exercise?

Since my internet connection is cooperating I am tryingto get caught up. Please excuse the typos I am trying to get this done before the wind changes.

I belong to the gym. I love it. It is the best use of $60 a month (includes unlimited childcare) I could have. Sure sometimes my sole motivation for going is to take a shower uninterrupted by small children, but hey, it gets me there and once there I feel morally obligated to do at least 20 minutes on one of the cardio machines. Other days my motivation is an hour away from the kids & if the price for that is 2 20 minute cardio sessions & and some ab & thigh machine work, then it is worth it. Unlimited childcare is a wonderful thing. Pity you can't leave the building...

I try to go 3x a week. I usually do 15-20 minutes on a cardio machine, there are about 7 styles available, I use all but the bikes. Then I do a round of weight machines, getting arms, back, abs, legs & butt worked (or some variation, I don't get to each of them every time) sometimes I just use hand weights. I always do ab work, one of a couple different ab machines. Then I do another 20 minutes on a different cardio machine. I listen to audiobooks while I work out. Some people are motivated by music, but there is nothing like a good murder mystery to keep my focused on my workout.

I try the classes every so often. I like the yoga & the cycling classes but I am just not a class person. I can't listen to my murder mysteries in them. So I am bad about attending them.

other news

with all the rain we have been having, and there being 5 miles of decidious trees between me and the source of my broadband signal, I have been netless more often than not since Sunday. Leaves are bad enough to shoot a signal through, wet leaves are impossible. But i did get a bunch of stuff done around the house. And I have completed the party invitations for 1hourscrap.com and have 9 of 14 pages done for my Baby's First Year album. HOPEFULLY 'll finish up today and get the previews done tomorrow.

I am going to be the featured designer in mid July , week of the 17th. It'll be a Baby Shower theme, since I have so much baby stuff currently. I need to make a freebie. I'm going to do a set of 6 wallet sized mini pages. Probably with a baby theme. I still have to 2 my word art for June as well

The last time I laughed really hard

was probably while watching Who's Line Is It Anyway? reruns before bed. It has become a habit fromback when Derek was born. I'd get inot bed with him about 10pm and watch Who's Line while nursing him until we both fell asleep. I stillwatch it nearly every weekenight. The sketches that make me laugh the hardest are ones that involve Colin & Ryan having to do accents. Neither of them is very good at it in the long term. They can manage one sentance in a Russian accent but not a second sentance. So the accents are all over the map. My favorite skit is one I just saw recently with Kathy Greenwood, wayne Bradey & Ryan & Colin. Colin was the mad director & he had this weird middle european accent going on & told themto do the scene "In the doork. ..no light..it's doork" which for some reasons just cracks me up. Plus they were doing Zorro and everyone was supposed to have a Spanish accent but Ryan's character had apparently spent years in Ireland and Cathy's had a Swedish mother. And they were making fun of themselves on top of it. I usually end up laughing really hard a couple times a week at Who's Line.

what the names mean

Drake Llewellyn was named shortly before he was born. We'd agreed to the name Drake. It is a family name on DH's side & if you go back far enough they are related to the Elizabethan privateer Sir Francis Drake. I am all about all things Tudor, so I agreed easily enough to Drake. A tradition in DH's family is to give the first born male a first name of Llewellyn. Wasn't going to happen to my kid. I cannot see calling a toddler Lou and I don't like Louie. In my family you name the first born male after the maternal grandfather. These traditions combined would have given the poor kid the name Llewellyn Byrd. DH has an older brother, not named Llewellyn, who also did not name his son Llewellyn, so I felt justified in nixing it. DH wasn't that attached to the idea anyhow. As I was waiting to go into my c-section I agreed to using Llewellyn as a middle name.

Derek Raleigh was named for a character in a Douglas Adams book and the Elizabethan privateer Sir Walter Raleigh. Derek is named for Dirk Gentley of "Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency" and "Long Dark Teatime of the Soul". Dirk is a variation of Derek, something we discovered when we looked it up in the Baby Name book. Derek was going to be named Dirk, or Adam (after Douglas Adams) or Seth (just because I liked the name). We couldn't decide so we waited to see what he 'looked like' when he was born. He wasn't a Dirk or a Seth. For a little while he was Adam, but that didn't fit, then we called him Duncan for 24 hours, but that wasn't quite right. We started going back through the name list and came upon Derek (which had been added merely as a curiosity because it's where Dirk comes from) and we *knew* his name was Derek. I chose his middle name when the lady with the social security paperwork said "and the middle name?". Adam, Raleigh and Byrd were in the running. Raleigh is what came out.

If we had another son he would be named Dirk Henry (for the privateer Sir Henry Morgan. I like having a theme). Had we had a daughter she would be Devon Elizabeth.(Devon is where most of the privateers were based out of & I really like the name and Elizabeth for Elizabeth Tudor)

what would I take with me

if I had to leave the house in a hurry?

I do think about this from time to time. Given the layout of my house, if there is a fire, I won't be in a position to grab anything but the boys and my bathrobe. My house is built into a hillside, not near a fault line or flowing water and is over reinforced. I can't really think of any sort of weather that might cause us to evacuate, but if the nuclear power plant had a meltdown I'd be moving fast, even though I live outside the evacuation area. I would grab my laptop, all my photos, music & audio books are on it. I'd stuff the giant suitcase with whatever clothes I could grab for everyone, everyone's bed pillows and the boys loveys. Plus my purse.

The pillow may seem a strange choice but think about being in a strange place, with nothing of your own. Laying in a strange bed, after a traumatic event, stressed out about everything. But right there under your head is something that is familiar to all of your senses; it's sight, feel, smell, the sound your skin makes as you turn your head, even the taste of the fabric as you roll over brushing your lips on the fabric. Its comforting. It's 'home' even though home isnt there. Sort of a lovey for adults. I take my pillow with me when I travel, sacrificing clothing space to pack my pillow in the suitcase. I'm definately grabbing it if I have a chance.

What are the best 10 things you have accomplished since your LAST birthday that ended in a zero?

i only came up with 7 things to accomplish before I turned 40, lets see if I can come with 10 accomplishments since I turned 30.

1. gave birth to Drake
2. gave birth to Derek

that got the easy ones out of the way :)

3. landed my dream job of doing interesting work that only required me to be there 9-5 M-F most of the time & yet paid very well.
4. learned to bake my own bread
5. learned to really cook, not just heat stuff up
6. bought a house
7. bought my first car
8. began crocheting & cross stitching again
9. learned to quilt
10. lost 20lbs....unfortunately they keep finding me again.

be careful what you wish for...

I am so screwed.

You know how I hate my sofa adn would like nothing more than to have to buy a new one? You know how I just spent nearly as much on a laptop as I would on a new sofa? You see where this is heading?

One of our cats has PEED on the sofa. And not just on a cushion than can be taken to the laundromat, but in the corner, so it is on the nailed into the frame upholstry. That can't be washed and no amount of Febreeze is going to eradicate the smell. The cat will do it again. The cats are 13 years old & have been peeing on all sorts of things since the boys were born..mostly the boys toys, but also in the bathrooms. Cats are not disposeable to me so I can't just dump them at the shelter and I can't see placing an ad that reads "wanted good home for cat that pees on everything." So I don't know what to do. Odds are they will pee on a new sofa too. If we were in a position to buy a new sofa, which we aren't because we just bought the laptop. I'mnot returning the laptop. I need it far more than I need a sofa.

So as an experiment & to buy some time, I am taking the cushion and the sofa cover to the laundromat for an industrial strength washing tomorrow. Tonight I am going to soak that corner of the sofa in Febreeze and vinegar. Tomorrow I will also go to the furniture store & price sofas. (I told brad we shouldn't have given away our old IKEA sofa last month) The cats have just become outdoor cats as opposed to the indoor/outdoor cats they were. well, they will be out when we are out. Unless they do it again & then they are out for good.

Maybe people will just have to sit on a pile of pillow until Xmas, when we will have saved enough to buy a new sofa.

10 things to do before I am 40

and I better work fast because I only have 13 months to do them in

1. BUY A NEW SOFA! (won't happen but it's nice to hope)
2. take ballroom dance classes with DH
3. clean out & reorganize my junk/sewing room (it will take me a year to do this)
4. lose the last 15lbs of baby weight (the baby is 2.5 years old)
5. brew mead
6. get another tattoo
7. think of 4 more things to do :)

10 things to do before I am 40

and I better work fast because I only have 13 months to do them in

1. BUY A NEW SOFA! (won't happen but it's nice to hope)
2. take ballroom dance classes with DH
3. clean out & reorganize my junk/sewing room (it will take me a year to do this)
4. lose the last 15lbs of baby weight (the baby is 2.5 years old)
5. brew mead
6. get another tattoo
7. think of 4 more things to do :)

the computer saga so far

There have been times in the past 3 days where I wished I was a complete newbieto computers. That I could just turn on a new one and be like "WOW This is so great". But I've been doing this a long time. And I have had my curent CPU for 3 years. It's been modified, tweeked and souped up. Slowly and over time. Now I am faced with making all those changes at once to my new computer & that is fairly overwhelming. Just the vast number of progams is daunting, never mind basics like what color my window bar is. Somthings I changed so long ago I forgot they had been changed. "Why is it telling me this?" "Why didn't it tell me this?" So I broke it down into manageable tasks

Tuesday - Make It Your Own
delete all the 'helpful' crap it comes with - google & yahoo toolbars, easy internet connection set up, free trials of earthlink, AOL, norton; plus most of the dozens of games. Strip it to basic, connect it to the network & transfer over my wndow scheme. begin long tedious copying of My Document and all that entails

Wednesday - Downloading & Reloading
I was stupid and in a hurry and rather than wait for the CD versions of software to arrive, I downloaded them. And cannot find the original downloads(some of them were months and months ago, they might have been burned to CDs but I can't find them). So I have go and download them again, plus updates & occasionally email tech support because the verision I paid for is no longer accessable and I am not buying the upgrade. Once all they are done then I have to reload everything I have the discs for & then download their upgrades. Setup Outlook & import everything into everything that can export my existing settings. (I love that PSP has workspaces you can save!)

Thursday - How Many USB Ports Do I Need? or Fun with Peripherals
All the externals must be sorted through & connected. Most especially my adored 19 inch flat screen monitor (because SIZE DOES MATTER). The monitor is the main reason I have been reluctant to change to a laptop. I am almost too fond of my monitor. I have it set up now as the top of the screen & the laptop as the bottom. I think this will work. But I have to sort through printer, keyboard, mouse,scanner, tablet, cords to Ipod, cameras, other random stuff that I am not sure what it is and printer isn't USB. Can you buy a 15 port USB hub?

Friday - What Did I Miss?
final tweeking & search for stuff I may have missed

Saturday - Actually Use the Thing!!!
maybe even scrap & get caught up on DSP & everyone's blogs

Sorry I haven't been to visit anyone lately. I will catch up soon though!

3 ways in which someone can compliment me

1. I am prompt & meet deadlines
2. I am a good listener
3. I am decisive when necessary.

I have a new laptop! It's still in the box. DH & I decided to spend the extra and get the good laptop. He got a bonus this paycheck and it was just about the difference in cost so it seemes fate. The PC is now just humming along as if it never had a problem a day in it's life; itmust know it is being replaced. That is fine by me because to save money I went with am 80GB HD. My PC has 2 HDs, the main is 100GB and the secondary one (my scrapping one) is 120GB. In a month or so I'll buy one of those boxes they make to turn an internal HD into an external one, but until then I'd be happy to be able to use the PC as a networked giant external HD.

Hopefully I'll get to open the box soon. but I can't do that with small boys underfoot and no one shows any signs of napping today. Maybe I'll put Madagascar on & lock myself in the bathroom......

bad news

my primary HD appears to have overheated & caught fire. There is a burn mark onthe bottom of the floppy drive slot and a smoke trail running up it, to my DVD RW drive, and that is just on the outside of the computer. I'm afraid to look inside it. The HD will boot occasionally for a few minutes & I am using that time to copy over to the secondary drive what things are still on it that I really really want - My Documents mostly & export databases from my Life Journal & Outlook & then go through the software & see what to copy over if just to avoid endless updating on a new computer. Fortunately my PSPX and all my photos & scrapbook stuff are on the seconday drive already.

I am sooooo not happy about this. DH wants to gt a laptop for me. I appreciate it but I'm reluctant to put anything on credit right now. I have $500. The laptops I am looking at are $800-$900. I was really hoping to get 6 more months out of the PC

What would have happened if I had stayed home?

Drake would not have gone to vacation bible school. He cried a bit when I dropped him off but he did let me leave adn he tld me after that he had a good time, though he isn't too sure about going back tomorrow. It was his very first ever 'school' day.

I wouldn't have gone to the gym. This would be bad for my morale & my waistline.

I would not have gotten the photocopies done that I need for a project I am working on and today was the only time I could get them.

I wouldn't have gone to the library and therefor would have no new reading material until I had the time to try again. I've been trying to get to the library for over a week but the boys just can't remain calm long enough for me to browse.

Lastly, if i had remained home today I would have spent even more time in a house with a broken computer & feeling incredibly frustrated because of it. My computer is DEAD, officially & irretriveably dead, as of 12:45pm today. Though had I been home I woud have realized it about 8:30am. I am on my mom's ancient laptop that she gave to me a year ago when she got a new one. It is 6 years old & cannot run PSP. or just about anything else except Word, Excel & IE. So at least I can surf the web & I think it has an email program I cen use too. I don't have the money right now to buy the revved up laptop I want, but if I buy another bottom line PC, that will be $500 I'll have to resave toward a laptop. And I recently got a DVD writer, an secondary internal 200gig HD and 2MBs RAM for that PC (and no PC on the market uses that style RAM) so I am feeling a tad bit frustrated. But at least it has been 4 hours less frustration than it would have been.

what do you consider a good party?

Since we were just writing about our teen years my first thought was a frat party! Good looking guys (for the most part), beer, drinking games, a band (or great DJ) and a theme that gets everyone to dress up in some goofy way. I was in a sorority in college (in an attempt to overcome my anti-socialness). We were the #1 party sorority at the #1 party college in the nation. If there was a party going on the AOII girls were there in force! TGIF parties started at noon on Fridays. When the weather was nice all the houses on frat hill would have cookouts and we'd hop from house to house and then nap in the early evening, get up and go to the evening parties. Football Saturdays were one long party, starting with a Wake Up (screwdrivers, bloody mary's or regular OJ & donuts), then the tailgate, the game, a nap & meal then the evening bar hoping (the whole strip was one big party if we won). Just remembering it makes me happy! I had SUCH a good time the first 3 years I was a sorority girl. (4th year kinda sucked on a lot of levels). Hearing Rock Lobster brings back such strong memories I have to pretty much stop what I am doing & relive them. God, I loved college! (i earned 2 degrees almost in spite of myself)

Nowadays a good party involves good friends, some new acquaintances, good food & drink and some games - trivial pursuit, croquet, various dice & card games. On site babysitting is nice too when you can get it. I also LOVE murder mystery parties - friends, food, a game and dressing up in costume (some things don't change much) I haven't been to one since the boys were born but I am thinking of hostin gone if I can arrange some babysitting.

What were you like as a teenager?

I was anti-social. I liked to stay in my room & read, write stories, or watch TV. I was not into organized sports. I was shy & I really did not like going to 'events' unless it was a carnival or fair. Meeting new people was agony to me. I had a small circle of friends & kept to myself. I did not put a lot of effort into my appearance (when you wear a uniform all day & have your hair, makeup, jewlery & shoes stictly limited, there just isn't much motivation IMO. I made up for it in college)

My parents are VERY social, so I was a big problem to them, though I might not have been to less socially active parents. I was not really a rebellious child. I didn't stay out past curfew or sneak liquor or cigs. I didn't mouth off. My parents were well known in my home town. No matter how sneaky I thought I was being, someone would see me & tell my folks. EVERY TIME! I learned that lesson very quickly when I was still in grade school. As a teen I knew I would get busted & there was never anything I wanted to do so bad that was worth the risk. Anyway, from about the age of 14 I knew I was going to go to WVU, the then #1 party school in the nation & I could do all the wild stuff I wanted to then with no parental reprocussions (as longa s it didn't involve bail). So I waited. My brother cound;t be convinced of this & regularly was surprised to be busted for sneaking out, underage drinking, tearing his car around in vacant lots, etc. Mostly for sneaking out & drinking in the woods. Which was really dumb of him. If we wanted a beer, even at 16, (the drinking age was 18 then) we said "Hey Dad, can I have a beer?" and he said "Sure, you have to drink it in the house." So what was the point of getting some one to buy you a six pack & sneak of into the woods? I never got it. I never really had a curfew, though my car had to be home by midnight. I was free to drop it off & leave again. My parents wanted to know where I was, who I was with, when I might be home. But they were open about the curfew thing and cut you no slack if you stayed out until 2am and had to get up at 6am to work or something. Logical conscequences were a big thing with my parents. The only thing they were really adament about was no drinking & driving & no getting into a car with somoene who had been drinking, even just one beer. I never had a boyfriend in HS so sex was a non-issue.

My parents main issue with me is that I didn't want to go along to watch my brother's baseball games or to 'family events' that the Jaycees were sponsoring (my dad was very involved in jaycees) and I had no problem sharing my unhappiness at being where I was with everyone in my vacinity. I was a sulky, whiny teen when I was dragged out to things I didn't want to do. Eventually they stopped making me show up at most things.

I never really grew out of the anti-social thing. At least not IRL. I am much more social online than I am in person. I've never apologized for my sulking & whinyness. But then they have never apologized for pushing me so hard into social & athletic situations. Mistakes were made all around as I see it. I could have behaved better & they could have eased off on the pressure. My parents and I accepted our difference shortly after I graduated from college & that was closure for me. My older son is very shy & slow to deal with social things. I am trying to both respect that & encourage him out of it. But I am not going to drag him repeatedly to things I know he doesn't enjoy on the theory he'll just get over it, because I know it doens't work that way.

Finding peace

I have a 3.5 yo and a 2yo, peace can be a rare commodity in my house, especially if you follow it with "and quiet". I've gotten better about finding it more often in the past 6 months - getting more sleep really helps the mental equilibrium. I've also adopted some Buddhist thoughts that help. Mostly about letting go and accepting that things are as they are. Soem things are just not going to change soon, if at all & I have to work with reality, not with what I wish. Toddlers can be whiny at dinner and little whirlwinds in stores and messy in general. That is toddler nature. Getting all bent out of shape about it may provide a temporary relief to stress, but it is not a constructive way of dealing (She says during a quiet naptime that her children went down for without a fuss - for once) It's easy to say that & believe that when things are going well but in the midst of a meltdown screaming fit by 2 little boys in the checkout line at Safeway, it's not so easy to believe. Screaming at them or with them seems to make much more sense right then. So it's a slow process but I am getting better at it. I recommend the book "Buddhism for Mothers". It is based on Buddhist principles but the methods & recommendations it gives can be applied by anyone of any faith. the message is about finding peace & showing universal love.

I do mindful meditation too & that helps a lot. I focus on a task & experience every moment of it. Usually I do this in the shower because I have never really been able to think "now I am scraping the food off the plate. Listen to the sound the fork makes as it slides across the ceramic" without rolling my eyes at myself. But I can stand in a shower & think "Feel the warm water, feel the slight roughness of the loofa as you wash off". I alwys feel very relaxed adn peaceful after I do that, assuming that no small boys were pounding on the door shouting "JUICY MAMA! WANT JUICY!!" while I was doing it. Being 'in the moment', actually focusing on coloring with my children, rather than thinking about what I am going to make for dinner while I am coloring has really helped me.

To me finding peace involves acceptance of things that cannot be changed, knowledge that all things end (good, bad or indifferent), paying more attention to the things I don't want to change and faith that things will get better.

blast from the past

As long as we are talking about 'remember when', let me tell you something I am reliving right now. My teeth hurt. My teeth hurt in that special way teeth hurt right after you get your braces tightened. Why do they hurt this way? Because I got braces today - 25 years to the month after having them removed. I had braces from 6th-8th grade. They tell you to wear your retainer. They don't tell you you have to KEEP wearing it for the rest of your life (and it gets expensive to keep with it). My teeth have been shifting for about 10 years now. Within the past year my front teeth stopped meeting when I bit into things and my back teeth have shifted so much it can be painful to chew sometimes. I have no guarantee this isn't due to degeneration of my jaw muscles but only time will tell and my teeth are crooked even if it is. So a couple months back I plopped down $6000, had impressions done and today received my first set of OrthoClear aligners. I'd been willing to go with a repeat of a mouth of metal if it would be cheaper but because the orthodontist thinks these will work better, faster. I'll still end up with some metal for 4-6 months after about 18 months of the aligners.

I popped these things in and it was an instant flashback to a pain I had not forgotten but had not thought about in years. And I get to re-experience it every 2 weeks for the next 2 years. It will be nice to bite into things properly when this is over.

Scrapbooking history?

I don't have on really. When I was in high school & college I would occasionally put photos & memorabilia in those 'press & stick' photo albums. But that is it.

After DS1 was born I liked the idea of paper scrapping but it was too expensive & too messy & paper crafts have never been my thing. I did a page or 2 with a kit but it just felt like a hassle.

I've been using PSP since version 5 (2001 I believe) and occasionally doctored up photos for sigs on message boards but that was it. Last year online friends of mine started doing digiscrapping but they all used Photoshop or PSE and I was on PSP9 by then & didn't want to pay for or learn new software. I thought it was a software specific thing. Then one of them told me about DSP having tutorials. I joined there in August & have been scrapping ever since.

Monday's prompt

How did you get started using computers? When did you first get "online". Do you predate the Internet being available to the public or was it always here for you?

Oh the memories this brought back! My first computer was an Atari that my parents bought sometime in the early 80s. 1982 at a guess. They never used it. My brother played games on it. I played games but I wrote programs too. There was an Atari magazine that had games in it, but it was just the code. You had to type the code into the computer, complete with line numbers, and hope you made no errors & you would get to play a text based came if you got it right. I don't think I ever got one right but while entering the code I began to figure out just what command combinations produced what results. My very first ever computer program was for a school schedule. You entered your grade & depending on it you could choose classes for 2-4 of your 8 class periods. Then it would generate random schedules, complete with teacher names (and getting to choose only certain teacher for certain classes was the real challenge for me). Sometimes you got lucky & it assigned you 4 periods of lunch :). It even drew lines around the schedule & between the classes. HIGH TECH STUFF.

We got computers in my high school in 1984. TRS-80s that had to be all connected together & only one person at a time could send information over the wires. We each had a floppy that held our work because there were no hard drives (NO HARD DRIVES!). I recreated my school schedule program on it for class with a few refinements & got an A.

In college I use the university Apple's & discovered local BBSs. I remember chatting about a lot of books and playing RPGs online on them. Then in 1991, DH bought his first comptuer, a 256. It cost $1100. I remember because his Discover card only had a $1000 limit. We were living together then & I paid for a Prodigy membership. Prodigy was one of the first nationwide BBS, not quite the internet today, but a starting point. I was never offline again. I later added a CompuServe account & then an AOL account. I'm not sure when the nationwide BBS experience that was AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve became the WWW as we know it. I remember researching things online but it wasn't IE based with www.something.com names. It was more like telnet. You had to connect to the site, often with user names & passwords, sometimes manually dialing in. Then suddenly there was IE and http:// stuff and email that could be sent outside AOL or Prodigy (or maybe the email came before IE...I think maybe it did). There were listserves, and webrings and html! It was pretty incredible.

And now I feel old. When I was in high school (and in college for that matter) & a paper had to be written you looked stuff up in the encyclopedia at home or you went to the library and flipped through the card catelog looking for relevant books, or you sat at a big noisy machine & looked though the microfish at scanned newspapers or scanned old documents. You didn't just google Margaret of Anjou and start cutting and pasting notes. Hard to believe nowadays.

How do I spend my time online?

I am celebrating 15 years of online life this month. In 1991 I became a member of Prodigy & joined my first message boards (about Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Dragonlance & David Eddings). Over a 3 year period I got to know many people on those boards, my first internet family. I would spend the next 10 years trying to find the same thing in other places. I found it again the first time on a fertility board called www.ovusoft.com, in a now defunct buddy group called the Freaks. Most of us are still together on another private board. I've been friends with these women for over 3 years now and I was so thrilled to meet some of them last year in person. I stopped posting very often at Ovusoft a year ago & now only visit a few times a week at most. My next experience of internet friendship came on DSP, where I am still an active member. It is possibly the most supportive & friendly place I have been on since those long ago days of Prodigy. I spend a good portion of my online time there, keeping up with threads& browsing the gallery.

My other scrapbook home would be scrapmommies.com though they do more chat in chat these days than chat on the message board and I am more a message board person than a chat person.

I am a long long long time member of a pagan elist and it's associated message board, though the past few months I have visited infrequently and have the elist set to digest. They are a family of a sorts....a dysfunctional family... or as I have been quoted as saying "More of an online bar room brawl" some days. But i really love some of the people. I've known some of them for almost a decade now. So I can never bring myself to really leave and they are a very interesting cross section of people. I've learned far more being a part of them than I would ever have learned on my own.

The other things I do online include shopping, blogging & occasionally selling/reselling things on eBay & half.com

Pricy Chocolate Part 2

I found the MON CHERI and the MINT dark chocolate Dagoba bars at Whole Foods last week and have been slowly nibbling at them every since. I don't like the MINT, despite my best attempts at trying too. They put rosemary in it. The rosemary is rather strong. It overwhelms the mint. The MON CHERI is good. Not outstanding, but good. The cherry was strong but not overpowering, with perhaps just a touch too much vanilla for my taste. However I would buy it again. I also bought the WHOLE MILK, milk chocolate bar. I'm giving up on their milk chocolate bars. Too creamy. Hershey's is better. Whole Foods had the XOCOLATL, but I decided 3 new bars were enough for one visit. They did not have the LIME. No place that I find Dagoba bars ever has the LIME, so I'll just have to keep looking.

are we there yet?

Are you where you thought you would be in life, when you graduated from high school? Are there dreams you had then that you still have now?

If you had told me, when I was 18, that in 20 years time I would be a SAHM to 2 toddlers, I would have laughed so hard I probably would have hyperventilated. Had you told me this 10 years ago I would have had the same reaction. Children were not in my plans. Which is not to say I actually *had* plans - I didn't really. I just knew I didn't want kids. I wanted to go to college & get a nice 9-5 office job, something interesting, possibly to do with creative writing/journalism, but I had no specific job in mind. I had an idea of being able to go away by myself, maybe teach English in Japan for awhile between finishing college & getting a real job. But nothing really concrete. I wanted to be comfortable, happy, have friends & enjoy my life. From that perspective I am where I thought I would be. It just never occured to me I might find all that with small children under foot. :)

favorite teacher

The prompt is to write about your favorite teacher or the one who influenced you most. I had a lot of nuns teaching me when I was in school. Plus a number of lay teachers. None of them really influenced me in a positive way, though there were some negative ones....There was Mrs Szymanski in 5th grade who said I was at fault for letting the boys pick on me, but then punished me if I stood up for myself. There was Mr Stein in the 7th grade who seemed to really dislike me for some reason & I can only assume it was because I was the only girl in class not in love with him. He was a bully & went out of his way to point out my faults when we played sports, mocked me when I got answers wrong in class & in one memorable incident made me sit in a row all by myself, not in the front seat mind you, but in the second seat back, for almost a month. (there were 21 kids in my class & 25 desks). My parents took his side when this stuff began & yes in the beginning my behavior was not stellar, but his became worse when he realized he could get away with it. Years later a classmate & I were reminiscing about it & my mom overheard & said "Why didn't you tell me all this? That is terrible." I told her I did tell & she took his side so I never bothered telling again. She looked so shocked I didn't tell her what happened with another teacher a few years later. There was also Sr Ethelrida, one of my HS math teachers who constantly gave me grief for not trying hard enough, even though I was. As a freshman in college I would be diagnosed with a form of dyslexia & on winter break I stopped by my old HS to show the report to Sr Ethelrida - I *had* been trying very hard. She apologized & said it never occured to her because I did so well on standardized tests....um, ok.

There was one teacher I really like in HS, Mr Volpe, who taught Advanced English for seniors. He didn't think I was goofing off when I questioned things in the books we read & wanted him to explain just how he knew that those flowers in the story were symbolic of a mother's grief & not just simply flowers. He had us write a lot of essays that were based on personal opinion, and he actually graded us on the grammer & style, not whether he agreed with you or not. Once he told the entire class "There was only one A+ this time. I disagreed entirely with her thesis but it was so well argued I had not choice but to give her the top score" and he handed me my essay on "Why TV watching is good for you". :)

My favorite teacher of all was in college. Dr Arnette, who taught Egyptian history and several low level ancient history classes. I got lucky getting into his History 101 class my first semester freshman year. I love history & he loves history & he made it all so interesting & fun. So real. Some of the other 101 teachers were bland or boring or just out of their normal area of expertise, so their classes were not as enjoyable. I took every single class Dr Arnette taught over the years of getting my BS and my MA. I was even one of his proctor students for a semester as a grad student. My favorite lecture of all of his was a slideshow known to everyone as "toilets of the ancient world". It was slides of various ancient historic sites he had visited all over Europe & Egypt and at every site he included shots of the ancient 'facilities' which made the past seem more real. It's all very well to memorize a list of date of pharohs, but learning about how food was prepared, how a bed was made & what sort of bathrooms the people used really makes it all come alive in the imagination.

Childhood books

What books did I love as a child & did I pass them on to my children? The first books that come to mind are Little Women & the Little House on the Prairie series. I have not shared them with my sons because they are not old enough to read them & I suspect my boys will not be that interested. However there is still the Narnia series and the Dragonlance series (though that one will have to wait until they are 10-12) and my beloved Douglas Adams books (i was teen for those, not a child) and David Eddings Belgariad series. When they get a bit older I will start reading them chapters of these books at night.

Right now though I am enjoying rediscovering the Dr Seuss Early Reader books with them (most books are not Dr Seuss). I loved "A Fish Out of Water", "Put Me in the Zoo" adn "Oh the Thinks You Can Think" when I was learning to read and really love reading them with the boys.

I am on a roll! I have my second set of quickpages done & it's only the 6th. At this rate I may actually get some extra things in. I did magazine covers this time. 2 different titles & 3 different backgrounds to choose from. Plus instructions for how they can be personalized with a name & date. I've got plans for a Teens one and a Newlyweds one as well. Does anyone have any photos (8x10ish) of a teen or newlyweds I can use for my examples? You can have a free set of the covers in exchange. This is my biggest problem. I have ideas for things that I cannot use & therefore cannot do examples.

Thankful

I am thankful that:

we are all healthy
we have food, shelter & clothing
we don't want for what we need
there is naptime
my broadband is working again

Menu for the next 2 weeks

Tilapia in foil
lasagna rollups
mini meatloaf
veggie soup & sandwiches
chicken & rice stir fry
steak & spinich salad
spaghetti with spinich pesto
veggie fritters
slow cooker BBQ chicken or pork sandwiches
potato frittata
BBQ pizza
orzo with squash

The goal is not to run the oven more than absolutely necessary. The tilapia & steak cook on the grill. The pizza could too if I felt like experimenting. The lasagna may be replaced by burgers, depending on the heat.

When I read today's prompt I thought "Didn't we already do this topic" but then I realized it had been a topic for the Book Of Me a few weeks ago. This is the layout I did of my earliest memory.

Bethy asked about the lack of toys in my family room (See the DSU198 gallery for the photos). This is where a lot of the toys are kept. I just toss everything in there when I want to take pictures :) Most of them are in the playroom/spare bedroom, but a selection of them stay here, in what was our former entryway. When we redid the kitchen 4 years ago we had French doors put in to replace the sliding glass door & now we use them as our main entrance. On the ratehr long to do list of house improvements, the wall on the right will be knocked out, along with the top part over the door frame & that area will be incorporated into the rest of the house. The door will be replaced with a window of some sort.

The gate is there to keep cats out when we are not around. One of them (I suspect Buddah) has been using the area as a litter box off & on ever since we started keeping toys there. I think he has psychological issues.

Public Service Announcement

Before you forward the latest email warning about flashing lights, date rape drugs, online petitions and pepsi cans PLEASE check out www.snopes.com. Your would be recipients will thank you. Actually they won't because if you check these things out you will find that 95% of them are hoaxes. So you probably won't forward them, so your would be recipients will never recieve them, sothey won't know to thankyou for not forwarding the hoax to them. If that makes sense.

My personal mission in life seems to be exposing internet email hoaxes & doing my best to spread the idea these things should be checked out before forwarding. Just because you received it in an email does NOT make it true.

I mention this now because my mom & my SIL, whom I love dearly, are big forwarders. They go through spurts where they forward stuff to me & I respond with snopes links about how it is a hoax. Then after a bit things get quiet & then it starts up again. Recently it has started again, so I am assuming things are making the rounds.

Please check www.snopes.com before you forward. People won't know to thank you, but if they did, they would. :)

If you could go back to school (and time, money, other commitments are not an issue), what would you study and why?


This is an actual possibility for me in a couple of years, once both the boys are in school full time, so I have been giving it a good deal of thought lately. I would go for my Doctorate in Early Modern history, at least I think that is what they are calling the Tudor era now. It was Medieval/Renaisannce in 1989 but I heard they changed it. I have my MA in it. Initially I had planned to be a professor (I want to teach adults who, mostly, want to be in the class), but after 7 years of college I was just burnt out on learning. So I went into the business world as an admin assistant & worked my way into the telecom field & any idea of going back to school left my head. But now I am going to have a chance to start over. If I could just go to school for the heck of it, I would still get my PhD. I just would be more relaxed, knowing I don't have to use it for anything.

Or better still I'd go to cooking school in France or Italy. Vacation & education at the same time. I enjoy cooking most of the time & I think some technique style classes would be good for me.

Speaking of cooking, I am between dinner menus at the moment. I ought to have done a new one over the weekend but was out of town & then it slipped my mind. So dinner has been a bit haphazard lately. Tonight we are having pizza, with a pesto biscuit crust & topped with leftover chicken tenders, zucchini & spinich. I have to use up the fresh mozzerella I bought a few days ago.

I've been tagged

5 things in my fridge: I just cleaned it out so I know this without going to check
Miracle Whip
Hornesby Hard Cider
leftover home made chicken tenders
Welch's grape, blueberry, kiwi juice
spinich

5 items in my closet:
dirty laundry
lots of shoes
lots of purses/bags
a new dress
bathrobe

5 items in my purse: I don't carry a purse but this is what is in my current stuff bag
iPod
wallet
diaper & wipes
"My First Truck" book
notepad

5 items in my car:
iGo charger
carseats
unopened Sprite
empty take out coffee cup
solar veil baby sling

5 people to tag:hmmm....I'll have to check & see who has been tagged already but I'm probably safe naming my friends Jenny, Porn & Critter on Live Journal.

Musings on being a Woman

I was in the store the other day, facing the giant "Wall of Feminine Hygine Products", scanning the boxes, when I noticed how desperate their makers actually are to make themselves stand out in the crowd. A quarter of a century ago, when I first faced the Wall, it was not a Wall. Your choices were small. Stayfree, Kotex or Tampex. The pads that stuck to your underwear & did not require a belt were a new innovation. Then one day there were "wings" on the Stayfree and Always joined the brands. Then the pads got thin. Then they started coming in assorted absorbancies and thus a Wall was born. For the majority of those 25 years I stuck with Tampex & failed to really notice just how many different types of pads there are. Tampons themselves were straining my decision making abilities as it was (scented? cardboard applicator, plastic applicator or no applicator? light, heavy, medium or multi pack?). The whole idea of choosing a pad was just too much & so I always bought Always when I needed some. The hospital where my sons were born sends you home with a couple packages of Always and I stuck with it. But the other day I was waiting for a prescription & had time to contemplate the bounty before me. Every brand has a gimick, but one stood out above all others. On the box of Kotex Ultra Thin (with Leak Lock), in bold letters, is written "SHHHH Quietest Packaging"

Is noisy pad packaging a problem?? Did the results of some poll say "Yeah, we'd like to use your product but that wrapper is just so darn *loud*" Are there women out there concerned about the sound their pad wrapper makes when they open it? I imagine a woman, frozen in a public restroom, needing to change her pad but too embarassed to open the new one because the loud rustling will announce to everyone else in the room "SHE HAS HER PERIOD!" Then I began to wonder if I had ever noticed the sound of pad packaging being opened when I was in a public restroom. I cannot recall. I've never thought about it. You hear noises sometimes from other stalls. I, for one, choose not to speculate on what those noises might signify. Perhaps it is time I started.

I bought the Kotex because I just *had* to know if they were that much quieter. Always has a plastic wrapper that is taped down & sealed up the sides & there is a definate ripping noise when you open it. The Kotex wrapper was more cloth like & thinner, not taped but still sealed up the side. It was much quieter when it was opened. But unless Kotex has pointed it out too me I don't think I would have noticed.

I never thought I would one day be in a bathroom comparing the relative loudness of pad wrappers. It's just not something that ever crosses your mind you might be doing. Cooking dinner? Yeah. Weeding the garden? yeah i thought I'd probably do that. Comparing noisy pad wrapping? no, never.

Firsts

Yea me! I'm on top of things for once!

I design quick pages for www.1hourscrap.com. I've been doing this for about 7 months now. We have to design 4 sets a month at a minimum. Every month, despite my plans & my best efforts, I am always scrambling the last week of the month to get my sets finished. Well, not this month! It is June 1st and I already have 2 sets finished! First time ever! I am doing stand up invitations & birth announcements this month. I've completed the birth announcements so far (even the sample pages!) and I have the backgrounds & elements et for the invitations I am doing. I'm doing a set of generic style "You are invited" & "Its a Party" style invitations and then I am going to do a set of Birthday Party ones as well.

These are the announcements



and this is what one looks like when it's printed, trimmed & folded. I need to get a better shot for the store example though.

This is Mike. He is the former owner of the loathed sofa, the inadequate desk and the fairly nice dresser that we now own. I like Mike, which is a good thing because I would otherwise be cursing his name everytime I sat down on the sofa or at the desk. As it is, I often mumble unpleasantries about the person who accepted Mike's offer of the sofa & the desk....DH. Mike is one of his oldest friends & I actually met Mike months before I met DH. He'd been our roommate off & on in our early years in Virginia, but was living in his own place (with his own furniture) when he relocated to California.

This is my computer area. We have an L shaped family room. The computer is in the far corner of the short end of the L. The TV is in the corner where the 2 sides meet and our chairs, bookcase & the loathed sofa are in the long end of the L. The long end also has a sliding glass window on one side & a wood stove in the left top corner. If you go straight out the bottom of the L, you enter the kitchen.

There is a gate around the area to keep the toddlers out. Drake calls it "Mommy's office" though DH occasionally sets his laptop up on the dresser. Everything in the area is 'temporary' and 'will do for now'. Including the desk. The desk belonged to the same friend who gave us the sofa & my feelings for the desk are similar to my feelings for the sofa. It is inadequate to the task. The desk is from the late 1940's when people and chairs apparently were much narrower than they are today. No chair with arms, currently in existence, will fit in that tiny opening area. Meaning I can either have a chair that gives me arm support or I can have a chair that gets in close enough for me to type comfortably, but not both. The shelving next to the desk is a walmart special. I like the shelving, but something a little less 'garage storage' and a bit more 'family room' looking would be nice. I have a lot of peripherals - printer, scanner, wacom, wireless router & big surge protecting multi plug, plus the CPU itself. So the shelves are a real necessity. I like to have everything handy. There is a little stack of rigged up shelving between the walmart special shelves and the dresser (also a gift from the owner of the sofa. I like it & as soon as I can figure out how to paint or otherwise resurface it, I will love the dresser.) The rigged shelving is made of a night stand, a serving tray and a couple wire cabinet shelves. It holds all my notes, my bills, the lessons & tutorials I have printed out & all the CDs & DVDs. The dresser holds little used, but needs to stay out of small hands, stuff.

I like having the PC in the family room. I can scrap & keep an eye on the boys, or chat with DH. We like having everyone in the same area, even if they are doing different things. DH says he is going to build me an L shaped desk to fit in that corner & that it will have built in shelves on each side going over the top of the desk. He is going to use the existing desk as a base. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

The weekend was ok. We went up to the mountains to some property some friends of ours own along a river. It's a very shallow river where they are, up to my waist at most 90% of the time, so it's great for the kids. It was their DD's 3rd b-day and they were having a weekend long camping party. We went up Saturday morning & came back Sunday night. The males camped out, I stayed in a Holiday Inn about 20 minutes away. DH owed me a night alone from when he went camping a month ago & I'm not much on camping, so it worked out well. The little boys had a blast. Drake's first question was "when can we get in the river?' and spend the rest of the time in the river, complaining that he had to get out, & asking when he could get back in. He also went fishing with DH & caught a fish, though he didn't seem to realize this was a big deal. It was hot, though the water was chilly. It was fun hanging out with our friends but I didn't have much to say & just lounged a lot. The 2 women are yoga instructors (different types of yoga) and talked about classes & things that I had nothing to add to. But it was nice to just be quiet & sit in the woods. They both teach prenatal yoga & one is working on getting a kids' yoga or mommy & baby yoga class together. That got me thinking about a book I got called "Baby Buddahs" which is about teaching meditation to toddlers. I got it because I think Drake could do with learning to relax & focus. He gets so wound up sometimes, gritting his teeth intensely - not with anger, just with energy. So I decided to finish reading it this weekend when I got home & use some of Drake's quiet time to teach him about meditating. The kids all played & shrieked together & had a great time & we talked about how we do this group camping thing every year & wondered about what the kids will remember of it as they get older.

It was a long & tiring ride home Sunday night. I had both boys in the car because I was dumb enough to ask who they wanted ride with (DH & I each drove, they slept in his truck bed & I had to drive to the hotel. Dumb, but DH *hates* pitching a tent.) They were asleep within 15 minutes of leaving the campsite. It's a 2.5 hour drive home. Derek woke up about 25 minutes from home & cried the rest of the ride because he couldn't find his sippy cup & it was dark, on a windy 2 lane road with no place really safe for me to pull over & try & find it. Drake slept through it. Derek then would not settle to sleep at home. It was almost 10pm when Dh & i got in bed & started watching TV. Derek cries for water, cries for company, ends up in our bed by 10:50. He won't settle down & irritates DH so much he gets up & goes to bed in the playroom. I eventually convince Derek to go to his bed about midnight, doesn't last. He's back in bed with me by 12:30 & finally drops off at 1am, sideways across our bed. I wake up around 6am, with Derek curled next me , his head on my feet & his body at an angle hogging as much of a queen size bed as a 30 inch child can. I sent Drake, who came in the room, to get Daddy (who got at least 90 minutes more sleep than me) and went back to sleep. Derek was up about 8am.

I had a good weekend, but I am a bit worn out. Physically I didn't do much but I just feel mentally drained & i don't know why. I was finally able to find Digital Scrapbooking 5 & look forward to reading through it tonight.

Is creating "beautiful art" more important than the process of creating.
For me it is the process. Most of my hobbies are about the process, though I enjoy getting a beautiful result. I would not cross stitch, crochet or quilt otherwise. I love the process of them. The planning, the cutting, the stitching, watching something whole & formed grow out of scattered pieces. I feel the same way about digi scrapping. The process of making all the parts into a whole is what fascinates me. Sure I love it when the results are admired by others. But if I didn't find the process more important, the odds are I wouldn't do it.

We're going up to WV to celebrate a the birthday of a friend's DD. They are having a weekend long camping party at some property they own in the mountains, along a river. Dh & the boys will be camping. I will be not camping. I have a room at a hotel about 20 minutes away. I don't like camping. But the hotel is mostly because DH owes me a night alone & this is a convenient way for me to get it. He went camping with his buddies a month ago & we agreed I get a night in a hotel in exchange.

morning thoughts

When I woke up, or when I got up? These are 2 different times separated by about 2.5 hours. Derek woke me up at shortly after 5am when he came in our room& climbed in our bed. My thought at the time was "Please God let him go back to sleep.", which is what I think every morning that he comes into our room before 6am. And as usual he did not go back to sleep. After about 30 minutes of him tossing around & playing & occasionally snuggling up to me, I told him to go watch TV and he did. So i went back to drowse while DH got up at 6 & got Derek breakfast. I actually got out of bed at 7:30am, when DH leaves for work. My first thought then was "I am going to the gym today & I mean it." I haven't been all week because of Drake's recent separation anxiety. Its been growing on him slowly for a month or more but he's been downright hysterical about it this week. He tells me he is afraid he will miss me. So we have spent the last few days doing other things. But I like going to the gym & try to get there 3 days a week. He's gone through these periods before & periods where he gets upset when we *don't* go to the gym. When we talked about it last night he seemed to be getting upset just to see what my reaction would be, not because he was really upset. So I was determined to go this morning & if he pitched a real fit when we got there I'd deal then.

Never made it to the gym. Never made it 500 yards from my driveway. Flat tire. Turned around & came back to the house, tried to change it, couldn't get the bolts off. I used to be able to do that. I've changed every one of my flat tires & that is about 10, in my life. This is my second flat in 5 weeks. I had to get help changing that one from a guy who was willing to actually *help* as opposed to offering me his cell phone. Dude, if I had someone to call I would have done it before I jacked the car up. ::rolls eyes:: Don't know what has happened to my upper body strength. I even work out specifically on that. So DH is going to get an air tank from the repair place at lunch & coming home to inflate the tire so it can be driven in & they can fix it. I think he thinks I am going to do that..... The boys will be napping when he gets here. By the time they wake up & we get there, it will be 3pm & there is no point at all in arriving there at 3pm because they will never actually get to me & what the heck am I supposed to do with 2 toddlers In a gas station repair waiting room the size of the inside of my car?

How do you handle good byes?

I don't enjoy them but there have been few final good byes in my life. Apart from my mother in law, the people that I have lost to death, went when I was not there to say good bye. Saying good bye to MIL was very hard for me. I cried a lot.

A few people have moved out of my life to a new job or a new place, but even then, it was a physical goodbye, we could still keep in touch & while I was sad they wouldn't be there to hang out with, knowing we can still chat on email made it easier.

I try to remain upbeat about good byes, even the final ones, because while a door is closing for me, it is opening for someone else. And when I am the one moving on to a new job or a new location, the door is opening for me & new beginnings are a good thing.

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An update on the chocolate bars. I left out the ECLIPSE dark chocolate bar, 87% cacao & entirely too bitter for my taste, though DH loves it. I think chopped fine, melted & mixed with milk & a tiny bit of sugar it would make a great cup of hot chocolate. But as an eating chocolate, it is just too bitter.

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I've started typing these entries in my Life Journal program first & then copying them to blogger. I've been doing it the other way around & I get lazy & am now 3 months behind on copying things into Life Journal. It is some really incredible journal software. I've had for 4 years now. I go through periods where I never use it & periods where I record everything in it. It has topics & keywords to highlight parts of your entries so you can search later for things. Iit lets you specialize your entries so you can keep your spiritual journal entries separate from your exercise log or your daily entries It helps you enter you life history, your personal time line, has a daily pulse (energy, happiness, stress plus customizable options, I track my weight), plus a graph so you can track how your pulse categories are doing. It gives you prompts & quotes to write from. Apparently they now have specialized versions of the software as well. If you are into journaling or just want to keep your blogging somewhere you can back up, this is a good way to do it. http://www.lifejournal.com

some pricy chocolate

I love Dagoba Organic dark chocolate bars. They are kinda pricy $3-4 a 2oz bar but they are so good & they are slow eating chocolate. They are not Hershey's that you can just eat without really thinking. The dark chocolate bars *demand* you sit & pay attention to them & 2 small pieces is really all you need at a sitting. They come in an assortment of flavors but I have to go out of my way to find them just in general, & I have not come across all the flavors yet. These are my favorites

New Moon 75% cacao
Roseberry
and Lavender,which is not available individually on their website for some reason. It's a lavender essence with blueberries in it. Sounds weird but tastes good.

I have not encountered the XOCOLATL, which has chilis, the MON CHERI or the LIME flavored ones. The plain DARK is ok, but I prefer a Hershey's Special Dark.

I amnot fond of their milk chocolate flavors. I've tried the LATTE and the CHAI & was disappointed both times. Too sweet & bland & the spicing was too strong. I have not tried the HAZELNUT, BRASILIA or PURE MILK because I have not seen them yet.

So if you are looing for some good, bittersweet chocolate bars, the kind you indulge in when you have 10 minutes to slowly nibble your way uninterrupted through a couple of pieces, try the Dagoba bars. They are worth the price.

I got this link from Bethy's blog. I've never heard of the artist but I like that I would 'inspire an enchanting portrait"

Who Should Paint You: Gustav Klimt

Sensual and gorgeous, you would inspire an enchanting portrait.. With just enough classic appeal to be hung in any museum!

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

Pets

We had a few pets when I was growing up. They all arrived in the house when I was between 6-10 and I don't really recall which arrived first or if there was overlap.. We had a couple hamsters. Mine was named Princess. I can't remember what my brother named his. Princess had some babies at one point but they didn't live. We had a fish tank. We had that for a while. Lots of different fish in it at various points. I only remember Mr Cat, the catfish, though. We also had a dog. A minature schnauzer. Her name was Puppet. I was 7 or 8 when we got her. She was supposed to be the family dog, but she was really my mom's dog. That dog worshipped my mom. I remember dressing the dog up in baby doll clothes sometimes. Puppet died when I was in college.

The first pet I ever had as an adult were hamsters again. I had them for a couple of years in college because even 'no pets' apartments would take hamsters (and they were cheaper than fish tanks).

Scent

The smell that reminds me most of childhood is a mix of the perfume Chanel No5 & this perfumed talc powder(but I don't know what the name of it was) . My mom wore it all the time. So did both my grandmothers. When I smell it now I can picture thier bedrooms in the mid-70's, the colors, the furniture, even all the bottles & brushes they had laid out on their dressing tables. They had dressing tables....They sat down at them & did their hair & make up every day. I cannot imagine doing that now. I do everythign standing the bathroom, usually in a rush.

My parents are visiting this weekend & brought me a stack of photos from the 60's & 70's of them & me. Some of the photos smell like this mixture.

Childhood play

When I was little I loved playing with dolls or playing with Weebles or the lego people. I loved creating stories about them & acting those stories out, making them talk & walk around & do things. I would get together with a couple of friends & we would either play with dolls in someone's basement or we'd go outside with the Weebles & lego people and build a fort, house, boats, etc for them out of sand, rocks, dirt, legos & lincoln logs, then have a great adventure with them. I remember I had the Weeble treehouse & the Weeble cowboy set & my friend Alexis had a Weeble pirate island and some one else had a RV type set & we'd set them all up and have Weeble village. These were different Weebles than what they sell now, these were egg shaped, weighted on the bottom and had a piece of paper wrapped around them under a piece of clear plastic. The paper had their face & costume printed on it & if you got the Weebles wet, water would seep in and the pictures would run. I had a tape recorder, one of those 70's era black rectangular things with the huge buttons on one end you see in period cop shows during interregation scenes. We'd use it to record us playing with the Weebles.

favorite words

I wasn't sure which way to go with this - meaningful, fun, by sound...I love a lot of words for different reasons. But here are the 5 I came up with & why.

1. LUNCH - my philosophy of life revolves around lunch. It is the thing I miss most as a SAHM (apart from soft smooth hands). Douglas Adams, in "Life, the Universe & Everything " wrote about a group called The Holy Lunching Friars on Vondoon - The Holy Lunching Friars of Voondon claim that just as lunch is at the centre of a man's temporal day, and man's temporal day can be seen as an analogy for his spiritual life, so Lunch should (a) be seen as the centre of a man's spiritual life, and (b) be held in jolly nice restaurants This is what I believe as well.

2. NAPTIME - because that is when LUNCH is going to occur if I get one at all (but no jolly nice restaurant)

3. DEFENESTRATION - it means to throw someone out of the window & it has always struck me as funny (In both sense of the word) that this word exists. It's existance means that people were being thrown out of windows often enough that they needed a word for it. This is the part that strikes me as bizzar. However, for some reason I don't understand, this word reminds me of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which is why it makes me laugh

4. MOMMY - I never thought anyone would say it to me and I love to hear it. Though perhaps without the annoying whine as in "I want some juice please MMOOOOMMMMMYYYYY." a dozen times in a row because they were too busy whining to hear me when I said "ok" after the first time.

5. MILK - I just like the way it sounds. It sort of just rolls off the tongue

favorite words

I wasn't sure which way to go with this - meaningful, fun, by sound...I love a lot of words for different reasons. But here are the 5 I came up with & why.

1. LUNCH - my philosophy of life revolves around lunch. It is the thing I miss most as a SAHM (apart from soft smooth hands). Douglas Adams, in "Life, the Universe & Everything " wrote about a group called The Holy Lunching Friars on Vondoon - The Holy Lunching Friars of Voondon claim that just as lunch is at the centre of a man's temporal day, and man's temporal day can be seen as an analogy for his spiritual life, so Lunch should (a) be seen as the centre of a man's spiritual life, and (b) be held in jolly nice restaurants This is what I believe as well.

2. NAPTIME - because that is when LUNCH is going to occur if I get one at all (but no jolly nice restaurant)

3. DEFENESTRATION - it means to throw someone out of the window & it has always struck me as funny (In both sense of the word) that this word exists. It's existance means that people were being thrown out of windows often enough that they needed a word for it. This is the part that strikes me as bizzar. However, for some reason I don't understand, this word reminds me of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which is why it makes me laugh

4. MOMMY - I never thought anyone would say it to me and I love to hear it. Though perhaps without the annoying whine as in "I want some juice please MMOOOOMMMMMYYYYY." a dozen times in a row because they were too busy whining to hear me when I said "ok" after the first time.

5. MILK - I just like the way it sounds. It sort of just rolls off the tongue

comfort foods

Homemade cookies or muffins. Meatloaf. Fried egg & bacon sandwiches. When I eat for comfort I reach for high fat food because there is no comfort in broccoli.

I am eating one of my faves right now. Homemade chocolate chip cookies spread with a strawberry cream cheese & yogurt dip. It has yogurt in it therefore it is healthy right? It's a great dip for apple & pear slices, pineapple chunks (fresh) and strawberries. Drake is eating it with apples at the moment. I am hoping that I can start a patternt hat fruit is comfort for him

Drake is covered in poison ivy. The spots started appearly slowly Sunday & we were not sure if they were just bites. Then more Monday, started hydrocortison cream, yesterday he was one big rash. His arms, his face, his neck, his stomach, the backs of his legs, his private parts. He just healed up from it on his butt. The doc gave us some oral steriods to clear it up plus I have to put hydrocortison on it & anti-itch stuff. Poor kid, no wonder he has been so whiny lately.

bad habits

I shout too much at the kids & I take DH for granted. I try to work on these things - keeping my voice calm, imagining I have a studio audience watching my deal with my kids, telling DH thank you often, commenting that I appreciate that he did whatever it was. But then after a few days I am back to shouting in irritation & ignoring DH's efforts.

I live with 3 people who are absolutely incapable of cleaning up after themselves or finding a darn thing by themselves. Granted two of them 3 and 2 years old but when the shoe is right in front of him I should not have to come in from the kitchen, where I am attempting to cut veggies for dinner, pick it up and hand the shoe to the 2 year old who apparently cannot look down. This happens all day and is why I end up shouting & am not really appreciative that DH made cookies (because of the mess left behind him).

But I am working on it. I resolve every morning that I won't raise my voice to my children in any form that I would not wish to hear addressed to myself and that I will thank my husband when he does things (He thanks me all the time) Many days I manage to do this. Some days I've failed by 9am. Most days I have about a 70-80% success rate.

eta - Heather, bunco is a dice game, played with 3 dice at 3 tables of 4 people. You roll for certain numbers every round & you get points for various combinations. And at the end of every round points are added up & people move around to different tables. Everyone pays in $5 and at teh end of 15 rounds points are totalled and the money dividedup among winners in different categories. It's a lot of fun. I play it monthly with some women from my MOPS (mothers of toddlers/preschoolers) group

Menu for the next 2 weeks

in no particular order:

broiled salmon
salmon patties (with leftovers)
deep dish pizza or calzone (toppings dependant on leftovers)
hamburgers on the grill (Saturday)
chicken with rice
spaghetti
london broil
pork loin crock pot
grilled chicken
veggie soup & sandwiches
baked ziti
steak & spinich salad (leftover london broil)

I think we will have the pasta tonight, since it is too late to start the pork. Tomorrow night is bunco at my house, so Brad & the boys will go out to eat. I'll make a sandwich. I'm going to have veggies & dip, guacamole & chips and the Cafe's spinich & artichoke dip with bread, plus cookies, for bunco. My folks will be here Friday & we'll probably get Chinese take out. Saturday we'll do the burgers and one day the weekend after that I am owed a Mother's Day dinner. So technically I should have more plans than actual meals. we'll see.

my weekend

Saturday I spread out the gravel for the pool area while Brad was off on the tractor buying a backhoe attachment from a guy a mile or so away. Drake was in ecstacy when Brad came back with the backhoe on the tractor. We hadn't told him about it so he was really surprised. "My backhoe tractor!!! My backhoe tractor!! You got me my backhoe tractor that i've always wanted!! Fank you Daddy Fank you!!!!" Then it rained before Brad was able to do more than make a couple test digs with Drake on his lap. But it was enough. Later we went to a cookout that was hosted by the preschool Drake will be attending in the fall. Drake is in a shy & fearful phase right now, make worse by the fact that he has always been a bit shy & reluctant to try new things. So he stuck by us most of the time & wouldn't not go on any of the rides, but he did pet the animals & watched the (very LOUD) puppet show. The food was ok.

Sunday I slept in until 9am. That was it for my Mother's Day celebration. We did some work around the yard in the morning, not much though since it rained all day. I had my bi-monthly meeting in the afternoon & then Brad had to go interview someone who apparently could only meet him at 6pm on Mother's Day. ::Rollseyes:: He got home just in time for storytime. I loaded "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdaine on my iPod & went to bed.

These are some of my recent layouts. I've got my layout spreadsheet almost completed. I have the 60 individual layouts I have done this year in it. I need to add the mini albums still., but then I will be caught up & just keep a print out on my desk with space to write the new ones in as I create them. For some reason doing all this is easier for me than just creating a new text layer in PSP. I think my problem with that method is I have to oepn the file, in PSP, to see the info each time & really prefer my information in one central location, all printed out in nice rows & columns on a spreadsheet. I'm wierd like that

Mission Possible at DSP

Mission Possible at DSP

Book of Me challenge at DSP

K for the Scrapmommies ABC challenge

J for the ScrapMommies ABC Challenge

New minis

I finished my redo of my sweet baby girl & sweet baby boy mini albums. The originals are 6x6 and these new ones a 5x7. The 6x6 are available at 1hourscraps now and the 5x7's will be available there in a week or so. I am now working on a 12 page "baby's First year' brag book that will coordinate with this one but be in a more varied assortment of soft pastel & neutral colors.

Super power?

I'd have a super memory. I'd be able to recall with clarity & detail what I wanted to recall (Drake's first smile, the first time Derek said Mommy) and not recall very well the things I don't want to (the flame war I started over Mother's Day on an elist, the car accident on our way to FL).

I have a very good memory, but a rather vague & fuzzy one as well. I don't trust myself to recall details well of some things (like some incidents on message boards, dates of the kings of France, people's birthdays, grocery lists) but I remember lots of other things (other incidents on message boards, dates of the kings of England, how much my first job paid me [$1.20 an hour], what I ordered at restaurants I visited in another state 5 years ago) There is no real rhyme or reason to what I remember. I have periods of having a great memory & periods of having a really bad memory & I never know which I am in until it's too late.

So a super memory, with an edit feature would be awesome.

My project for 1 hourscrap this month is a baby mini brag book. I want to do 12 pages plus a title/journal page so people can use it as "First Year" book if they want or use the pages to divide months up in a photo album. It will be 5x7 because it scales down better than 4x6 scales up with graphic quality. I am also redoing my Sweet Baby Boy/Girl mini albums from 6x6 to 5x7 as well. They are solid blue or solid pink & only 8 pages. To make this easy on myself I am going to use the basic layout of the 8 pages but with different papers & elements for the Brag book. So I am turning out almost 50 5x7 plopper pages this month. But only doing the work of about 15.

If I had the day off tomorrow....

I'd sleep in. Then I would go to IHOP for breakfast - alone. Then I would go to the bookstore & browse as long as my heart desired. After that I would go try on pants, skirts & bras in a variety of stores (I really need bras). Followed by lunch, at Quiznos. Then I would come home to a preferably empty house (I'd have to travel at least 45 minutes to do any of the shopping & eating I mentioned) and digi scrap for a bit or maybe work on my cross stitch. I'd make myself some dinner without having to consider the likes & dislikes of the other 3 people in my life - cream of mushroom soup with toast covered in mushroom boloagnese sauce and a spring salad with goat cheese. (DH hates mushrooms & goat cheese. The toddlers only like breaded chicken strips or spinich salad.) Last I'd have a nice long soak (in a tub somebody else cleaned while I was out) and climb into bed to read a good book before falling asleep.

Now, if DH had the day off tomorrow I'd like for us to take the kids up to the National Zoo & spend the day there. His idea of a day off though would probably involve sleeping in & then doing things with power tools or the tractor.

A tasty recipie

One of my favorite meals is a chicken & potato salad combo I've been making for a few years now. It is loosely based on a recipie in "Cooking for Two" by Suzi Smith (1996) called "Grilled Chicken Salad with sour cream dressing". I'll give the book version at the end, but first some commentary.

1. The original recipie has you mix the chicken, avocados, bacon & tomatoes together with the dressing & serve on a bed of spinich with potatoes on the side. I mix all of it together with the dressing at once.

2. I prefer to use sweet potatoes rather than white ones. They taste better. They add a nice flavor that you don't get with white potatoes. They are also more nutritious. It's still good with white potatoes but its better with sweet ones. Try the sweet potatoes. They are not just for pie & marshmellowy Thanksgiving side dishes. Really, they are wonderful in savory dishes.

3. Steam the potatoes, whichever you use, if at all possible. The flavor is much better than boiled.

4. If you are serving this chilled, mix the chicken & potatoes with half the dressing & let chill, then add the other ingredients & the rest of the dressing before serving. It is also very good warm

5. The easiest way to make this is to use planned leftovers. Grill some extra chicken for it when you make grilled chicken for dinner. Or if you are roasting a chicken, roast a slightly larger one than you normally would. Leftover turkey is also delicious in this. White & dark meat both work well.

6. The base recipie serves 2-3 people & it scales up easily. This is a great dish for pot lucks & picnics.

Some other things I change from the original when I make it:
I leave out the tomatoes because I don't like raw tomatoes.
I've used Miracle Whip when I haven't had any sour cream. It adds a nice zip. Regular mayo is not as good IMO
I experiment with the vinegar, my favorite is garlic wine, tarragon is second.
I often leave out the garlic clove in the dressing & marinate the chicken in garlic & olive oil before grilling.
I prefer prosciutto to bacon when I remember to get it.
I've left the spinich out many times & don't miss it a bit

Recipie: - serves 3
12oz chicken - cooked & cut into bite sized pieces
equal weight in potatoes (white or sweet) cooked & cut into bite sized pieces
3 slice cookd bacon crumbled
2 small tomatoes - diced
1 ripe avocado - diced
5ozs spinich or arugula

Dressing: (coats 3 servings)
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 teaspoon Dijon
1 clove garlic
salt & fresh ground peppper to taste

color

My favorite color is purple - big surprise I am sure :). My blog is mostly purple, I am wearing something purple in my avis, 95% of the pages I do about me involve purple. I just really like purple. For some never adequately explained reason, this bothered the heck out of my family when I was a child. "Oh of course you chose the purple shirt." "Purple again?" "How about some other color than purple?". It's not like my wardrobe was all purple. I don't really recall have much of anything that was purple clothing-wise, because they always stopped me from getting it. My room was pink or peach (I never really had a say in what color it was) & I don't remember having many purple toys. So I am not certain where this idea of theirs came from. And I often wonder if they would have said it if my favorite color was pink or green?

This "Oh why not choose something other than purple, you have so much purple already." mentality stuck with me until I was 37. I would shy away from buying things that were purple because I had 'so much' purple stuff anyway. Then when I was pregnant with DS2, so soon after DS1, I went through my clothes & packed a bunch up & gave loads away. And I noticed something.... 90% of my wardrobe was green, black or blue - the colors I prefered when I wanted something other than purple. 3 out of 5 rooms in my house are green. One is blue & the other a pinkish grey (and they were painted those colors by the previous owners). There are some small purplish flowers in a wallpaper border in my kitchen, which is green & white. My folks commented "I see you got your purple in there." huh? So where had this myth that everything I own is purple come from and what do my parents have against purple? I never have gotten a straight answer from them. The fact that I liked wearing a particular purple dress when I was 3 seems an insuffient explanation for 35 more years of anti-purpleness on their part.

So I started buying things that were purple & telling that part of my mind that warned me against it to shut up already. I am not going to wait until I am an old woman to wear purple. I am going to do it NOW. (though I probably will not wear a red hat with it)

feeling optomistic

I'm feeling good about a number of things.

Brad has the frame for the playset canopy built & it just needs to be bolted permanently together & installed on the playset. As it is taking up our entire 'yard' area I am feeling optomisitic that he will finish this task by this weekend. He can hardly move it out of the way to begin something else.

The part that got broken on the tractor 2 weeks ago has been replaced & I am feeling optomisitc that I might actually be able to keep the place mowed this summer & we now have a weed trimmer too.

I have come up with a way to keep track of kits/designers/fonts used on my layouts. I've been reading about people putting a hidden text layer in the layout itself so you can read it when you open it up in PSP/PS. Tried that. Doesn't work for me. For a while I was really good about putting everything in PSP's 'image information' area but again, I don't keep up with it. It came to me today how to keep track of all this data, because I actually thought the word 'data' and not 'kit' or 'information'. The best place to keep track of data is in a database! Or failing that - a SPREADSHEET. Well, duh! And I am a spreadsheet person. I put everything in to Excel spreadsheets, don't know why it took me 6 months to think of it. I even havea column of little 100x100 thumbnails of the layouts so I can print it out & know at a glance - date, title, filename, kit, designer, font, challenge/reason, gallery posted to adn 'other info'. So I am feeling optomistic about finally keep accurate track of what kit I used in what layout.

Music

What music do I like? I admit to a partiality for 80's music - pop, metal, hair bands, alternative, but I was 13 in 1980 and 80's music is *my* music so I dont' apologize (though several friends thing I should :)) I also love Celtic music (clannad, gaelic storm) and medieval inspired music (Blackmore's Night & Loreena McKennit). I am not a fan of country music but everyone around here is. I have not kept up with mainstream music. I hear random songs that i like (on a radio station called SAM I pick up in the car) but I have no idea what Brittany Spears sings or Emminem's latest is called or who Puff Daddy is. I goto iTunes every so often & only ever recognize maybe one of the names on that are on the main page. I don't really care, eventually the boys will start listening to it & then I will too.

I listen to my iPod at the gym, though mostly audiobooks because listening to a good murder mystery motivates me to stay on the elliptical machine more than Duran Duran or the Scorpions do. I like to have music playing sometimes when I am making dinner, cleaning or scrapping. I put the 'modern rock alternative' Sirrus station on the TV (comes with DISH), but now I have DirecTV & need to figure out what XM stations to listen too. I've been listening to less music since the boys were born because I now appreciate silence in a way I never used to before. :)

Sofa Photos

the horrid sofa with the old sofa cover I just replaced. There are a gagillion pillows on the sofa because the back & arms are basically just 2x4's covered with a thin padding & very uncomfortable.


the horrid sofa with the new sofa cover & additional padding. I liek the cover & I like the sofa with all the padding. But, the padding consists of 2 old body pillows, a crib bumper, a half a dzoen old sheets, some quilt batting and some old table cloths. They are not going to stay in place & even 2 days into it have had to be reshifted back where they belong more times than I can count. But when they are in place they are comfy. This is the more or less what i want in a sofa, only with the padding stitched & attached into place. If it had a fold out bed that would be good too.

humor

The prompt for the weekend is post your favorite joke & tell why it is your favorite.

I LOVE puns! I love wordplay. I love something that makes you have to pause for a second & think. I love that they make you groan and giggle at the same time. These are a few of my current favorite puns

=======================
A botanist was trying to research some details about a particular kind of fern, so he sent a request to all his collegues, asking them to send him any information they had about it.

Unfortunately, he didn't word his request very well, and all the botanists he'd contacted thought he was looking for details about any ferns, rather than just the one species. So within just a few hours of sending it out, his fax machine was buzzing with piles of useless documents about all kinds of ferns - there were tree ferns and wood ferns, ostrich ferns and cinnamon ferns... but very few about the particular type he wanted.

So he sent another message to everyone:

If it ain't bracken, don't fax it.


==================================
An enterprising journalist decided to get the scoop of the day by photographing the fearsome phantom that lived in the spooky old mansion house at the edge of town.

When he entered the house, armed with only his camera, the ghost decended upon him, moaning and wailing and clanking chains.

"I mean no harm; I just want your photograph," the journalist said bravely.

Pleased at this chance to make headlines, the ghost posed for a number of shots, and the happy journalist rushed back to his darkroom and began developing the photos.

Unfortunately, they turned out to be so underexposed that nothing could be seen in them.

He was distraught, and went to a local pub to drown his sorrows. Meeting his friends there, they asked what was wrong. Not wanting to tell the whole story, he simply explained with a single sentence: ......

"The spirit was willing, but the flash was weak."


===============================================
A debt collector knocked on the door of a country family, that made their living weaving cloth.
"Is Jack home?" he asked the woman who answered the door.
"Im sorry," the woman replied. "Jack's gone for cotton."

A few weeks later the collector tried again. "Is Jack here today?"
Once again the answer was "No, sir, I'm afraid he has gone for cotton."

When he returned for the third time and Jack was still nowhere to be seen, he complained, "I suppose Jack is gone for cotton again?"
"No," the woman answered solemnly, "Jack died yesterday."

Suspicious that he was being avoided, the collector decided to wait a week and investigate the cemetery himself. But sure enough, there was poor Jack's tombstone, with this inscription: ...

"Gone, But Not for Cotton."


=====================================
Several years ago, Andy was sentenced to prison. During his stay, he got along well with the guards and all his fellow inmates. The warden knew that, deep down, Andy was a good person. So, the warden made arrangements for the inmate to learn a trade while doing his time.

Some three years later, Andy was recognized as one of the best carpenters in the local area. Often, he would be given a weekend pass to do odd jobs for citizens of the community. And he always reported back to prison by early Sunday evening. Andy was a model inmate.

One day, the warden considered remodeling his kitchen, though he lacked the skills to build a set of kitchen cupboards and a large counter top. So he called Andy into his office and asked him to do the job for him.

To the warden's surprise, Andy simply refused to help.

"But you're an expert, Andy, and I really need your help," said the warden.

"Gosh, warden, I'd really like to help you, but counter fitting is what got me into prison in the first place."

Accomplishments

There haven't been many lately for me. But I am not really trying to accomplish anything much at the moment either.

I finally mopped the kitchen floor last night. Even used Pine Sol instead of baking soad & soap so it smells clean too.

I got some decent work in on my cross stitch project.

I remembered to cancel DISH before they billed us for another year of service. Direct TV is coming today to install.

I didn't lose my temper with the boys while they were running like little demons all around the stores when I was shopping yesterday.

I did manage to get to the gym today.

I have root canal part 2 in about 2 hours and I have managed to not freak out so far this week about it. Which has me worried. I spent the better part of 10 days stressed out & terrified about part 1 and it didn't hurt a bit, except for the shot. what if the pain you feel is inversly proportional to the fear you experience & because I am calm about it now I will be in agony during it? Logically I know that is rediculous but that idea has always had a small part in my thought process when dealing with things I am afraid of - if I am afraid *enough* then it won't be so scary

I DESPISE MY SOFA!

Really. I loathe the thing. Always have. We got it 3rd hand, for free. from a friend who was moving out of town 6 years ago. We'd been talking about needing a new sofa beacuse the one we had was falling apart & DH comes home & says "Sofa problem is solved! Mike is giving us his!" I so wanted to kill Mike right then. I didn't like the sofa when it was his. I really detest it now that it is mine & with every passing year I detest it more (if that is possible). It isn't comfortable. It is ugly. The staples from the recovering that was doen to it before Mike got it are coming loose.

It is on my mind at the moment because I just bought my 3rd sofa cover for it today. It has a flat top & skinny flat arms. No sofa cover in the universe is made for this shape sofa. They all are made for sofas with high backs & puffy arms, so I end up tucking in yards of fabric (that never stays tucked) or suffing old pillows and blankets in the spaces to make it puff some & they never stay in place either. We have pieces of plywood under the seat cushions because it has lost it's firmness.

Given my rather strong opinions on this sofa you may be asking yourself "Why has she been suffering with this sofa for 6 years if she despises it so much?" And well you might ask!! The horrid thing is still in our living room because DH cannot see spending $800-1000 to replace what he calls "A perfectly good sofa." He managed to justify spending $500 on another chainsaw when we already have what I would call "A perfectly good chainsaw." So now we have 2 chainsaws, but he just doesn't see my point about the sofa.

So I think one of these days there may be an accident involving one of these chainsaws and the sofa, which will then no longer be "perfectly good."

Where do I want to go?

There are 2 places I want to go that I am likely to actually go to:

1. Walt Disney World - and stay on Disney property, in a suite, with a jacuzzi.

2. LasVegas - and stay at the Venetian, Luxor or Excaliber, in a suite, with a jacuzzi.

I also want to travel around Europe for a couple of months, touring and staying in nice hotels, with suites & jacuzzis wherever possible. :)

The hotel is a good part of the experience for me. I don't enjoy trips as much if I am spending my nights at the local Bates motel.

Where I am actually going this month - camping in WV - no suites, no jacuzzis, no plumbing whatsoever. I don't like camping. It doesn't fit my 'suites with jacuzzis' vacation ideals.

I must admit however, that I have only very rarely actually stayed in suites or had a jacuzzi in a hotel room. Aside from getting lucky on a few business trips, I have only twice actually paid for such a room. But i would dearly love to do it more often. "Standard room, non smoking 2 queens" a the Comfort Inn is my usual room.

At last, I scrapped!

My first layout in over 2 weeks! It is a scraplift of 'Muches' by Lisa Swift from the CK top 10 new faces. It uses Amy Blesser's Daddy's Ties papers and I did it for the DET Boot Camp challenge. I've had it in mind to do this layout for awhile I just hadn't found the right photo.

Tuesday's prompt is...

Right now you should be doing ______ instead of being on the computer.

My answer: NOTHING! For once I am on the computer during my regularly scheduled computer time. There are things that need doing, but now is not the time for doing them. The boys are napping & that means this is *my* time. No cleaning gets done during my time unless the Spirit moves me - it rarely does.:)

common ground

I don't think I really had any hobbies or interests I shared with my mom while I was growing up. We both read a lot, but that is about it. The main 'thing' I remember my mom being really into doing when I was a kid was puzzles. She still is. She puts together those 2 sided 1000 piece puzzles with no photo to go by. I've never been that into jigsaw puzzles. I don't remember her doing any 'crafty' hobbies. She didn't sew unless it was to hem something, never crocheted or knitted or cross stitched. She cooked because she had to, not because she particularly enjoyed it. She played bridge with the neighborhood women & she now plays tennis. Mom was always busy with things. She belonged to various organizations & was usually the treasurer or committee chairman. I think that was like a hobby to her. Ihave no interest in that.

I learned to sew & crochet & cross stitch from my grandmothers. I learned to cook on my own. I hope to share my interest in cooking with the boys. I'm going to teach them to sew too.