Broken. Smile.

Worth While

It is easy enough to be pleasant,
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is one who will smile,
When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
Is the smile that shines through tears.

It is easy enough to be prudent,
When nothing tempts you to stray,
When without or within no voice of sin
Is luring your soul away;
But it's only a negative virtue
Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honor of earth
Is the one that resists desire.

By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
Who had no strength for the strife,
The world's highway is cumbered to-day;
They make up the sum of life.
But the virtue that conquers passion,
And the sorrow that hides in a smile,
It is these that are worth the homage on earth
For we find them but once in a while.

~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I Heart My Cabinet Shop

Get this! I hardly ever get personal emails, then this morning I got one from Mom AND one from Dad! :)

Mom sent me this email about Agape love today, was really good, thinkin bout posting it just because it was cool.

And Pop's was tellin me about needing a template for a cross to put on a casket he was building yesterday, then he found the template for a celtic cross I had made when I was making liquor cabs for my bro and me last year :) *sigh* I really do miss working in the cabinet shop... It's so...it's just amazing. It's so relaxing on a Saturday to be out there working on my own project, no one else there to make lots of noise. Granted, sometimes I'd coax my sis out there just because :-P

But really, it's awesome being out there in the shop alone,when I'm the only one making noise out there. The radio is set to the music of the day (I'm always changing from country to rock), the big garage door is open in the earlier morning when there's a cool breeze...when the door is opened, the sound of the air compressor that comes on at least every 30mins is muffled.... Still, there is a certain comfortable easy embalming silence that reigns when I'm there. I can hear my thoughts and the sound of a screw going into the wood....

I miss being able to just go out to the shop and grab the drills, the batter powered mini skill saw (so awesome, the one's by Makita!) or whatever else I needed to build a box for a present, make a backboard for a poster, make a shelf to go above my washer and dryer because, frankly, the builders of my rental place were pathetically cheap and completely inefficient or, my absolute favorite thing I've ever built and am most proud of, make a wine/liquor cabinet because I felt like it!

Those cabinets...just...wow! They are GORGEOUS! and I only have two crumby little pics from my phone of them! When I moved here to KS, I only brought what would fit in my car, thus, my cabinet is sitting royal estate in what my family likes to refer to as "the princess room" .... yes...that would be my old room! lol.

Anyhow, I started makin the wine cab for my bro, then only partway done I was getting jealous and I'd already told him I was makin it for him.... So I just put his on hold for a few days and started on another for me, brought it up to speed with the first.

Of all things I've built or made, I am most proud of those two cabinets that I made. And the brother I made one of them for (the one pictured, actually) is one of the most amazing men I know. He is the kindest husband and father that I've seen. Love you bro!

"Dear Girls Above Me..."

Background on "Dear Girls Above Me": there's this guy, Charlie McDowell,  Mary Steenburgen's son, that posts random little notes to the girls that live in the apt above him, though they don't know it. They are always out of control and he puts the things they say and do in the funniest way... Anyhow, I'm always reading the GAM posts out loud in the office, no intro, I just start, "Dear Girls Above Me..." they are often pretty entertaining and we all get a good laugh out of them (granted I edit in my workplace sometimes...).

For Example:
"Dear GAM, "He was totally faking an accent to impress us, people from Georgia talk like hicks." Georgia=USA, Georgia also=Eastern Europe."

"Dear GAM, “I had the shittiest day, all I wanna do is get wasted.” I remember you saying the same thing last week when having the best day."

"Dear GAM, In your Vegas recap, everything happened before or after "Jen passed out". You just created a new dividing point in world history."  

"Dear GAM, I wish I could have seen u guys get high (before Jen passed out) & work the casino with your "p-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face.""

"Dear Girls Above Me, I changed my wireless internet name to "JohnStamosCondo" in hopes that it might confuse & excite you. It did."

Okay, so now that I've got the background for my story:
Today a friend messaged me about something, I cocked my head to the side and read out loud in a confused tone, "Who is Jenny B?" Without a moment's hesitation, my co-worker says, "One of the Girls Above Me!!!" It was pretty awesome! Almost died laughing, so perfect! And one's name is Jen, so we gather from Charlie's posts that is...  It was awesome, even Charlie thought as much DM-ing me, "Thank you for making my day!"

I heart Charlie McDowell's Girls Above Me stories! :) Read them on Twitter too! @charliemcdowell

Flamin'..er...Bloomin' Onion Anyone?!

Okay, so I got a Green Tea Latte/frappe fix today, ordered some mix off of Amazon, good stuff by the way! Lol, let me know if you want some, I'll point ya in the right direction! Oh yeah, back to my story.... 

So after my Green Tea Latte and workin out in the yard for a little bit, I came back in and suddenly decided that I wanted to make a Bloomin' Onion, ya know, like at Outback Steakhouse. I have no bloody clue why on earth I suddenly decided such a thing.... Haven't had one for a long time since when I was back home in the Idaho...nor have I seen anything to suggest the Outback, so anyhow, I took it as very odd, but Googled "how to make a bloomin onion". ...I went through their steps, though I added more ketchup to the dipping sauce and I didn't cut the onion quite like they said to, but it turned out way better than how they were sayin I should do it.

Anyhow, I cut it almost to the root end, and then turned the knife vertical and sliced to the roots that way as well to make the onion bloom without havin to put it in boiling water then cold water like the recipes said. So after I was done cutting, it looked like this: 

Which was pretty cool. Then came the interesting part....

I had a medium sauce pan for the oil, and had it half full, enough to just cover most of the onion I figured... So I put it on the stove (which is a flat glass top), had it on for awhile, so I think it was a little on the too hot side

when I went to put my battered onion in...well...let me tell you...one should have a bigger pot/taller pot when ya'll put a bloomin onion into hot hot oil....

I dipped the onion into the pan, and it started boiling...OUT of the pot! Lol! My face had to have been a Kodak moment! LOL! I stepped back in shock for a moment, didn't want to have exploding oil on me or anything, then I realized it was just going to boil, much like hot water..but it was pouring out all over the stove top...so I picked up the pot to move it off the burner, stop the boiling over. Then as I stood there holding the pan over the stove wondering how on earth I was going to clean up the mess I made in my shear brilliance, it started to smoke! I breathed a quick thanks that the evil smoke detector wasn't in the kitchen anymore. Well, I shouldna been saying a thanks so quickly, I was suddenly standing in shocked horror as the oil burst into flames!

So I'm standing there for a split moment in shock watching as the flames floated over the oil, grabbed the pot off so I wouldn't have a flamin' onion, then grabbed the bottle of oil since the flames started to spread all over the bloody top! So I'm standing there with a pot in one hand and wondering how I'm going to put it out as I have no extinguisher or anything! I thought, "Maybe a towel to smother it? No, bad idea, could start on fire then what would I do?!" Stood there a moment longer and the flames got higher and wider and black smoke was everywhere! So I thought, "Okay, I've got nothin left, I'll try blowing on it..." Thank goodness it worked! I took two breaths and blew it out! Lol. So yeah, that was pretty interesting! :-P lol. 

So after the flames were out, I noted that my onion was still cookin even off the burner.... Didn't look half bad either!

Yum Yum :-) It tasted just like from Outback :-) Most enjoyable.