Poetry for your Friday vol. 1

The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

-Charles Bukowski

I'm on the fence about Bukowski. Sometimes I think his writing is fantastic and other times I feel like he's whiny and pretentious. I supposed it depends on my mood. Today I seem to be I the right mood for him because this poem really spoke to me. I've been struggle with some life stuff, you know the normal 'who am I and where is my life going' so these words were a comfort today.

Recap of the last 3 weeks.

Sometimes you forget about the internet for three weeks.

1-3. Last Monday I woke up weirdly early and made french toast for my birthday. I found a recipe that used strawberries and blueberries. Perfect for welcoming the slightly warmer spring weather. 

4. Ben brought home a dozen of my favorite flowers that Sunday and they are blooming perfectly.

5. Ben's trying his hand at soap making his first batch is almost completely cured.

6. I sewed something! My mother in law gave me this material to make a blanket out of around Christmas time and I finally gathered the courage to brave the sewing machine with her on speaker.

7-8. I also went magnet crazy. I found this tutorial through craftgawker.com (I've become a little obsessed) and just kept hot gluing magnets to plastic cats and soup cans. (I'm also enough of a dork to display my birthday cards for at least the next month I can't just toss them.

9. I love hard boiled eggs (mainly deviled eggs, but who doesn't) and I heard about baking them instead of boiling them so I gave it a try and it worked well.

10. This Monday is cloudy and we've all been napping, someone gets a little grumpy when he gets woken up!

I've been thumbing around Marvel Unlimited this month and am planning on reviewing it soon!

How has your month been?

Book Review: Interview with the Vampire

(source)

I listened to Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice on audiobook awhile back. It took me an unreasonable amount of time to finish it, like 3 months or something. I felt the need read it for some time I have heard here and there that it was the first novel to really modernize vampires and make them relateable. Now, I don't know if that's true, but nonetheless this book been on my list for awhile. I'll be upfront I was overall disappointed with the story. There were parts that were fantastically done; Rice was able to craft complex rising actions within the plot but the climax between the two vampires, Louis and Lestat, lacked conclusion. 

I didn't realize at the time Interview with the Vampire was a beginning of a series but the first book did not wet my appetite for the rest of the series. I found the main character, Louis, lacking in depth and the antagonist, Lestat, had too much mystery about him that was never resolved. The only character that was really explained was Claudia the child that Louis and Lestat both had a hand in turning. She would have intrigued me more if she hadn't been so cold-hearted. That's my personal preference though and despite that I do think that she was the most well written of all three. Louis and Lestat were contrast of one another. Lestat embraced his vampirism with a passion and vitality while Louis just barely accepted it, but he do so with reverence. This made him unbelievably morose and also pompous thus construction the formula for an irksome and insipid narrator. Even when the plot got interesting or down right weird I had a hard time bringing myself to continue on due to the manner of which it was told.

This was the first book I've read by Ann Rice and even though it was certainly not my favorite I would still give her writing another try. Ultimately, she used a flawed device to tell her story but her writing was clever and skilled.

This is so, so neat

I'd just thought I'd share this with you. I'm kicking myself because I had the chance to join in on the Twittering and I didn't. Sigh maybe next time

What I'm (not) doing

Hello!

Sorry for the absence. I took a semi-impromtu trip to Denver with my mom, aunt and sister-in-law for a week. It was fun to get away, but I pulled a blogger fail and didn't charge my camera battery so it died half way through. I did get some gorgeous pictures of the mountains which I would love to upload except my cats knocked off all the stuff on my desk in my office and smashed my card reader that I use to upload my photos :( I'm waiting on a new one to come in so hopefully it'll be here next week!

Coming home must have been cursed because my iPhone stopped working and I got food poisoning and haven't been sleeping. Weh, weh, weh.

Today I'm using as a recuperation day as silly as that is. I've cloistered myself in my office because the rest of the house is a mess and am editing some old photos and starting some tutorials on Adobe Illustrator. I got the program as a gift and don't know much about it does anyone know any helpful beginner sites?

Oh, and I've also started Grant Morrison's Supergods which is thought provoking in ways different than I thought it would be. 

Tonight, I plan on drinking probably too much sleepy-time tea and doing some relaxation yoga to hopefully get a real nights sleep so tomorrow will be worth something.

We started making our own cleaning products...

I found a recipe for making laundry detergent a couple of months back on Pinterest and saw that it wasn't too hard, but then I forgot about it. 

Recently, a friend talked about making her own and I remembered being interested. The recipe I orginally found was for a liquid detergent and she had made a powdered detergent which sounded a lot easier since we didn't have to worry about boiling water and storing it in a 5 gallon bucket, so I searched for a powdered recipe and found this one which seemed really easy. While on that website I also found how to make dryer balls which really appealed to me since Ben and I both have reactions to dryer sheets. While on this website I also found a recipe for dishwasher detergent and saw it had several of the same ingredients as the laundry detergent and wanted to go ahead and try that as well. We were able to get all of the ingredients at our grocery store and a Jo Ann's for the dryer balls. The only thing we had to get off the internet was the citric acid, but we later found out that we could find some at a tractor supply store. All of the ingredients including the wool and citric acid cost us $45 and will mostly last for a year or so.

 I had my dryer balls in a bowl on top of our washer with the essential oil I like to use. Right now I only have lemongrass and eucalyptus but I'm planning on building our collection (except slowly, a lot of essential oil is expensive especially Rose and Sandalwood which are two of my favorite smells)

We decided to buy 5lbs of citric acid at one time we knew we would use it and it'll last forever.

 I ended up using the old Cascade and Tide containers for the laundry and dishwasher detergent. They were a good size and they have lids so it work out great.
So far the everything I've made has worked out just fine. I know on the website the laundry detergent is recommended for HE front loaders but we have massive old top loaders and it works fine with those.
I haven't tried white vinegar as a rise agent or as a fabric softener as the articles suggests because I'm still using my store bought ones.
I'm really interested in the website diynatural.com and have liked the recipes I've found so far. I've decided that as I run out of household products that I'll give their recipes and try and see how it goes!

Are there any cleaning products you like to make?

Baked apples and eggs

 Sometime last week when Ben got home in the morning I decided to do an experiment with baking eggs. You don't know this about me, but I love watching the Food Network. It's pretty much the only channel I watch (except for Spike when they have those repo shows on. Super trashy, super entertaining). I'd seen people do baked eggs in a lot of different ways that mostly included some other baked concotion. Since, I don't wake up with a mind set to cook for several hours before I eat I aim to make things that take less than 45 minutes. That led me to baked eggs and as I was looking around for something else that I could throw in the oven I came upon a bag of apples. Baked apples. My sister in law had made scrambled eggs with apples at Christmas and it was delicious. Turns out that eggs and apples pair well together. The first time I did this I baked both things on 400 for forty mintues. For me, that was a little too long for the eggs though Ben really liked them. The second time I did this I baked the eggs for 20 minutes and the apples for 40 at 425. Both times I've seasoned the eggs with salt, thyme and cayenne (a flavor combo I've been recently putting on my popcorn as well) and the apples with cinnamon and honey. You can't beat cinnamon baked apples and honey.

And there was bacon.

I greased a muffin tin with cooking spray and the eggs were easy to pop out with a fork

           

I wrapped the apples with cinnamon and honey in a foil bundle. It's a good idea to wrap it twice because it will start leaking very hot honey when you take it out of the oven.

Ha! Bet you thought there wouldn't be a cat picture in this post.

What are some of your favorite breakfast recipes?