when you eat too much garlic, you are bound to come up with this:

This is a recent picture of my parents and sisters and I love it dearly (Steve doesn’t like this picture because he was sitting to my dad’s right and I totally cropped him out of it.  Sorry, husband.):

Remember Blueprint Magazine?  It was a short-lived Martha Stewart experiment, equal parts shelter and lifestyle magazine; I think it folded in late 2007.  I boohooed when it died and probably complained about that here, though I’m not sure.  Here are some covers:

I don’t know how many issues of it I have, but I want to say all.  I’ve saved them and just tonight started going through them again since around the time I received the last one.  I can’t say I remembered much about them.  Some are you joking me DIY, but not too much.  Anyway, I am inspired now to pay more attention to my house.  But because I can’t labor too much these days, I think I’ll have to put it on hold.  What I am trying to say, mostly, is that I’m glad I saved these issues.  They are the ticket.  There are features of homes with white interiors and big dogs, all happening at once!  CAN IT WORK?  I don’t know.  But I would love to experiment with that. 

I had a garlic bread appetizer today at an Italian trattoria.  There were chunks of garlic on the bread that seemed like a good idea at the time.  I am paying for it now.  I have not belched such vile burps in my life.  I’m thinking George does not like garlic; he’s giving it all back to me one piece at a time.  Generous of him!  I kind of want to stick my finger down my throat to get it out of my system. 

I was really looking forward to cooking dinner tonight – chicken parmesan.  Not anymore.

We picked up some silly things at Bed, Bath & Beyond today.  I think I’ve shopped there maybe twice before; I’m not a huge fan.  Do you want to know why?  I feel like it is a supermart for suckers and the pop-up houses they come from.  There are a lot of things out there that we could all live without and most of them are on the shelves at BB&B. To boot, it’s like walking into a shit storm of cucumber melon potpourri.  Don’t get me started on the cucumber melon stench but I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t America’s favorite scent.  I’d rather sniff hooch.  But whatever, I got sucked into the madness because of a gift card we received for our getting hitched.  And immediately decided we needed a foldable cutting board.  So we got the green one:

 

And then I decided I really needed a small colander for washing my strawberries (I eat 16 ounces of strawberries just about every single day).  And guess the eff what?  They had a collapsible one just for that purpose:

Unreal.  MINE.

My mom got me a sweet Rowenta iron about five or six years ago, but I left it on all day once and, since it didn’t have an auto-shut-off, it sort of destroyed the damn thing.  It was great while it lasted and I’ve been using it all these years, but it just had to go.  So today at the BB&B, I got a cheapo Sunbeam iron ($19.99).  I’m convinced it will do me good.  And then I got a new cover for my ironing board.  And then we got storage for our knives.  And then the gift card was over.

And so is this post.