Copy Cats Gone Bad

 Every morning I wake up.  Boy do I love that!  Then I run outside to see what the fox have been up to.  I got a nice closeup yesterday that shows off this beautiful tail.  He came back over two minutes later, smelled the camera and promptly knocked it over.  All I got was a blurry face full of whiskers.  

It was back to quilting day where I put up a couple more squares, until I remembered a quilt I knew I brought back, but couldn't find.  I KNOW I have it, I just don't know where!!  Another search of the fifth wheel resulted in five more projects.  I completely forgot they were in the far back outside compartment.  Since I'm no longer carrying everything but the kitchen sink, I actually have room for more important stuff.

I returned to find this.  It's amazing what a tiny little dog can do to a large heavy rug when he can see the ball, but can't get to it.  I'm sure there was lots of barking that went along with this.

Such an innocent little face!!!  Don't you just want to pinch his little cheeks?  Ok ... enough of that.

As you know, I like to experiment with recipes.  I actually spent some time gathering up all the necessary ingredients for this Panda Express chow mien copycat recipe.  It should taste EXACTLY like the real thing, yes?  

First off ... there's oyster sauce.  I should have looked it up before I bought a bottle.  It's made from oyster extract.  I hate oysters ... always have, always will.  Then there's hoisin sauce ... made from fermented soy bean paste.  YUCK!!  This was a really BIG mistake!  But it's okay, because it will taste EXACTLY like Pandas.

It wasn't easy to find the yaka-something-or-other noodles either.  Yucka would be more correct.  I threw in some veggies I had just for good measure.  It's also got onions and cabbage ... just like the real thing.  

Finally .. I'm ready for the big taste test!!  YUCKY POO!!!!  The veggies were yummy, even with the not-so-tasty sauce, but the noodles ... they were pretty disgusting.  Whoever said this was a Copycat recipe was OH SO WRONG!!  I picked out all the vegetables and left the rest.  Sadly, there is one more serving leftover in the fridge.  I burned the recipe.  

Lucky for you guys I don't have many pictures of me as a kid, nor do I have many ranch pictures.  My Mom had a little Kodak point and shoot film camera back in the day of black and white, but we were always so busy on the ranch, there was no time for pictures.

This is me in my Sunday best homemade dress, along with my boyfriend Georgie.  He and his brother spent a lot of time with us at the ranch in the summer because it kept them out of trouble in Santa Barbara.  Little did their parents know they learned how to climb out a two story window at the ranch.  

As you can probably tell, we didn't have a lawnmower.  Well we did, but they had four legs with a rope attached.  My mom's dream was to have sprinklers around the house.  It never happened because cows come first.

It's funny that I'm the spitting image of my grandmother at the same age.  One of these days I'll run across THAT picture and post it.  By the way, I MUCH preferred Levis to this dress.  The church ladies thought it funny that I wore my cowboy boots (not shown here) with my dress, but hey ... I was just fashion forward because I see it all the time now!!

Finally recovered from Bingo, I've got another night of Elks meetings, followed by an accounting nightmare where we are $119,000 in the hole.  Not really ... something just got left out of the budget.  I'll find it ..... but not til tomorrow!