And the heroine always has red hair.

It's been a busy weekend, and I'm trying to remember what we did. For one thing, Kim was here this weekend, and she went back to school this afternoon. She got here Thursday night, and before she came home, we had made plans for cooking her favorite things, and letting her rest and relax, but things didn't work out quite like that.

What we planned to cook this weekend:

Kim told me she wanted salmon for dinner one night, and another thing she wanted was roast beef hash. Neither of those things happened. Salmon was so expensive I couldn't bring myself to buy any, and we ended up with pizza that night, and then I was gone most of the next day, so I didn't cook anything for dinner at all and she and Rich got some takeout.

What we made instead of dinner:

It was Kim's birthday last weekend, and we wanted to make a birthday cake for her while she was home, so I bought a cake mix, and was going to make a Jello cake, but I am not actually sure how to make one! I asked RA about it, because she makes them all the time, and she said if I gave her the cake mix and the Jello, she would make it for me, and that's what happened with the cake. It was delicious!

The other thing that we made, and this I actually did make, well okay, now that I think about it, Rachel made it and I just chased Maddy around the house and kept her out of the way, but anyway, the thing was that Kim said she wanted salt-water taffy. I didn't think we would be able to just buy some, because isn't that something you can only get when you go on vacation, like when you go to Mackinaw Island?

Then I kind of remembered a long time ago, my friend and I wanted to cook something, and her mother helped us make taffy in a pan on the stove, so I thought maybe we could do that and it would be really fun! Didn't pioneers used to make taffy and it was an evening's entertainment? I got a recipe on the internet, and I borrowed a candy theromometer from RA, and Rachel came over with Maddy, and we worked on making candy.

Can I just tell you, that making taffy isn't as easy as you'd think, and what we ended up with was a pile of hard, sticky candy, a lot of dirty dishes and a big blister on Rachel's thumb. I think that pioneers were easily amused.

What I did at the Fiber Festival:

Rachel and I were up early (for us) on Saturday morning, and we were pretty excited to take Maddy and go to the Fiber Festival! They have yarn! We looked at everything, and we saw people that we knew, and we maybe bought a little yarn...

Rachel took Maddy home for a nap, and I went home to fondle my new yarn (and to wake up Kim). RA kind of wanted to go the Fiber Fest, and I was supposed to go back to meet Laura too, which is why I was back there again in the afternoon, but I only bought one circular needle, that's all, and that other bag of yarn I carried home was not purchased by me! RA doesn't knit, but she buys yarn for me, and I knit it into socks for her - do you see how everybody wins?

What I am reading today:

I just finished the new book, City of Fallen Angels, and I am thinking that maybe I need to take a break from Urban Fantasy for a while. I'm feeling a bit sickened by all the melodrama, and the professions of undying love! Can anyone just get a grip on themselves and maybe do something relaxed and ordinary like take a class or eat a hamburger? No, it's got to be all magic and the love that burns like fire and fighting with your last breath and your amazing magical skillz to save the person you brought back to life (magically) because without them you can't even freaking breathe or walk your dog. I might have spent too much time with this book, but I couldn't put it down, even while I was mocking it in my head.

What Kim forgot when she left:

When kids come home from college for the weekend, they always leave something behind - like their glasses, or their retainer, or oh, I don't know, a dryer full of their jeans!?! So Kim was about an hour away from home when she remembered that she never got her jeans out of the dryer. I told her to use her (my) Old Navy card that I gave her for emergencies (and yes, there are emergencies in which a person needs a pair of jeans and this is the perfect example of one), but then later I thought that I will have to mail a package to her this week when the birthday present I ordered arrives, and I can put in a pair or two of her jeans, and anyway it's not like she has nothing to wear, because I know she has clothes down there at school. So I called her back and said I could send her some jeans and also the t-shirts she left drying in the dining room, and she said did that mean she couldn't go shopping?

So that was our weekend, and I'm back at work tonight, knitting socks for RA with some beautiful merino sock yarn that is hand-dyed in pale yellow, and I'm going to look for something else to read on my Kindle, maybe something with no frantically attractive supernatural creatures?