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While I’m stuck inside, I might as well admire the beauty.

I was supposed to go to work yesterday but that wasn’t going to happen. I live on a hill, and my street was (and still mostly is) buried. I watched four-wheel-drive vehicles get stuck. Oh yes, and there was a state of emergency declared, meaning no non-essential vehicles on the roads.

I worked from home, which at first I thought was great: 1) I get to work in my pajamas! 2) I can listen music or turn on the TV if I want! 3) No one here to annoy me!. By the end, I saw the downsides: 1) Eww, I’m still in my pajamas? 2) I’m too busy to listen to anything but my frantic fingers on my laptop keyboard, which feels weird to do work on because it’s nothing like my work keyboard. 3) I’m lonely. I wish someone was here to joke with. Or to answer my hypothetical questions.

It was pretty stressful to make sure everything went through the way it was supposed to, but it worked in the end.

Three times as much snow from the last time.

It was around this time that the sun finally came out and it melted a little. I’m glad there wasn’t not too much at once or there could be flooding. That’s something we definitely don’t need.

Don’t mind me, I’m perfecting my work from home look, complete with no make-up and authentic bedhead. I know, I know, I’m a natural!

Even though this snow mess kept me from my plans, I’m okay with it. I could see kids with snowboards on my street and hear them outside, yelling and laughing. It’s really easy to be a grump about things that disrupt us from our lives, from what we want, and from what we have planned, but hearing them have a good time was a reminder that kids still find joy in snow, like I used to. In the early morning hours as the sun was slipping its way through the cracks in the blinds, I would lie as motionless as I could with the radio softly above a whisper, as not to jinx school getting canceled. If I lie very still, I thought, it will happen. To hear my school district called was like a reprieve for staying so still. I feel a little sad for kids these days, who are told to go online to see if school was canceled, because their moments of bated breath are much shorter and much more anticlimatic.

I lost my taste for Spagehetti-Os but I like to think that I can still appreciate the little moments of life. I just need a reminder every once in a while.

See those indents in the snow? I made them an hour and a half after this was taken. You can’t even tell I walked through it now. This insanity has accumulated in only nine hours. I keep hearing we have everything from four inches to six to eight to a foot, so I’m going to split the difference and say TOO MUCH.

What’s really killing me about this is I was supposed to go to D.C. (the heart of this mess) for the Pens/Caps game on Sunday. Considering I couldn’t even make it home from work without sliding all over the place, the likelyhood of me going from Pittsburgh to Morgantown, W.V. (where my friend April lives) to Frostburg, Md., (where my friend Gina lives), to Washington D.C. is looking very, very slim. According to numerous reliable sources (people who live there via Twitter), West Virginia and D.C. are notorious non-plowers. I have a hard enough time when I white-knuckle around here and they DO plow.

I’m trying not to get upset about this, with that you-can’t-control-the-weather-so-let’s-have-a-drink mindset. Still, a rum and coke can’t change the fact that I haven’t left Pittsburgh in months because I can’t afford to go anywhere, so having my first break away in months canceled with the stinging memory of last weeks’s fine weather is frustrating to say the least. By this I mean, I’m reaaalllly trying hard not to whine (okay, I let one slip, but no more). Since there’s nothing else I can do about it, there’s no point in going on about it. I might as well state the facts, accept it, and pick out what movies I’m going to watch. So far I’ve watched Friday Night Lights and half a Project Runway episode.

However, I can’t stay up too late because I do have to work tomorrow. And that is called bad fucking luck.

Few things are more adorable to me than baby shoes. Yes, the clothes are cute, the socks are darling, but the shoes! The shoes! I’m don’t even love adult shoes the way I love baby shoes*.

I know Hemingway wrote a very sad six word story involving baby shoes (which he considered his best work), but when I see them I don’t think of that. I think of happy little baby feet in shiny Mary Janes and itty bitty Converses and black-and-white saddle shoes and how they’re miniature perfections of the grown-up thing.

I suppose in warm climates, babies could (and probably do) go without shoes, but I’m glad the ones around here don’t, because every once in a while I find myself wandering through the baby section of Target, (it is in between the books section and housewares, not out because some clock is ticking, if I need to specify that) and it really is such a delight to come upon those tiny shoes. I never plan on it, so it’s a nice surprise when I turn to the left and there they are. I keep my cool but inside I’m a total EEEEEE BABY SHOES mess.

I’m definitely not ready to be a mom. And yes, I’m aware that being a mother is more than picking out shoes and clothes. I have to say though, just when I think that I can’t take any more baby talk, the shoes suck me back in.

*You wouldn’t either, if you wore a 10 wide and had to wear clodhoppers that make grandma shoes looks stylish.

Due to technical difficulties (a flaky internet connection), Mining Monday is a day late, for once not because of my procrastination.

Okay, maaybe procrastinating a little.

Some weeks I have a hard time figuring out what edition it is. This one was pretty obvious:

Only because Mining Monday: Pink Paper On White Is Really Hard To Read Edition makes for a super long blog subject line. Many thanks to the Good Samaritan Thrift Store for making it easy.

I. Love. These. AND they’re already framed, which cuts out a step for me. You will be mine next pay day!

A cross sitching plate- how very Rachel.

Lots of religious things, in case you fogot it was the Good Samaritan store.

I just got my bangs trimmed and that one piece of hair won’t swoop with the rest and it’s driving me craaaazy.

I want to believe that Demark is nothing but wooden shoes, windmills, tulips, and green pastures. Add mint chocolate chip ice and that’s pretty much my ideal vacation.

Took me a little bit to notice, but the one wall was lined with adorable vintage hats.

I wish that I didn’t look terrible in hats. Or that hats like these were in style.

For every adorable little tricket like this….

… there was fug like this.

One of the weird Frankenstein toys from Toy Story has found a new place to live. Good for, um, it.

Very sleepy. The OMG LOST premier kept me up past my bedtime.

This week has been crazy. Here’s what I think:

1. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t watch the State of the Union address, not because I was opposed to it or because I had other plans, but because the 4th disk of the second season of Project Runway came in the mail, and well… Daniel Vosovic made really pretty clothes that season. I’m sure Jon Stewart can catch me up, right?

2. The iPad is separating people into several different camps: 1) Camp OMG WANT, 2) Camp Lame We Don’t Care and 3) Camp Hehe iTampon Hilarious. I’m in 4) Camp I’m Too Poor To Even Consider It But If You Handed Me A Free One I Wouldn’t Throw It Away. I mean, my MacBook fulfills my needs, but a large print iPod might be nice too. Hint, hint, blog readers with cash to burn.

3. J.D. Salinger died. Let me repeat this: J.D. EFFING SALINGER DIED. Yes, I was one of those teenagers. I once made an iron-on “Holden Caulfield Is My Boyfriend” shirt that I never wore in public because I accidently ironed the E’s on backwards. I will admit that Catcher in the Rye is definitely a book that either you loved or you hated, but you have to admit that no other book with a teenager protagonist has had even half as much impact. There are excellent teen novels that come close (The Outsiders, Sloppy Firsts), but they’re not the same (I still love those two, by the way.). I must come clean now: thought I’m in mourning, I’m also curious- are those rumored-squirreled-away-manuscripts finally going to see the light? A girl can dream.

4. I haven’t bought a new DVD in nearly five years, but tonight when I spied the first season of 30 Rock on sale at Target for $16.99, the last copy somehow found its way into my hands. I’m glad I didn’t start watching until the end of the first season, because the pilot is rather awkward and unfunny. It doesn’t really hit its stride until the third or fourth episode. Who knows if it would have stayed with the show otherwise.

5. I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I go to bed between midnight and one, wake up between 3 and 5, unable to fall back asleep until 5, and then wake up at 8:30 feeling terrible. I think that’s why I had a baby migraine this morning. I woke up with a bad headache, laid back down, called my dad, thrown up, and then felt better. This exact same thing happened a month ago. Stress needs to stop doing this to me.

How was your week?

Just a hint: when Uncle Crappy organizes a Pho Tweet-up, you must go. It’s that simple.

I got the bun dac biet- a spring roll, pork and shrimp with lettuce, bean sprouts, cucumbers, peanuts and noodles. Not a soup, which is what almost everyone else got, but super good. Sadly, I’m a mess with chopsticks and dribbled noodles all over my shirt. Pretty much like every other meal of my life, except usually it’s with a fork.

As you can see, lots of happy Pho-ers (Father Spoon has the full list of everyone who attended). I had never eaten Vietnamese food before, I highly suggest trying it, especially if you find yourself with a large group of great people.

Believe it or not, a good deal of editing goes into Mining Monday, mostly for the sake of time. I’ve taken on average about a handful or more photos that I’ve never shown. Today’s Mining Monday is going to consist of odds and ends from past weeks that didn’t make the cuts.

Hello, 1971.

Mup-pet Bay-bees! I watched this as a kid but I honestly prefer my Muppets in puppets form.

I think we all know he sleeps in Minnesota. And I wonder if he pronounces it as Minne-soo-ta.

HAR HAR WOMEN PLAYING SPORTS SO FUNNY.

That Mary and Jesus under glass reminds me of something my dad would pick up for my Catholic mother at an auction and she’d say that she loves it while keeping it in the basement for all eternity.

A cliche magazine headline would call this ‘two is better than one!’ Twee!

Child, why did you paint on your milk mustache with White-Out?

My Aunt Stella, the Cool Aunt of the family, had a Mickey Mouse phone when I was a kid. So of course, I thought it was the AWESOMEST THING EVER. A Cabbage Patch Doll phone is for 13-year-olds in 1988 (Claudia Kishi, perhaps?).

My house is freezing, I’d kill for this right now.

Or hell with this, let’s have a drink.

A week ago I did the seemingly unthinkable: I deactivated my Facebook account.

You might think I’m being melodramatic, but you aren’t the one who’s been getting “Where did you go on Facebook?!” text messages.

I had been contemplating for a while but ended up doing it on a whim (like most decisions I make). I was getting ready for work last Thursday and one second I’m picking out a shirt to wear, the next I’m click-clicking and it was over. (By the way, if you’ve never deactivated or come close to it, Facebook brings up a page of tagged photos of you and your friends and says how much they will miss you. I’m not kidding. They’re trying to make you stay by pulling on your sentimental heartstrings… I’m surprised I didn’t fall for it).

No more Farmville invites for me to ignore, no more LOOK AT MY AWESOME PICS LOL, no more inane status updates to make me gag and wonder why I was ever “friends” with this person in the first place. Of course, on the flip side, there is no way for me to see who got a new job, who’s doing stupid stuff to their hair, who’s going to grab school, who’s popped out more babies, (and the depressingly dreaded) who’s gotten engaged before me. As Lindsey, who also recently deactivated Facebook, said about it, “It’s 100% centered on one of my favorite hobbies and honed skills, which is stalking people I barely know via the internet.” Word.

When I first signed up, I was embarrassingly excited. I didn’t go to a Big Name University, so it took until fall 2005 for my small private college jump on the board. I approved friend requests from people I barely knew. I constantly changed my favorites and profile pictures. I wrote inside jokes on my friends’ walls and joined random groups because I could. Online life was swell.

Then the pool widened, from high school kids, to people I went to high school with who didn’t attend college, until finally, everyone joined. It became full of buttons and apps and bells and whistles and invites and blah blah blah. I thought I joined Facebook to get away from that MySpace mess, not to have it follow me.  Then there was the crap with privacy changes every couple of months that made me think Big Brother changed his name. The final straw for me may seem small, but it annoyed me to no end: the constant pressure to add people with whom I shared some mutual friends. I don’t want to be friends with people I don’t know and it creeped me out think that I showed up as pressure for them to befriend. No thanks.

I know I’ll probably be back on someday (or the curosity will eventually kill me), but for now, I’m enjoying the break.

I’ve become pretty good at parallel parking. In the past two years, I’ve done a total F-to-A+ transformation. Considering this was what kept me from passing my driver’s test for oh, um, several years, yes, I’m a little proud.

The other night, however, I kept getting stuck. I was trying to park in front of a grocery store and it was much harder to see AND to add to it, pedestrians thought it was great idea to cross the street behind my car as I was backing up (because the crosswalks are ten feet away and that’s too far). As I was backing up yet again, someone came behind my car and started directing me. A couple turns of the wheel and I was in. I assumed it was the guy parked behind me.

It was a homeless man. With a tip cup. “A little help,” he crooned, jiggling the change.

And I never, ever have cash on me. I do always have guilt close at hand.

“Ummmm,” I stall, as I grab a handful of change out of the ashtray, mostly pennies. “This is all I have, is this okay?”

He nodded and I dumped it into his palm. Sorry, city of Pittsburgh, it cost me 58 cents to tip the guy who helped me park my car, so that’s why I didn’t pay the meter.

Next time, I’m parking in the lot. I know how to pull into those spaces.

I went to a Salvation Army last week for Mining Monday, but it was very gross (even by Salvation Army standards) and I didn’t seen anything worth noting, so I’m not going to degrade the integrity of Mining Monday by posting the few pictures I took just to post them. Yes, believe it or not, this mishmosh blog has standards.

I haven’t blogged about this yet (though I alluded to it here), but I have an occasional gig where I drive to a list of convenience stores and bars in the Pittsburgh area,  try to buy cigarettes and alcohol, and test if I get carded. I try not to think of it as being a narc, though I guess technically I am (dammit). It’s a ton of driving, but it pays pretty well, and I borrowed my sister’s GPS so it wasn’t that bad this time (I forgot it last time and it took me TEN HOURS). I’ll go into more in another post.

Anyways, today I went to an outer county that I’ve never gone to before and I saw a TON of thrift stores. I counted at least seven. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to check them out, but maybe I’ll have to make a trip. Don’t doubt my commitment to this blog that I won’t drive an hour out of my way to check out awesome stuff for everyone. Or Sparkle Motion, but that goes without saying.

I heard somewhere once that Michelle Phillips, Cass Eliott and Denny Doherty HATED the song Monday, Monday but John Phillips made them record it. I just know I get aggravated when I hear it any other day of the week.