Sucky surprise

Y'all, do you know what I have done for the past hour? I have a babysitter for a few and decided to finish putting our guest room back together now that all painting is (beautifully!) done. Eager to do a thorough job yet certain it wouldn't take long to reorganize things (never assume such silly nonsense), I basically unpacked every drawer and shelf so that I could quickly go back through things, tossing the old, keeping the wanted. Our guest room directly abuts our HVAC room, and I went in to clear those shelves and pare back dramatically (how many empty boxes does one really need to save?). At some point, I noticed that my feet felt wet. Was it just cold linoleum which always feels rather like clammy skin? It became clear that clamminess was the best-case scenario and dreadfully wrong. Long story short, the hot water heater is leaking, and by the looks and feel of things, for some time. Shit.

Now literally everything is stacked in precarious piles in our was-clean guest room; it looks like a shed from Hoarders blew up in here. Not good. Just not good.

Also, I just found that the crotch of my shorts appears have to have a fairly sizable hole and am now feeling thankful that I've had to wear a raincoat all day!

Despite the chilly rain, a peony

Although we've been saddled with some seriously craptastic weather, this peony (the one I'll get from this bush) emerged triumphant. Because it's supposed to keep on raining and I didn't want this beauty to be ruined, I cut it early and hope it will still bloom winningly on my sill. Gorgeous, gorgeous! A sure sign of some bit of spring.

Monday: manic, meatless, monsoon'y, muscular

This morning I chaperoned Ol's class field trip to a local recycling center. One of his very best buddies rode with us, and darn are those little boys precious. I find the recycling center totally cool, so you can imagine how most of the kiddos felt. A front loader here, a giant conveyor belt there. Rain be damned, the field trip was awesome. Hours later I hurried home to cook dinner for my sweet nonagenarians, then delivered it, picked Jack up, made 2+ dozen miniature collard green hand-pies and later scurried to the gym for a session with my trainer. It was awesome but for a full 45 minutes afterwards, I was on the verge of puke. Back home to prep and construct a magnificent MM (meatless Monday) dinner salad: dandelion greens slicked with an orange-pomegranate molasses-sherry vinegar dressing (because T thinks the dandelions are too bitter so to offset that, I made this sweet'ish dressing; dandelion greens are so good and so good for you; it worked); roast carrots; fresh chevre; candied walnuts; the fresh peas that I shelled yesterday; tomatoes; challah croutons; and some endive and chives. Bellissima! Perfetto!

There was a slight mishap while candying the walnuts. It seems I didn't beat the egg white until quite foamy enough and, as such, some of the nuts looked both candied and scrambled. Revolting. Those went into the trash; the fittest made it into the salad. Kitchen oops! No worries.