Doughnutty

On our rare most recent library trip, Sarah got a Cake Boss cookbook. Now, I don't know if any of you have watched Cake Boss, but our family loves it, and it is on several of the kids' bucket-lists to have birthday cakes made by Carlo's Bakery. :D Benjamin is quite practical about it:

"If I start saving up now, it'd only cost...y'know...like a thousand bucks to get a simple birthday cake."

Well-said, dear sir. But thank heaven for Buddy Valastro's willingness to make a Cake Boss cookbook so little boys like Benjamin don't have to break their bank to satisfy their sweet-tooth. (I don't charge) Though, come to think of it, Benjamin is ten times (quite literally) as rich as I am, so it might not be that long before he could afford a Carlo's Bakery cake. ;) To further clue you in, in a proposed road-trip to NYC which will probably never happen, a large stop on the way will be Hoboken, NJ for the original Carlo's Bakery where we hope we don't have to drop, say, ten bucks on one cannoli. But of course since Labor Day was Monday, Tuesday felt a tiny bit (in our heads) like autumn. And I got a hankering for cider doughnuts. I can pin-point the exact first time (and one of only two) I had cider-doughnuts:
It was at Taft Farms: a country vegetable-fruit-bread-stuff stand in the Berkshire mountains from which Uncle Lon and Aunt Heather bought much of their food during the summers when they lived up there so Aunt Heather could work at Tanglewood. That one summer--the beautiful, glorious week--when Sarah, Daniel, and I went up to visit, Uncle Lon drove us to Taft Farms and paid the laughing girl in the baseball cap for a white paper-bag with the grease-spots coming through and in that bag was heaven on earth. We bought the doughnuts one more time on that trip (sometime after Boston and Fort Ticonderoga) and I've never been that close to the Other Shore since. ;)

because you all need gratuitous cuteness in your day.

Well. All that melodrama to say, I thought to myself that we'd make cider-doughnuts while Mama was at a funeral. (morbid, I know) But it appears that the cider part of cider-doughnuts actually has something to do with cider and not just a reference to the best coupling of beverage with bakery-treat. C'est la vie-- we'er all excited for fall around here, but I'm not exactly sure that Food Lion sells apple-cider yet. Anyway, Sarah came to the rescue by telling me that inside that Carlo's Bakery cookbook (don't you love how New England rallied for us?) there was a recipe for Buddy's doughnuts; they didn't require cider (woo-hoo) and they didn't require butter (woo-hoo). And we happened to have a tub of lard on hand for frying, which never EVER happens. (WOO-HOO)

I made up the dough with Levi, and had lots of fun watching him watch me. (and help a bit) The batter looked like dubious cookie-dough, though, so I shoved it in the freezer per instructions and lived as a doubting Thomasina for the next several hours.

Jimsie was none too keen on the loud mixer

But afterward he insisted on turning it on...

...and messing about with a teaspoon and a bit of flour...

Awwww, itty bitty toe-prints in the spilled flour!

We rolled out the dough per Buddy's instructions and cut out the doughnuts with a mason-jar lid and a little medicine-cup....there was nothing left to do but fry them up! So Sarah and I melted and heated lard from our friends' farm, figuring that people used to cook doughnuts in lard, so why not? :) We also double-checked with the rest of the cookbook and saw that since cannoli can be cooked in lard, it's not like the doughnuts would come out tasting like bacon. (though isn't that the trend right now?) I don't understand that....the other day on Google+ I saw a picture of a friend's ideal burger: a patty smushed between two glazed doughnuts....the opposite of what I would imagine to be tasty. Oh well. To each his own culinary adventures, oui?

After removing the doughnuts (and holes) from the lard, we rolled them in cinnamon and sugar. Yum! 

Jimsie approved.

So did Grace

I would have liked to see a bit more flavor inside the doughnuts, so next time I would like to try an honest-to-goodness apple-cider-dough recipe, but these were amazing when fresh off the stove and paired with a cup of French Press coffee. Bon appetite! 

Old-Fashioned Doughnuts:

(makes at least twelve doughnuts)

I have edited the recipe to reflect how I did it

3 c. all-purpose  flour, plus more for the work surface

1 c. sugar

3/4 c. milk with a tablespoon of lemon-juice dissolved inside

2 extra-large eggs

2 Tbs. coconut oil

2 tsp. baking power

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt 

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Lard for frying

cinnamon & sugar for rolling

1. Mix half the flour with sugar, milk, eggs, oil, baking soda and powder, salt, and cinnamon in a mixer. When smooth, add remaining flour.
2. Turn dough onto plastic wrap and chill for at least one hour or up to three days. Dough will be TERRIBLY sticky and not look anything like you think doughnut-dough ought.
3. Remove dough from fridge and let sit till room temperature
4. Flour work surface and work half the dough into a 7-inch square, 1/2 inch thick. Fold in third, the roll it again into a 7-inch square. (this doesn't have to be precise)
5. Punch out doughnuts, or roll balls by hand. (repeat with other half of dough when ready)
6. Heat lard in pan till it is about 1 1/2 inches deep. Heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Drop doughnuts in two or three at a time and fry till golden brown on both sides, flipping with a wooden spoon when one side is done.
7. Remove from pan and dab excess grease off onto paper towels. While still hot, roll in cinnamon and sugar.
8. Repeat with remaining raw doughnuts.
9. Eat hot with a cup of French Press coffee, and enjoy! :)