Culture No. 33: Cafe Beignet

A few weeks ago on a whim, I bought a Living Social Deal for a coffee shop up in Scranton called Café Beignet. We usually don’t travel much farther than our kitchen for a hot cup of joe – except on Fridays, when we go to Dunks – but this past weekend, Bert and I braved the wind and the snow (Hurray for October nor’easters!) for a Saturday morning date in our sister city.

Scranton’s always quiet on the weekends – actually, it’s quiet all the time – and the weather didn’t help any. There were approximately three “occupiers” in front of city hall and only one other brave patron of Café Beignet. The café is just north of Cooper’s Seafood (of “The Office” fame) on Washington Avenue downtown. It’s run by the Milk Saving Starving Children Foundation and all profits go to support child nutrition programs overseas. So you can drink your coffee and feel good about it too. Sweet.

The café is decorated New Orleans style, right down to the Mardi Gras bead-wearing donkey out front. (My inner architect especially appreciated the old school tin-style, stamped metal inserts in the dropped ceiling. Because we all know how I feel about dropped ceilings.) We ordered two mochas – the Carlton Family favorite – and six beignets – the Café Beignet specialty. (Go figure. ;) We didn’t know what a beignet was (or how to say it), but the barista explained that it is essentially a square piece of fried dough covered in powdered or cinnamon sugar. Mmm…he had me at fried. (And it was only $4 for six. What a deal!)

Since it was quiet, the barista went to the back to get our beignets started. (Yes! They make them to order!) He brought them out to our table – three covered in powdered sugar, three in cinnamon sugar – and proudly announced that “lunch had arrived.” (It was about 11:15 a.m.) We laughed, but oh man, was he right. They were hot and amaaazing. Totally worth the snowy drive up 81. The mochas were eh – lukewarm and a little acidic – but in perspective, totally inconsequential. It doesn’t matter what the coffee tastes like when you can eat fresh fried dough. I’m definitely adding Café Beignet onto the “NEPA Highlight Tour.”

PS Cooper's is totally better than that place in Tel Aviv. Just as long as you're at the Scranton one. The Pittston branch? Eh, not so hot.

Top 100 Signs I Married the Right Man No. 86

86. He listens to Christmas music before Halloween of his own free will!

...

Be still, my beating heart. <3

Cooking No. 10: Boo Cups

In college, my good friend E. introduced me to the best Halloween dessert ever: Boo Cups. I’d never had one of these amazing little creations until my sophomore year, but now the season just doesn’t seem right without them! Boo Cups are to Halloween what Peeps are to Easter – a delicious sweet you can only eat once a year for fear your teeth will rot out. Oh yes, they are that good.

Bert’s coworker invited us over for a Pumpkin Party last weekend (where Bert carved his first pumpkin ever), so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce Boo Cups to the NEPA crowd. (Interested? You can find the recipe here on the Kraft website.)

They are super easy to make. First, mix the instant pudding. The official recipe calls for only chocolate, but I always split it up into half chocolate, half vanilla. Trust me: Boo Cups are not lacking in the sugar department. I’ve found the vanilla makes them a bit more palatable for the “older than 5” crowd and adds a nice color contrast, as well.

Next, mix in half a tub of Cool-Whip (or “whipped topping,” if you go the Brand X route like me. ;) and 3/4 cup of crushed Oreos. (No Brand X on the Oreos. No one can match the yumminess of the real thing.) If you use both chocolate and vanilla pudding, make sure you split the Cool-Whip between the two, (i.e. a quarter tub in each bowl). I usually only put Oreos into the chocolate pudding, but again – up to you. ;)

Set the pudding aside and lay out twelve small cups. Sprinkle more crushed Oreos into each one. Divide the pudding between the cups - layering, if you're using multiple flavors - and top with more Oreos. (Can you ever have enough Oreos? No, I don’t think so. ;)

Finally, divide your remaining Cool-Whip into twelve “ghosts” on the cup of each pudding cup. This part always makes me laugh because the ghosts on the Kraft website look so perfect while mine always come out…well, blobby, for lack of a better word. (I'm sure they'd look neater if you piped them on.) Each ghost gets a pair of chocolate chip eyes and you’re done! The recipe says to use miniature chocolate chips, which I never have because they never go on sale, so I just substitute the regular ones for a more “googly-eyed” look. But they are yummy either way.

Unfortunately, transporting Boo Cups is not nearly as easy as making them. Eek! I have this issue every year and every year I forget about it until it’s time to leave the house. You’d think I’d learn.

The party was about 45 minutes away, so I threw the Boo Cups in the freezer to stiffen them for the drive. I tried a bunch of different pans and covered dishes, but the only thing big enough was a metal crate that Bert uses to hold office supplies. Out with the pens! In with the Boo Cups!

I covered the bottom with foil, lined up the cups, and then threw in a roll of saran wrap to wedge them in. (The crate was a wee bit too big. Or maybe I just didn’t make enough cups. ;) And it worked! The Boo Cups were a little melty by the time we arrived, but we put them straight in the fridge and they were perfect by the time dessert rolled around. Success!

Mmmm… Make sure you give them a try! And Happy Halloween!

NTOTD No. 13: October Snow

October snow? Yes, please! I always considered myself lucky to have snow on Thanksgiving, never mind Halloween. (Halloweens in New England always seem to be damp and mild, although I'm not sure how they usually run in NEPA.) I know we'll be lucky if the white stuff hangs around till Monday, but still... It makes for a very cozy weekend! (And I love how Bert's jack-o-lantern looks like it sprouted hair overnight. Chia Pumpkin, anyone? ;)

Craft No. 10: Sucrets Tin Makeover

In a recent scientific survey performed by yours truly, there were 3,210,000 hits for the Google search “Altoids tin craft,” but only 906,000 for “Sucrets tin craft.” And most of them appear to be "Altoids tin repeats."

Travesty! Sucrets tins are great! Mine has lived in the uncharted regions of my purse for some years now, providing a fantastic home for any sort of meds I need/think I need/probably will never need on-the-go. However, they are uglier than their small, mintier cousins, I’ll give you that. So the other night, in a burst of craftiness, I decided to give the ugly duckling of the tin packaging world a much-need makeover.

I started by removing the ingredients sticker from the back of the tin and scrubbing off the residual goop with rubbing alcohol. (I know some people like to use Goo Gone for that sort of job, but I’ve found rubbing alcohol works just as well – if not better – minus that awful smell.)

Next, I traced the top of the tin onto a piece of cork leftover from an old coaster project and cut it out with my special sharp scissors. (I protect my sharp scissors with my life. They live in an undisclosed location only known to me so they don’t get used for anything mundane or manly. Hehehe… Do you have a pair like that?) But even using the sharp scissors left the cork a little rough and crumbly around the edges. I rubbed it down as best I could, but I planned on covering it later and wasn’t too worried about the finish.

Now for the fun part! I pulled out my set of mini alphabet stamps and went to town. (Practicing on a bit of scrap paper first, of course. :) Originally, I wanted to use red ink to match the red tin, but the red didn’t show up too well on the cork. I substituted black and it came out just fine. “For what ails you” – it makes me think of a spoonful of sugar or the glass of “medicine” in Peter Pan. Hopefully, whatever lands in this tin is somewhere in between!

Then I tried gluing the cork onto the tin, but the cork soaked up the Elmer’s and hot glue just got all gunky. (I think my glue gun’s dying and it wasn’t quite hot enough.) Plan C involved several strips of double-sided scrapbooking tape and that seemed to work just fine.

With the cork secured, I wrapped the edges in decorative adhesive tape (God’s gift to crafters? Quite possibly. I was thinking of gluing ribbon on, which in hindsight would have been a disaster!) and taped a bit of paper inside the cover for the finishing touch. Voila! What do you think?

Except for the skull and bones tape – 50 cents at Jo-Ann’s with a coupon! – I had all the supplies on hand, so this was a pretty low budget project. I wouldn’t mind sticking a brand or two in the cork for a little extra decoration, but I don’t mind it as is. I think my Sucrets tin is lookin’ mighty fine!

(What ails me? A sore throat, stomachache, and allergies, apparently! :)

NTOTD No. 12: The Vera Bradley Train

Am I the last one to jump on? Probably. Unfortunately. Trophy Wife or not, I never thought I'd see this day. But when I saw this wristlet on Listia, I was totally hooked before I even knew it was the ubiquitous V.B. How could I know? It's vinyl and there's no paisley. Obviously, Vera was out sick the day they snuck this bad boy through.

I am, however, 100% guilty of bandwagon-ing when it comes to that ID case. I bought it at a local consignment shop fully aware of where it came from. But it was on sale. And I am a complete sucker for anything turquoise and brown. And, well, I had already lost any street cred I had in regards to not owning a V.B. Might as well jump in head first...

Do you own a Vera? Why or why not?

Culture No. 32: Working!

I broke the number two trophy wife rule this week and got a job. Thankfully, the number one rule is “there are no rules,” so I quickly exonerated myself and emerged guilt-free and slightly richer. (I am all up for an extra dollar or two – sadly, literally – added to my monthly grocery budget.)

The new gig is a part-time office job at a local construction/trucking company with nary an AutoCAD station in sight. I can also wear jeans, so it is pretty much Sarah heaven in those two respects. (There is also an office cat named “White Trash.” Hellooo, NEPA!) I have to teach myself QuickBooks stat, but I already use Quicken at home so it’s not too bad of a learning curve. And who knows? My own personal accounting will probably drastically improve in the coming months as well. ;)

Ahhh…It feels good to have one foot back in the working world!

Culture No. 31: Hiking the Lehigh Gorge

I have a list of things I want to do while we live in NEPA. It's a small list, but it does exist. (On my iPod. So I can add to it when inspiration hits. Just like my grocery list.) After our trip to Jim Thorpe this summer, I added “Hike the Lehigh Gorge in the Fall” for two reasons: one, I am too cheap to pay for the tourist rail when I can walk it myself, and two, if it was gorgeous in the summer – which it was – I could only imagine how it’d look in autumn.

And since we’re coming down to our last few fall weekends here in the Northeast (Can you believe it?!), Bert and I took advantage of the beautiful weather and snuck away this weekend for an afternoon on the trail. And I'm so glad we did, because I think the Pocono leaf-peeping season is just about over!

I had imagined a really tough and rugged hike, but – like the Back Mountain Trail – the path turned out to be a bike trail (Whoops. Missed that memo…), so it was more like a leisurely stroll. (Thankfully, I packed enough chocolate bars to maintain our caloric intake. Got to love those Halloween sales!)

Still, we walked six miles+ and both came out sore. (Although that may be more a reflection on our own condition. I am blaming it on my boots. ;) There were lots of people out biking and walking their dogs and we even saw a large group of rafters headed downstream towards Jim Thorpe. (At the end of October? Crazies!) It was a beautiful day and I'm so glad I can check the Gorge off my list now! What were you up to this weekend?

(And before you ask: Yes! I am hunting wabbits! The resident male model was quick to point out my resemblance to Elmer Fudd. Guess I won't be wearing that hat again! ;)

NTOTD No. 11: Pumpkin Carving

(For Bert, at least.)

This weekend, Georgia Boy fessed up to never having carved a pumpkin before, which of course we had to remedy. Immediately.

Sacrificing one of my three pumpkins to the cause - the smallest one, just to start him off slow - we let the Carving Newbie go to town. He struggled a bit through the gutting process and - unaware he was supposed to save it - threw the top away, but once we rescued the stem from the trash it was smooth sailing from then on out. (Granted, he did have help from a five year-old expert. That may have helped. ;)

I think he named pumpkin, "An Ode to Steve Jobs," which is why it has glasses. Stevie the Wonder Pumpkin has since returned to the pumpkin ranks on our still-cornstalk-less front step and looks fantastic. I am so proud. :)

Trophy Wife of the Week (TWOTW): Shenandoah S.

My bestie S. just inspired a new series of posts with this shot of her "Homecoming Hokie Cupcakes": mini bits of red velvet deliciousness smothered in butter-rich orange frosting. (I'm guessing on the butter, but she's a big Paula Dean fan, so it's probably not too far off the mark. ;) I also enjoyed the peek at her red, Kitchen Aid stand mixer in the background (Remember this post? Kitchen Aid mixers are a trophy wife must.) and the very-obvious cupcake carrier in the foreground. This lady carries her baked goods in style! Way to go, S.!

So from now on, on a quasi-weekly basis/whenever I get submissions, I want to showcase YOUR forays into the world of trophy wifing. (Or trophy wifing-in-training. That counts too.) Outtakes from your tennis lesson? Awesome. The latest craft project? Bring it. Your cat? Show us. We all love the cute, feline children. You, my friend, could be the next Trophy Wife of the Week.

Charity No.3: Chicumbane, MZ

(Here's another story from my time to Mozambique! You can read my previous posts about the trip here, here, and here.)

Between eight team members, two missionaries, and three MKs, we easily had (at the very least) nine cameras and 2,000+ photos of our twelve days in Mozambique and South Africa. There is one day of photos, however (the second Thursday, to be precise) when yours truly mysteriously vanished. Was I on a spiritual walkabout, communing with God amidst the beauty of the African bush?

Haha. I wish.

I was actually sick as a dog, holed up in my tent, and wishing Bert was there to make me toast and tea. (The thought of eating and drinking was revolting, of course, but the idea of having him close by was comforting.) That’s right: I was the team’s lucky and sole recipient of the self-titled “24 Hour Bush Bug.” Go Team Sarah.

After spending a few nights in Maputo, our team camped for a luxurious three days/four nights next to a church in a small town called Chicumbane. We spent one full day there, then drove deeper into the bush the next morning for the day. (This was the day we spent in Manjacaza.) That night, while driving back to camp over teeth-jarring roads that make PENNDOT look like God’s gift to transportation, I started to get a headache.

Now, in and of itself, that is a fairly normal occurrence. I get headaches all the time. I even have an app on my iPod to track them and rank them according to how bad I want to die. On a scale of “Nothing” to “Give Me a Lobotomy,” this was somewhere around “Did I Just Run Into a Brick Wall?,” but given the bumpy ride and the long day we’d spent out in the sun, I brushed it off and tried not to think about it.

Everyone was tired by the time we got back to camp, but I was exhausted. As in, "too exhausted to eat," which is not something I usually suffer from. (They don’t call me Hoover for nothing! And yes, unfortunately, they do call me that…) Upon our arrival, I immediately went to bed and slept straight through till six the next morning, quite the feat considering the roosters start yakking around three and the witchcraft drummers never stop.

I woke up feeling tired, more headache-y, and – fun! fun! – nauseous. I got up and went through the morning routine, hoping I'd feel better if I started moving around, but to no avail. (For some reason, I always think this will work. It never does.)

Well, to shorten a long story full of too much information, we all decided I should just take it easy that day. (Decided? That makes it sound like we sat around and discussed it. No, I physically could not get off my air mattress and they refused to bring it in the 4x4s. So that was kind of the kicker. ;)

One of our resident missionaries, Adrienne, stayed behind with her munchkins to keep an eye on Gimpy and to give the kids a break from the car. (Adrienne is like the African version of the Pioneer Woman, although she is very modest and would never tell you that. ;) She closed my tent when it was cold, opened it when it was hot, and made me sit up and get some fresh air halfway through the day.

And it worked. (Super Moms are the best. I hope I’m like her someday.) My nausea went away sometime mid-morning and I slept till about four (minus my “fresh air break”), despite the bands of children staring into my tent and wondering what was wrong with the white lady in her funny pajamas. The rest of the team did not get back until long after dark, so I spent the rest of the evening in my tent journaling, playing solitaire on my iPod, and munching on bits of Portuguese rolls. (Fun Fact: Mozambique has an amazing supply of carbohydrates. Many thanks to the Portuguese for infusing this bit of Western culture.)

All this has been a very long explanation to explain why I was in my tent, alone and in the dark, when choir practice started.

Now, I've said before how much I love African music. I don’t think I need to explain that much further. So when choir practice started up a mere twenty feet from my tent, I was glad. The chorus of foreign female voices permeating through the dark and quiet camp was beautiful and calming. And strangely familiar.

Where have I heard this before? (And yes, that question is as crazy as it sounds considering I was sitting alone in the dark on a continent I had spent a grand total of three weeks on. But it is not crazy when you remember I was kind of sick. ;) Technically speaking, I had not heard it before.

But then it came to me. When I lived in the Berkshires, my friends and I spent several weekends at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Regina Laudis is a Benedictine community famous for – among other things – their Gregorian chants. The Abbey observes the full, eight hour Divine Office, which begins with Matins at 1:50 in the morning and ends with Compline sometime around 9.

Over the span of two weekends, I think I made it to Matins only once – must be in the middle of an REM cycle ;) – but it was well worth it. Even though the chants are in a different language (Latin), the sonorous chorus of women praising God in the quiet dark is not something you easily forget. Nor is it something I expected to find thousands of miles away smack dab in the middle of a culture equally as far removed from the hills of New England.

There is no moral to this story and I have no punchy point to end on. Only the thought that as I lay in my tent and listened to these women sing in the dark of the light, I marveled at how true worship sounds the same in pretty much any language. And that is an awesome, awesome thing.

Culture No. 30: Winning!

I have terrible luck when it comes to winning contests. During my entire childhood career, I won exactly one coloring contest, which Sister V. won as well - there's a photo somewhere of us touting our respective Crayola prizes – and to this day I question the legitimacy of my victory. Did Mama V. swing by Ames on the way home and pick up an extra set of crayons to keep me quiet? Quite possibly.

Last year, I won my first blog giveaway: a toddler’s bathrobe, which – while super cute – was obviously not something I had any use for. So I gave it to my cousin for his daughter and stopped entering giveaways for things I didn't need. It worked. My bad luck returned and my blog giveaway winning streak ended at one. Until now.

Giveaways for things I can use (or really, really want ;) are totally still fair game, so recently I entered a contest on one of my favorite blogs, Design Mom, and won a mural from Modern Murals. Sweet! I knew just the place for it!

While the wall at the foot of our bed continues to rock this photo collage I put up in June, the opposite wall was still really, really bare - the perfect spot for a new piece of art. Bert and I spent a few hours on the Modern Mural website agonizing between something Foster-esque (his favorite architect) versus something warmer, and eventually decided on the later. We chose #4301, which sports yellow gingko leaves on a dark, wood plank background. The mural was here within a week (Our UPS man was so impressed I got a package from Cali. Ah, NEPA…) and unboxed in minutes. And then it sat on the floor. For a week or so. Or more. Go me.

Finally I got tired of tripping over it, so last night I conscripted Bert and his drill for an hour of hanging fun. Usually I try to hang pictures around 57” on center – the “museum standard,” so I’ve googled, although I’ve never asked any of my museum friends if it’s true, so take that with a grain of salt – but because our headboard takes up the lower portion of the wall, Bert pointed out that it might be better to center the mural between the top of the headboard and the bottom of the molding. So I made a ‘mural mock-up’ out of newspaper and went to town:

The consensus? To stick with the 57" mark. It's hard to tell from the itty-bitty photo, but centering the mural between the headboard and the ceiling made the room feel really small. And it's small enough as it is. ;) A few off-the-mark holes later - if you have to spackle one, you might as well spackle three, right? - and we were in business! (And on a side note, that baseball bat is a souvenir Bert and I picked up on our 'engagement weekend' in Cooperstown, NY. Not a reflection on the safety of our neighborhood! ;)

I love it. The scale is perfect and the extra color is very, very welcome. We still may be curtain-less, but at least the walls are done, right? :) I'd like to buy a pair of clip-on lights for the headboard so we don't have to get up and down at night to turn off the lights, but I struggled to find something reasonable that doesn't scream "college student!" or "architect!" (No offense to my fellow archies, I've had enough of those tensor lights for about five lifetimes.) Any ideas? Other than the Clapper? ;)

(And a big thank you to Modern Mural and Design Mom. You totally made our week! :D)

Top 100 Ways You Know You Live In NEPA No.98

98. Your pastor refers to the Court of the Gentiles in the second Jewish temple as "the size of two Beaver Stadiums." You know it's football season when... (Fun Fact: Beaver Stadium, with an official capacity of 106,572, is the second largest stadium in the Western Hemisphere and the fourth in the world. Yeah! Go Pennsylvania!)

And while we're on the schedule of college football, yay Virginia Tech for getting back into the Top 20! Is Penn State even up there? Hmmm... No, I think not. ;)

Culture No. 29: Fall Decorating

In the NEPA spirit of over-the-top decorating, I went out yesterday and bought not one, but THREE pumpkins for our front porch. (I also took down the baskets of impatiens that have been dead for about a month ago now. Whoops. I always miss that unofficial day when it's okay to switch over to mums. Like when I secretly listen to Christmas music in July, I live in fear that I'll switch flowers too early and be summarily ostracized and excommunicated for lack of proper seasonal observance. So I just didn't buy any this year. C'est la vie. I digress.)

Bert and I tried to get pumpkins at a local super-farm (aka corn mazes, hay rides, cider donuts, the whole shebang) this weekend, but as soon as we pulled into the overflow parking lot and I saw the line to get on the school bus to take you to the farm that was still miles away, I was overcome by a sudden fit of stroller-induced claustrophobia and decreed that I did not want a pumpkin that bad. So we ended up doing a little leaf-peeping and drinking pumpkin spice lattes at Dunk's instead. An acceptable substitute, methinks.

These pumpkins came from the 'flower tent' that springs up seasonally in an abandoned lot across the street from the grocery store. (Mid-summer, it is the 'fireworks tent.' ;) I went there after my dentist appointment, and even though I had this weird novocaine-induced Elvis thing going on with the left side of my face, the guys there were still really nice and even helped me carry the pumpkins to the car. But when I got home, I realized we had four front steps instead of three (Who's observant? This girl!) and now I feel one pumpkin short of a whole patch. (Seems like that's been the story a lot lately...)

This is how it starts. It's one little white pumpkin now, and before you know it, we'll be like that crazy house on Route 11 that has no less than six blow-up monstrosities in the front yard. Even now, it's all I can do to keep myself from buying corn stalks for our porch columns. Oy vey. This time of year does funny things to people...

Culture No. 28: Heynabonics

In college, I took a linguistics course that I absolutely LOVED, even though I was the only one in the class who could appreciate Boston accents. (All the Southerners thought they were "obnoxious.") It was both amazing and revealing to see how attached people are to their local dialects and how thoroughly they identify with them. I'll be the first to admit: I always say "Wilkes BERRY" in lieu of "Wilkes BAR" for fear that people will think I'm from NEPA and treat me accordingly. I can't help it. It's the New England snob in me. ;)

So in the spirit of furthering our linguistical education, I'd like to share this little introduction to "Heynabonics," courtesy of my friend T. It doesn't get more Pensyltucky than this. <3 it.

Charity No.2: Manjacaza, MZ

Between my previous trip to Uganda and this past month’s trip to Mozambique, I’ve been vaccinated for everything from Hep A to Yellow Fever, yet I still managed to come home with a doozy of a cold. Excepting a fever, I've had all the symptoms of malaria, so my psychosomaticism has been in crazy mode the past week or so. (Confession: I went out last Tuesday – braving all malarial symptoms – solely to buy a thermometer. And I may have checked my temperature hourly. JUST TO BE SURE!) But my temperature has stayed consistently normal for me (usually not higher than 97°), so I think I’ll probably survive. Huzzah!

In the meantime, it’s been frighteningly easy to slip right back into the old PA routine, like nothing ever happened. I’m generally not one prone to large swings of any type of emotion – I’m not expecting a Hallelujah Chorus to start following me around or anything – but I do think it’s important to reflect on my time in Mozambique. What did happen and how does it change things?

Well, to be honest with you, I am still figuring that out. That’s why I’ve been home for two weeks and barely written a peep about it. ;) So rather than give you a day-by-day journal account of the trip - I tried to write one of those for Bert and only made it to Day Three! - I've decided to do an experience-by-experience account instead. A “highlight reel,” if you will, of moments that really stuck out to me and are somewhat indicative of the trip as a whole.

(If you need a quick brush-up on where and why I went, you can read some background here and here. I am going to assume you’ve read those and jump right into things. ;)

I’ll start with the photo I posted early last week. This was taken in a small village called Manjacaza. Manjacaza is in the bush. The way-far-away bush. The “only place that didn’t serve us Coca-Cola” bush. That's how remote they are. Even the American capitalists can't find them. ;)

We were camping in a not-quite-so-remote part of the bush (i.e. Coke was aplenty) about three hours away and arrived in Manjacaza via our two Speed the Light 4x4s sometime around midday. (Time is mostly irrelevant in these places, so I judged things by mealtimes. It was before lunch. ;) We’d come for a church service, which started when we arrived and was held underneath a large shade tree in the center of the village. As the guests, we were given molded plastic lawn chairs. Everyone else sat on bamboo mats.

Like church services in the States, theirs started with music – my favorite part of any African service. I love how they sing. I love that they sing. I love that everyone – boy, girl, man, woman – belts each song out as loud as they can – regardless of skill – with absolutely no sign of embarrassment or self-consciousness. I wish we sang like that here.

And I love that they dance. Let me tell you: the older women in this town could really break it down. And they did. All the time. For every song and for any reason. It was absolutely fabulous.

At each village and church we visited in Mozambique, three of our musically inclined team members played through a small set of Portuguese worship songs they’d learned ahead of time. Most of the villagers in Manjacaza only spoke Shangaan – the local dialect – but when they started playing one lone woman still got up to dance. And while I watched her dance, I felt God say to me, “Get up. Dance with her.”

Uh, what? (Why, yes. I am that unbelievably well spoken when I talk back to God. You'd think if I was going to be sassy at least I'd be smooth about it.) Sure, I love that they dance, but I’m not really a “get up and dance” person myself. That’s my mother. Surely you must have us confused.

“No. You were okay with coming halfway around the world and now you won’t do this one simple thing for me? Get up and dance.”

It was a complete and utter Namaan Moment. Do you know that story from the Bible? It’s one of my favorites because it’s a situation I find myself in all the freakin’ time. (Slow learner? You could say that...) Namaan was an army commander who suffered from leprosy. He traveled miles and miles to ask Elisha to heal him, then got all cranky-pants when Elisha told him to go jump in the Jordan seven times.

“I could’ve jumped in a river at home, Elisha,” he said. “Thanks for wasting my time.” (This is the Unofficial Sarah Paraphrased Version, of course. The USPV? Sounds like a disease… Maybe that’s what I caught.)

Fortunately for the Nam-ster, his servants pointed out that he was being ridiculous. “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” (That is from the NIV, just to give this some sort of legitimate edge. The whole story’s in 2 Kings 5, if you’re interested.)

So I hedged that God had a point. I was all up for long plane rides and sketchy border crossings and brushing my teeth with bottled water, but I wouldn't dance? Like Namaan, I suddenly felt kind of ridiculous. What was I doing besides saving up pride for some sort of nebulous, Super Christian feat that would mean nothing to no one but me? Bah.

So I got off my buns and danced. Is it possible to look cool while dancing in Tevas? Absolutely not. (Do I still love them? Absolutely yes.) Do I dance as well as Mama V.? Not on your life. But was I obedient? Yes. And I'm glad I was because it was surprisingly fun. (And they gave me a bag of fresh cashews for my skillz. That was nice. :) For a brief moment - regardless of language and culture and everything else that makes us different - my lady friend and I worshipped our God together. And that was pretty cool. I'm glad he pulled me out of my seat.

Top 100 Signs I Married the Right Man No. 87

87. He cleans up creepy, dead animals from our yard so I don't have to.

Let me explain: When I went down to the basement this morning to put in a load of laundry, there was a dead squirrel belly up in the grass. Nora isn't into squirrels (or a.m. kills), so I figured it either fell from a nearby power line or ran into one of the neighborhood strays. But thirty minutes later, when I went back out to put the laundry in the dryer, the squirrel was inexplicably belly down. Hmmm...

I don't know if it was possessed, half-dead, or turned over by another stray, but regardless: I left it there for Bert to take care of when he got home tonight. Ugh. I really can't handle anything larger than mice.

Top 100 Signs I Married the Right Man No. 88

88. When I'm not feeling well, he brings home Chinese food and wonton soup so I don't have to cook. Just like he did in college.

OXOX

Craft No. 9: The Quilt

My sister has an amazing knack for always giving me awesome presents. From the baby bunny she picked out in the hospital gift store on Day One, to the Kate Spade bag that showed up under the Christmas tree a few years ago, she has a history of excellent taste and foresight. For her birthday this year, I pulled out all the crafty stops and – in the spirit of little sisters everywhere – attempted to mimic her prowess. So I made her a quilt.

I’d never made a quilt before, but my amazingly talented friend J. does it all the time - I got one for my shower! :) - and she makes it look really easy, so I thought, "How hard could it be?" Oh man... I tried to pick out fabric myself and failed - that's how hard it can be! So when J. came to visit this summer, I enlisted her help and expertise and finally made it out of Jo-Ann’s with 10 yards of (hopefully) Sister V.-esque fabric. (Picking out fabric for someone else is hard!)

Then I cut it into 2.5”x5.5” strips. Ten long yards of fabric worth. Whew. I ended up not needing all of it – maybe Sister V. will get a set of matching shams for Christmas - but I cut it all regardless. (First quilt, remember? I'm still figuring out how to estimate these things. ;) (This was also when I figured out that quilting is physically much harder than I realized. How do old ladies do it? My hand had morphed into a claw by yard ten. Now I get why they invented fat quarters and jelly rolls.)

Then I had to sew it. I wanted the strips to be random, but with no two adjoining colors the same. (Although a few did sneak in by the end of things. Whoops. I told Sister V. it had more character that way. ;) I started by pairing each color with a different color and sewing them in twos. Nora volunteered to help just in case gravity failed.

Next, I took each pair of strips and arranged them in longer strips on the floor to make sure there was no 'color overlap' with the rows around them. Then I sewed. And ironed. And sewed. And ironed. (Quilting always seems so charming; I never imagined it could be tedious. Next time, I need to set the ironing board up in front of a Star Trek marathon or something...)

Due to my own procrastination, I didn’t finish the borders before the river flooded, so I had to evacuate to Connecticut with my sewing machine. (Bert loves me. He evacuated with the sewing machine and the stray cat without a peep. ;) Like everything else, I kept the borders simple - no corner blocks - so it was just a matter of more sewing. And more ironing.

I ran out of time to drop it off at the quilting shop before I left for Africa, so I left it with J. with strict instructions to, “make any and all decisions necessary to get this sucker finished.” (She knows more about this stuff than me, so the quilt was probably in better hands at that point. ;) And when I got back two weeks later, it was done! And just in time for Sister V.'s birthday lunch! Ta-da! Success!

Whew. And now I can breathe. It was a fun project and I’m happy with the way it came out – the ladies at the quilt shop couldn’t believe it was my first quilt! - but it was a lot more involved than I thought it would be. I will definitely quilt again, but I think next time I might work on something a little smaller. I definitely bit off a bit much with a queen size. :)

And for your entertainment, here are some other things I learned about quilting:

Quilting is for math geniuses.

Sometimes I tell people the only reason I didn’t study engineering was because I couldn’t handle the math. They think I’m joking, but seriously: at Tech, architecture majors were required to take two semesters of geometry AND NOTHING ELSE. (Frightening? You betcha. More frightening? A good deal of those two semesters was spent making paper models of tetrahedrons – a useful skill in modern construction, let me tell you.) Let’s not even mention the fact that I squirmed through high school without ever taking Trig. (I don’t recommend this. It makes Calc a lot harder and Trig ended being one of those mystical things I did need to know later on in life.)

Since this was my first quilt, I didn’t even bother with a pattern. Instead, in homage to my trig-less architecture degree, I created a design I call “Running Bond.” (That is a joke. Running bond is a way of stacking bricks. It is also a really easy way to sew strips of fabric together and pass it off as “modern.”)

Quilting is not a summer sport. At least for people without AC.

Do you remember that terrible, no good, very bad week this past summer when it was like a gazillion degrees and 200% humidity? Yes? Well, that was the week I had to do a lot of ironing. It was like my own personal steam bath. Lovely. In the future (sans AC), I’ll save my heavy quilting for the winter months when the extra warmth will be more welcome.

It’s good to have someone on standby.

I’d like to give a big public thank you to my friend J. who helped me from the start, answered all my inane questions like, “What is binding and do I need it?,” and navigated all the quilting shop ropes for me. You are amazing!

Quilts are priceless.

In the past, whenever I’d price quilts at a fair or country store I’d go into something akin to cardiac arrest and think, “How could they charge that much for a blanket?!” Haha. My naiveness kills me sometimes, but I totally get it now. Between the fabric, batting, binding, quilting, and TIME, I don’t think it’s really possible to charge enough for a quilt. Maybe that’s why they make such great gifts!

I love my sister.

Nuff said. Enjoy! :-*

Commerce No. 5: Shoppes at Susquehanna

One of the little known perks of living in Pennsyltucky is improved proximity to everyone I went to college with. This is especially wonderful when the bestie (aka "the bad cop to my good cop" / "the woman who introduced me to the huz") visits her parents for the weekend, thus cutting the usual drive time of seven hours down to a mere two. (I thought my 12 hour college commute had me well-trained for long car rides, but after 18+ hours to Joburg, I'm down with anything that doesn't involve transoceanic travel.)

We met at the Shoppes at Susquehanna - the smallest upscale outdoor mall I have ever seen - for lunch and a bit of window shopping, before going out to dinner with her parents and grandparents at the Capital Diner - the nicest roadside diner I have ever seen. (Hburg seems to be a land of extremes - always a good thing for your capital city, right?) It was a quick visit, but a good one. I almost feel like myself again. :-*

Cat No. 10: Fleas

In the meantime, let's talk about the unpleasant surprise upon my return: fleas. And lots of them.

I've since been told this is a crazy statistic, but I've owned cats for 16 years and never once had a flea problem. Oh sure, there's been the random flea dirt here and there, but nothing a few drops on the back of the neck couldn't fix. Because I live in the Northeast, I've struggled a lot more with tick control, which in hindsight seems like a cakewalk considering how easy it is to pull the little buggers off. (Gross, I know, but I am the designated "tick remover" in the family. I'm kind of over it.)

Nora was itching the day we got home, but it got worse as the week wore on. And she has the mood swings of a PMSing fifteen year-old, so when she's miserable, everyone's miserable. As in, "let me jump on your head in the middle of the night and scratch for ten minutes so you will wake up and be covered in flea dirt and be as miserable as me" miserable. That miserable.

The neck drops didn't work this time, so I moved on to an all-natural spray from Petco (where the resident pet expert informed me this is a "terrible" year for fleas). It smelled nice and Nora didn't seem to mind it, but she was itchy-scratchy again within a few hours. Next, I broke down and bought a flea collar. This was entertaining since Nora is usually 'free-range' and couldn't walk straight with a collar on, but it didn't work either and - in the end - just made her more miserable. Into the trash it went. (At least that will be flea-free.)

In my desperation, I did something I have never done before.

I gave her a bath.

Well, technically, I have done it before. When she was four months old, I gave her half a bath and swore I would never do it again. (This was just prior to her "Instate Quarantine" Episode, which is a whole 'nother story. Can we say high maintenance?) That's how bad it was then and that's how desperate I was now. A few people online recommended using blue Dawn soap (aka "oil spill bird" soap), which seemed like a cheap fix so we gave it a whirl. I wore jeans, two long sleeve shirts, and fully committed myself to getting absolutely soaked. And what do you know: it worked!

I don't think the fleas are totally gone, but it helped. A LOT. (And her fur is show-cat soft! :) She's going to the vet on Monday for her yearly shots, so hopefully they'll be able to give me a few ideas for future bath-less treatments.

But on the bright side, I think I can consider this Future Mom Training for those guaranteed delousing sessions. (Fun Fact: Sister V. and I caught our childhood lice in Disney World. How terrible is that?) Dunk 'em, shampoo 'em, and you're good to go, right?