You Can't Buy Happiness, But You Can Buy Cupcakes

Yesterday I met Katrina at her office after spending a few hours at the Stephenson Library in Marinette playing with my new camera and laptop.  We had a long drive out to the other end of Marinette County for a presentation on domestic violence to a group of second graders.

Not all domestic violence agencies are lucky enough to have programs for youth education like Rainbow House does.  Katrina visits kids from 2nd grade on up to high school, talking about domestic violence and teen dating violence.  The kids got pretty excited about the description of Rainbow House except for the fact that they don't have an Xbox!  She had to remind them that as nice as Rainbow House can be people are there because scary things are happening at home.  The main emphasis of her presentation for kids of this age group is knowing who "safe" people are that you can go talk to if domestic violence happens at your home.

After her presentation we headed back to Marinette and made two other stops.  She was excited to show me a new restaurant in town called The Ironworks on Main.  The building was built in 1889 and was the home of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows for many years.  I loved the sculpture they had commissioned for the top of the building.

The industrial theme was continued throughout the restaurant, including a metal lunch tin holding silverware on the table, and Katrina's fries even came in a little bucket.  The fries were AMAZING...the rest of the food mediocre.  I ordered a plain cheese pizza that was practically flavorless...except for the insane amount of onions used for the sauce.  It was more like salsa than pizza sauce.  The crust and the cheese were bland, it was the weirdest pizza I think I've ever ordered.

Our second stop was the Night Owl Bakery.  Let me tell ya, no complaints there!  When I arrived on Thursday night Katrina had already stopped there and picked up four cupcakes for us to sample.  We tried lemon almond, boston cream, cappucino and an interesting spicy strawberry.  When we went back yesterday we grabbed four new flavors to try.

This time we sampled a suzy Q, lavendar honey, dark chocolate and a strawberry rose.  The dark chocolate was my favorite of the 8 cupcakes we sampled, but the honey lavendar was delicious as well.  I was happily shocked at the price, only $9.92 after tax for all 4!

Today's plans have changed.  We were supposed to drive up to Munising and visit the Eben Ice Caves.  I've been struggling with hands and feet that easily get painfully cold for the last few years and have been wondering whether I suffer from Raynaud's.  Yesterday my hands and feet never got warm all day it seemed, and when we arrived at The Ironworks my left pinky was numb.  As I rubbed my hands trying to warm them I noticed the tip was completely white.  A few more minutes of rubbing and it finally turned bright red before returning to normal color and sensation.  I've also had the opposite problem occasionally where my toes will be bright red and hot for awhile.  Once the temperature falls below 50 I'm wearing lightweight gloves, and it seems no amount of Smartwool socks or gloves can keep me warm once winter sets in.  After yesterday's episode I decided that maybe I need to be done exposing myself to extreme cold as I'm likely just making things worse and might someday regret the damage I'm doing to my annoyed circulatory system.


 As if I needed a real reason to want to live somewhere warmer, right?  Luckily I've never been a fan of cold weather or cold weather activities so I'm not missing much...except getting through the confinement of winter has been hard enough and now I'm going to confine myself more, most likely.  Oh well, there are always cupcakes to console me! Today we're going shopping in Appleton instead, and maybe we'll hit a museum or something.