Progress

People, can I tell you I am stressed about this whole moving thing? Not only do we have to figure out when and how to be out of this house, but getting our stuff to Colorado, when Steve has to take time off work, making arrangements, legal and otherwise, for Danni to stay here with my parents, packing, cleaning, new schools, not to mention trying to set a record for the most commas in one sentence.


Well, as of today, one worry is taken care of. Sort of. Steve signed the papers on our new (to us) house today.

I'm actually excited. It seems like a nice place, nice neighborhood, etc. Now that we have an address, I know where Shannon will go to high school, and which elementary school Kylie will be attending. I can call up there tomorrow and see how we go about getting them registered. Things are falling into place. And I'm terrified.


Logically, mathematically, I know we should be able to afford this place. But since I am anxiety-riddled by nature, I can do nothing but worry. I spend my life worrying. And it sucks.


The house has a finished basement with two bedrooms, a full bath, and a living area. This shall heretofore be refered to as "Shannon's Dungeon." In fact, once she moves in down there, I'm not sure we'll ever see her again. Although when it storms, I'll be right down there with her. Whether she likes it or not.


Since I have nothing better to worry about, I'd figured today would be a good day to try making these pretzels. Yesterday I got extremely tired of listening to kids whining about how bored they were, so I thought we could do this today. The thing is though, is that anything that involves yeast never seems to work out very well for me.

We just finished making the dough, and now it's supposed to rise for an hour. Here's where my problems start. Dough never seems to rise for me. I have no idea what I do wrong. I follow the directions, I swear. Now it's in a warm place, covered with a towel in an oil coated bowl, and it's supposed to double in size. We'll see how that turns out.

Meanwhile, I'm listening, once again, to Kylie and Shannon screaming at each other. I'm in my room upstairs and they are downstairs and my door is closed, so it's muted. But I can still hear them. And just FYI, to help you (women, at least) understand my plight...my period is going to start, like...any minute. I'm just saying.

I bought this juice for Shannon last week, and it remains unopened. That seems wrong. What can we do?

Ah. I think this will go with the juice nicely. Yes, I keep my rum in the laundry room. Don't you?

I'm feeling better already. I wonder how the dough is doing? The nice part is that now, if the dough doesn't rise? I won't really care so much. Hopefully I don't pass out before the hour is up.

Edited, 6pm:

While I appreciate Diesel's reluctance to hear about my yeast issues, I thought I'd let you all know that the pretzels actually turned out pretty well. They may not look all Martha Stewart-y, but they taste pretty dang good. I think the rum helped.

Don't they look good, if not a little misshapen? They were warm and moist and chewy and...yum! Not quite Auntie Anne's, but not bad for someone with yeast issues. (Sorry Diesel) And just for the record, I think this is the 183rd time where I've tried a "project" with the kids where they ended up doing none of the work, and I did everything. So I made Shannon make dinner. At least she's good for something.