Potpourri, and finally, Potent Potables

I realize the last week or so of my life has been a little strange. Last Tuesday I sort of came closer to witnessing a crime than I like to, then Friday I experienced my child's worst medical scare to date. Saturday I completed my very first organized running event. And in addition to all this, or perhaps because of all this, I have been battling some low-grade depression.

All of this is to say that for the last week I have had no problem coming up with Issues to blog about. And it's good to have blog fodder, because I'm doing this whole NaBloPoMo thing. But at the same time, I miss my old, pull-a-bunch-of-random-stuff-out-of-my-ass style of blogging.

So, today, I pull a bunch of random stuff out of my ass.

First of all, you have to make this dip. I got the recipe from an issue of Family Circle magazine that my mom left at my house over the summer, but I didn't make the dip until this week. Basically, it's a low-fat peanut butter dip that allows you to enjoy peanut butter even if, say, you are on Weight Watchers. Here's the recipe:

• 3/4 cup low-fat vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 cup reduced-fat peanut butter
• 1/3 cup raisins (optional, in my opinion)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix all the ingredients together, and use it as a dip for celery, pretzels, or apples. The dip itself is 43 calories and 4 grams of fat per tablespoon. That's 1 point on Weight Watchers, so you could have two tablespoons and some celery for just 2 points. The given calorie count is for the recipe with raisins, which I am lukewarm on to begin with, and I don't think they really work in a dip.

You know what else is good? Wine.

In other news, I can't believe I'm saying this, but the running is actually going ... well. The 5K gave me a little bit more confidence to keep going with my running, and I feel like I can run longer without the psychological weight of worry resting on my shoulders. To be fair, I have only run once since the 5K, although I've been to the gym every day for the last 5 days, thankyouverymuch. Twice to swim, twice for Spin, and once to run.

I am planning on going to the gym later this morning for my second run of the week. And other than that, today is relatively unstructured. Fridays are pretty open for us. So, what we usually do is go to garage sales. As the weather gets cooler, I think the garage sales will more or less disappear, but we still have estate sales.

Let me tell you how it was that I ended up shopping at estate sales. See, awhile ago, for some unknown reason, I kind of got into Depression glass. For those who don't know and don't feel like reading that Wikipedia link, Depression glass is a style of glassware produced around the time of the Great Depression, when cheap mass-production of glass first became possible. What I think is cool about Depression glass, other than that it is generally pretty, is that during the Depression, you could acquire glassware in a package of oatmeal or powdered laundry detergent, much in the way that you can get a total plastic piece of crap in a cereal box today. Additionally, movie theaters tried to lure people in by having "glassware nights" where you could collect one piece of a matched set of glassware every time you went to the movies. That's just cool.

Anyway, somebody suggested I sign up for e-mail notifications on estatesales.net, and put a special alert on "Depression glass." So now I get all these e-mails about estate sales in my area. I click on the pictures, and if they don't look too ugly, I might go to the sale.

Here's the thing about estate sales, though. It used to be that when I heard the term estate sale, I imagined a situation where some billionaire collectors tragically die in a plane crash, and the world is free to come into their homes and bid on their priceless collectibles. In actuality, it's more like an elderly lady dies in a senior living community, and other old people invade her home to buy her sewing supplies.

And sometimes the stuff at estate sales actually is nice, but then it's not like a garage sale where you can get furniture for a quarter. Instead, it's all, "This is an original piece of Chippendale furniture from the 1700s, and it's $500." (And isn't it cool how snooty people from estate sales can actually include hyperlinks in their speech?)

Also at one estate sale I went to, somebody was buying a Waterford crystal decanter and referred to it as "yummy." Barf.

Anyway, I should note, for purposes of accuracy, that my collection of Depression glassware is a collection in spirit only. While I am interested in Depression glassware, I don't actually own a single piece of it. For one thing, I checked out a Depression glass pricing and identification guide from the library, and I felt like it was too confusing to try to identify the different patterns. For another thing, the shipping on Depression glass on ebay is usually more than the glass itself. And speaking of things being fragile, I have a 3-year-old. Oh and also, much of the glass contains lead.

Win-win-win.

So, I switched my preferred alert term on estatesales.net to "Fiestaware," which has so far not showed up at a single local sale. I still get the general alerts on sales though, and I think the boy and I might check a few out today. (Nathan, by the way, is not a huge fan of estate sales, inasmuch as most elderly people did not own toys at the time of their deaths.) I'll let you know if I find anything good and/or yummy.

In closing, I would like to note that all phone messages left by 3-year-olds sound kind of like drunk dials. Nathan and I have a tradition (custom?) of leaving a voicemail for Bill on Thursday nights when he teaches his night class and doesn't get home until after Nathan is asleep. Observe last night's message, and tell me it could not have been left by an intoxicated person:

"Hiiiiiiiiiiii ... I loooove you ... I'm leaving you a message ... I'm in bed now with the covers, and I have my feet under the covers. [long pause] Okay bye."