My Thanskgiving "Help"

We're hosting 10 people for Thanksgiving today. And this is the sight I find at NOON. 

Inventive or Dangerous?

I can't really determine if this is inventive or dangerous. (Ignore our ridiculous old school crappy oven). Actually I can, it's dangerously inventive.

Three Year Old Dirty Laundry...

In July my friend Joann from the Bay Area emailed me this picture:

Joann shared, "I had noticed that we were getting low on towels and I couldn't figure out where they were going. I decided to check the husband's hamper and discovered 3 towels there. He does his own laundry (yeah!) but usually only picks out the most important items to wash, which means that the dirty towels had been sitting in that hamper for months, ignored. While digging around for dirty towels, I discovered this - a garishly ugly T-shirt that our son made for him. He wore it once and promptly threw it in his hamper. In 2011."

Tupper what?

I mean...why bother using the perfectly clean, perfectly capable glass Tupperware we invested in when you can simply plop the pan you used to cook your dinner directly into the fridge?

Smokey the Bear Would not Approve

Sometimes when we cook the smoke detector goes off. The husband read somewhere that if you put a shower cap over the smoke detector, it won't beep.

NOT TRUE!

Get a Room

And by get a room I mean...open the closet door and throw your clothes in the hamper!

We've covered this before.

Let's hope this habit doesn't turn out like the toilet paper and paper towels nonsense we've got going on around here.

PS- But look how neat and organized the top of that bedside table is!

Paper Towels Part Six

I mean...they speak for themselves at this point, right? 

Part One

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Part Five

Hand-me-down Food is Not Okay

For as long as I've known Steve, he's been surrounded by people who give him random food that they've made or grown. He has no intention of eating this food most of the time. But he brings it home and shows it off and then just lets it sit. For days. For weeks. Whatever.

This morning, while going through the cabinet looking for something, I came across this poor, sad, lonely baked good thingy.

I'm not eating it.
I know Steve's not eating it.

It's been in there for at least two days.
Just waiting.

Who will throw it out first? Me? Or Steve?

We all know the answer to that.

Before I flung it into the trash, I of course had to photograph it. Why would he save this? What did he think was going to happen to this? At the very least, put this shit in the super small snack size bag you put your oversized onion in, Husband.

Spaghetti Sauce Surprises

Full disclosure: Steve makes the best spaghetti and meatballs around. I love when he makes them. It's a somewhat elaborate meal for him to make that takes up a big chunk of his afternoon and evening to perfect. He cooks with love and it definitely showed.

However...(we all knew that was coming).

After we all sat down to eat. I ran back into the kitchen to grab something and just shook my head and laughed at the sight that greeted me inside the sauce pot. What you can't see here is that the burner was, of course, left on. And if you're wondering what in the world is inside the pan. Well. It's a glass measuring cup of course!

PS- I could think of a few other things that could really help get the rest of that sauce out there easier. And one of them is resting right beside the pot.

Financial Stability Does Not Look Like This...

In an attempt to keep better track of our finances, Steve and I have "committed" to tracking our expenses by keeping our receipts.

A+ for keeping the receipts.

F for showing absolutely no willingness to do anything helpful or useful with them other than give me a daily anxiety attack.

What always happens is I get to a point where I simply cannot take it anymore and organize and track them myself.

PS- Underneath all those receipts is a jury duty summons. I wonder how that one will turn out.

Oatmeal Explosion

I will concede here and say that our microwave isn't in the most desirable location. It's placed on top of the fridge, because listen, counter real estate is sparse in our kitchen.

However.

When you make something like oatmeal every single morning. And you take the bowl out of the microwave and there's remnants of oatmeal around the entire perimeter of your bowl...chances are there's some oatmeal that needs to be cleaned up.

But my husband is very busy in the morning before he leaves for work. So it wouldn't cross his mind to look inside OR to wipe the tray down.

However.

When I go to use it and I can't even get my plate or bowl to stay upright because there's oatmeal leftovers caked onto the tray...yeah...time to clean up your mess. 

Washcloth Meets Sink...and Stays There

From Joan in Chicago. With the caption: "Because it's so hard to wring it out."

Tea Remnants Left Behind

My friend Michelle wrote about this once upon a time and while this isn't the first time the sink has looked like this, it has been looking like this consistently since the husband switched from coffee to tea. I know it's only a matter of time before he goes back to being a coffee drinker. And I'm actually looking forward to that based on what he leaves behind when he goes to work each morning:

PS- I promise you that's tea.

Peanut Butter Goes Missing

I searched high and low inside our cabinets for the peanut butter today.

Only to find it inside the fridge.

I know some of the fancy, natural peanut butter goes in the fridge after you open it, but not Skippy.

Now I know when I'm looking for something- look in the fridge!

Toilet Paper Part Four

I've attempted over the years to truly make things easier to avoid having to post on this blog.

Seriously.
Even though this is highly entertaining to keep up with...

Like, putting the toilet paper right out in plain sight to make things painfully easy to replace.

Not working.

Must come up with a new strategy.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

A Few Sizes Too Small

I suppose along the same lines of a previous post, I'm sensing a fresh pattern starting here.

I'm thinking, but I could be wrong, that this onion would actually stay fresher, longer, if it were put in a baggie (or Tupperware- God forbid!) that could actually close.

Just a thought.

Where's the Tupperware?

I've invested in a lot of great glass Tupperware over the past year and yet...my husband seems to be really resistant to using it.

Which isn't even my biggest beef with this photo.

1. Is that amount of parsley really helpful to anyone?

2. Uncovered and placed in the fridge...is it really going to be of use to anyone after a few hours? 

Let it go.

It's okay to toss that little bit of parsley. 

Close the Damn Door, Will Ya?

It's been a little quiet here on the blog. But I'd venture a guess that it has more to do with my travel schedule and not being home, more than it has to do with any improvements around these parts :)

My husband has a great habit of leaving every cabinet door he uses open. It's a skill. Of what use? I'm not entirely sure.

I'm surprised this is the first time I've photographed this. In fact, I'm sure it's not. Must look into that...

PS- I totally spy an empty box of tissues there too. Guess who used the last one? 

iPad goes for a Swim

We have something in our house called the fun box. You can drag your mind right on outta the gutter and join me back here. Right now. On this page.

The fun box has mainly been used to house Steve's wetsuit, booties and hoodie (he's a baby about being cold and while surfing is no exception). One time each year, it's dragged out, washed out, and then we may brine our turkey in there. (I know. This is sounding grosser with each passing word, but just stick with me). When the brining is all done, I take the fun box, empty its contents down the kitchen drain, fill it up with a few pumps of dish soap and then bring it to the bathroom to fill it up with super hot water and let it soak in the tub until I'm ready to clean it out again.

On Thursday I got distracted. What with making an entire Thanksgiving dinner and all. So it stayed in the tub overnight. And on Friday evening, at my mother's disapproving look of our pot holders that were a little too stained for her liking, I emptied the fun box from the brine-soak and filled it back up with hot water and some laundry detergent. I dropped in the pot holders and some cloth napkins to let them soak overnight.

While the rest of us were off wine tasting on Saturday, Steve-o stayed behind to work out, hang with Clancy and do a load of laundry. He remembered to take the items that were soaking overnight, without my needing to send a text with instructions, which was a huge victory in my book. But neglected to empty the container. Which doesn't sound like a really big deal and definitely sounds like me being entirely too picky (which I am- I have no problem admitting that).

Like I said. Not that big of a problem.

Until this afternoon.

I came upon the still full of yucky-once-soapy water bucket inside the tub and decided it was time to empty  it out only to find, much to my surprise, our iPad sitting at the bottom. I don't know how long it was submerged in water. Long enough for me to watch water slosh back and forth INSIDE the screen and realize it was never coming back to us.

I brought it out to Steve, explained that we have two iPhones and two laptops and we were just going to have to be okay with losing the iPad.

You may be wondering how in God's name the iPad ended up in the fun box. What you can't see in the photo below is where the toilet is. But. If you're the Irish rubber ducky below, the toilet is to your left. And that ledge that the Irish rubber ducky is starting at, is a perfect resting place for the iPad when you're done hanging out in the bathroom. Well perfect for some people whose name starts with Steve and ends in -o.

For the sake of the photo, below you'll see a fun box void of any water. But you'll see a very sad no-longer-working iPad that went for a lovely swim today.

It's hard to know just how my husband will top this one, but I look forward to seeing just how he's able to accomplish that.

Paper Towels Part 5

I'm thinking at this point that the whole paper towel used as a napkin being left with the rest of the clean paper towels is just something I'm going to have to live with around here.

Which is fine.

But it doesn't mean I'll ever stop photographing it!

I'm thinking this one was avocado, but I can't be sure.