New Year's Eve Eve 2017

I just got through doing something that I hadn't done in ages, and it came about in the oddest way.

Today, to prevent ourselves from sitting on our butts watching television all day, The Husband and I hooked up with his sister and brother-in-law, and did a road trip to an antique mall about 2 hours away.  This mall is HUGE - aisle after aisle of vender booths with everything under the sun.  We wandered the aisles for nearly five hours, looking for a few specific items - a print, a table, a Tupperware salt shaker.  He worked one side of each aisle, and I worked the other.  We'd hold up stuff - "Hey, look at this. . . ."  We found stuff we hadn't even known we needed.  ;)

Anyway, at some point, we were in opposite booths with our backs to one another, and he said something - I'm not even sure what it was (because he mumbles, and our backs were to one another) - that made me suddenly think about a bowl of ice cream with Coke poured over it.

I NEVER THINK ABOUT ICE CREAM.  I just don't.  I mean, if there's ice cream on a TV commercial, then I might think about it.  Or if I see somebody working with great enjoyment on a double-dip cone on a hot day, I might think I'd like to have one and might even go get one.  But ice cream just isn't regularly at the top of my list, or The Husband's, either.  I buy it, sometimes, and we might eat one bowl apiece, right away, then we keep it long enough for it to get freezer burnt then we wash it down the drain.  It's not my go-to treat.

Pouring Coke over ice cream was something my parents did when I was a kid.  We didn't call it an "ice cream float."  We ate it with a spoon, then drank the milky liquid.  I always thought it was kind of weird, though in a good way.  I have not done it - or thought about doing it - in probably 40 years.

I said to The Husband, "I don't know what you just said, but whatever it was, it made me think about a bowl of ice cream with Coke poured over it."  And he gave me the "Huh?" look, having apparently   not mentioned ice cream. 

It may be that the antique mall was playing music with subliminal messages (though it would seem that they'd want me to think, "Antique table," not "ice cream with Coke poured over it").  It may be that, come 5 p.m., when the place was closing and we had not eaten anything since breakfast, a drop in blood sugar might have been giving me subtle hints.  In any case, the thought sunk into my brain and would not go away.

On the way home, I happily remembered that we have ice cream in the freezer, left over from Christmas Eve, so probably not too frosty yet.  And there was a 2-liter bottle of Coke on the counter, also left over from Christmas Eve.  I thought I was set!  As soon as we got home, I fixed a little bowl of ice cream and tested the Coke for fizz.  Nada.  I got nothing but swirly syrup.  This would not do; there's got to be fizz.  I kept searching the kitchen.  In the pantry was a small bottle of Coke left over from a road trip we took two months ago.  Evidently, someone had taken one swallow and put the top back on; it was flat, too.  We had some cans of diet Coke left over from Christmas Eve, and I was forced to use one of them, for there must be fizz in a bowl of ice cream with Coke poured over it.

I ate the foam, I ate the ice cream, I drank the creamy Coke down to the last drop.  And boy, even with diet Coke, it sure was good.

From my toasty warm office - 12/27/17

It appears that the cold weather has driven me into the house for the next few weeks.  The low temperature tonight is supposed to be in the teens, with highs in the 30s for the next week or so.  Bummer!

Christmas has come and gone, and it was a good one.  Both The Husband and I were off work on the 26th, and we spent the day hunkered down in the house, eating left-overs from our Christmas Eve gathering.  I got out of bed at 6 a.m., had some coffee, then slept on the couch from 7 a.m. until 9 a.m., slept in the recliner from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., and had the audacity to head to bed at 10 p.m. and sleep until 7 this morning. 

But I've been cracking the whip on myself today (in a figurative sense, of course - I am not into pain).  As Christmas approached, several of my embroidery design customers asked for special orders, and I put them all off until this week.  Now it's time to get busy!  The embroidery machine has been running for two hours, already, testing designs I worked on this morning. 

There's just never enough time in any day to do everything I want/need to do.  I still have gifts to embroider for folks I didn't see at Christmas.  I want to paint a picture for our bedroom.  I want to make a swaggy thing to go over our bed (but need to go to the craft store for supplies).  I want to build a table for my sewing room.  I want to rearrange my yard (which ain't happening in THIS kind of weather!).  I want to practice on my mandolin, and figure out how to get Alexa to do what I *#)!@ ask her to do.

And yet I sit here blogging . . . .