It got 3 out of 5 right.
| What Your Fridge Says About You |
 You tend to be a fairly thrifty person. You splurge occasionally, but you're mostly a saver. You are a very adventurous person. You love to try new things, and you get bored very easily. You try to be responsible, but you don't always succeed. Your heart is in the right place though. You are likely to be married - and very busy. |
Nobody delivers to here. Nobody has ever delivered to here and if they weren't delivering when gas was under $2 a gallon there is no way anyone is suddenly going to decide to deliver out here.
OK I take that back. The General Store did, briefly deliver out here & they did deliver everything in the store from pizza to milk to cat food to beer, but their mark up is outrageous and then they tack not only a $5 delivery fee but a mileage fee onto the order. We live 7.4 miles away, the deliver within 9 miles and charge by the mile. Even Brad's truck gets better mileage than we would be paying the delivery guy. And the milk was $4.25 a gallon when it was $3.50 everywhere else. A large pizza & a gallon of milk ended up costing almost $30, for which we could drive into town, get Papa John's to go and get milk from the Food Lion in the same plaza for less. Then they stopped doing it because of gas prices.
I'd like chinese food delivered, or pizza or subs or any damn thing really. I don't care that it won't be hot - nothing is ever hot when DH brings it home anyway. I just want to eat at a reasonable hour & if I could call someone they could have it here before DH gets home and we could eat before 6:45, which is the earliest he gets home if he has to stop & pick up food I've called in.
Mostly though I'd like groceries delivered. I find the whole idea of going online and ordering groceries & having them brought to my door fascinating. The same way I find most sci fi fascinating. It's another world. It's THE FUTURE and not one I'm ever going to be a part of. People bring groceries to your house! Bags of chicken, milk, yogurt & cheese. Who picks out the produce? What if you think it is overripe? Can you return it? How do you cash in the coupons? It gets complicated when I start to think about it. Groceries are a hands on affair to me, especially since I am trying to get away from using too many packaged foods. I find the idea appealing, but as with so many appealing ideas, I don't know how I would deal with the reality.
I just blew through 13 of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books. I read 3,4,5 and 7 over the weekend and 8-13, plus the 2 novellas, between 11am Monday morning and 10pm Thursday evening - totally ignoring my children for 3 solid afternoons. I have no idea what they were doing from 1pm to 6pm Mon, Wed & Thurs. Sometimes they came in the room with dinosaurs, occasionally I heard them in the playroom. I did get them snacks, but apart from that I was in Stephanie's life, not my own.
Obviously they are light reads, 3 hard back books in one day is a bit much even for me. But it has been ages since I was so fully taken into a series, especially one that made me laugh so hard I wasn't able to see the words through the tears. I think Jasper Fford's Thursday Next series was the last time I neglected my children in favor of books in any serious, solid reading time, way. I read all the time, but most of the time it is for 30 minute segments and I am aware of what the boys are doing &prepared to put my book down & interact. This week I really have no idea what went on in my house. everyone is alive, healthy and nothing has been damaged or broken, so I assume they did as usual - played with dinosaurs, pretended to be Indiana Jones, raced in Mario Kart, watched some Land Before Time & Thomas DVDs and given the mess in the playroom, spent a good deal of time with the Imaginext pirate ships.
I'm glad it went well because it will happen again. I love to read & sometimes I get lucky & find something that absorbs me so completely I am totally unaware of my own surroundings while I am reading it. Granted, a 15 book series was a bit much, even for me but I really needed that. I feel so much better now.
I have book 14 and the other novella on order from Amazon. They should be here Wednesday. I bought all the other books in a set on eBay today. There are books I don't mind checking out of the library and there are books I must own. For the sheer laugh out loud escapism of them, I must own the Stephanie Plum series.
I've been alone in the house for 48 hours. The males went camping Wednesday morning & came back around dinner time today.
What did I do with all this time alone?
First I scrubbed the kitchen cabinets, counters & appliances thoroughly. The way things can only be cleaned if you are guaranteed not to be interrupted during the process.
Second I completed the last pages of my hybrid album & began to print them out.
Third I completed a layout for my new CT position. :)
Fourth I read all of Face Down Below the Banqueting House. Eh.. I've read nearly all the books in this series and while I liked the first 3-4, I'm not loving the more recent ones. Some of the recurring characters are getting a bit annoying.
Fifth I scrubbed, mopped and wiped down the kitchen floor. I have deep sympathy for 19th century scullery maids. My floor is natural slate with all the natural unevenness that comes with it. So while mopping is a useful stopgap, at least 2x a year I have to get down on my hands & knees with a bucket of soapy water (repeatedly dumped & replaced), a washcloth and a scrub brush and SCRUB the bejeezus out of the floor, taking care to wipe up the excess water with the washcloth or it will settle in the crevices & leave stains. Then once the scrubbing is done it has to have a rinse with a mop and then back down on the floor with a rag to wipe up the water. My knees and arms are killing me.
Sixth I went out for sushi with a friend.
Seventh I read Hot Six. I'm really getting into this series, so much so that I broke my own rule of reading series in order and skipped from book 2 to book 6 because 3,4, and 5 are currently checked out.
Eighth I assembled this:
my first hybrid album. I only had to reprint 2 pieces of it. And there is a smear on the A where it wasn't completely dry & some Mod Podge got on it. But other than that it went smoothly.
I've posted before about how I like the different Maya Road albums and others that Sweet Shoppe sells. And how I don't get along with scissors so I can't use them. Well, I've collected quite a number of premade album pages lately with Sweet Shoppe's FWP offers and I sort of feel I should at least try one. The Bree did a set of templates for the layer book my last week guesting for her. So I decided to bite the bullet and try it. I ordered a star album and a layer book.
Meanwhile, for practice I decided to do a couple of Sweet Shoppe's hybrid card album challenges. It is a set called 52 Pickup, new card every week. I figured it's 4 straight line cuts, how hard can it be? oh my....
This is the first one I did
I had to print it out 3 times before I cut it properly. Scissors...
This is the second one.
This time I used a penknife and a ruler on a cutting mat. Slightly better results. A bit a skew to the left where the ruler slid a bit, but not too bad. I had DH pick me up a razor knife when he was out yesterday. We'll see how I do with it on the next one.
I've got the layer album mostly created. I found some Mod Podge at Wal Mart finally, so now it's a matter of ink. Will there be enough? I'm hoping to get it assembled by Friday. We'll see
This month I read 14 new books and re read 2 other books. 6 were non-fiction and 10 were fiction.
I created 13 layouts, participated in 20 challenges and earned 28 points at Sweet Shoppe - giving me a 40% discount in June.
I was a guest CT member for Bree Clarkson and was turned down for 2 other CTs.
I paid $2200 to get my car repaired.
We went to Day Out with Thomas and to Great Wolf Lodge.
I crocheted over half a dinosaur.
I set up the swimming pool.
The boys finished K4 and K3.
We watched all of Firefly through Netflix.
I bought the boys some workbooks for the summer, to keep them up on what they learned this past year. It is so easy to forget things over 3 months & then have to relearn them. I don't have it in me to home school full time but I've always planned to supplemental school & I'm starting this summer.
Both books had summer reading lists and since I am dealing with K4 and kindergarten, many of the books are identical. I also found a reading list at the Daniel Boone Regional Library (my library didn't have one online) that is divided by age & grade. Again, some overlap, but not a lot. I now have a fairly decent sized list of books to work with when the kids don't seem interested in choosing their own.
I've got The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and The Well Trained Mind by Bauer & Wise on hold at the library. They are both due back June 3rd. I often find educational books for the kids on hold and I always wonder who has them. Is it the same person? Am I following along behind someone, finding the books or developing the interest just a week later than they do? Is it many people? Are they people I would like to meet & talk to? Why are they reading the books? What did they take away from them? How could I get in touch with them? I haven't searched the online database for the kiddy books, there are a lot of them & I know from experience that their presence or lack thereof in the database only partially reflects the reality of their presence in the library. The toddler, preschool & early reader books are not well logged.
I found The Wind in the Willows. Many Moons and a couple Captain Underpants on Bookmooch yesterday and requested those. I discovered a number of books on the reading lists were part of Amazon's buy 3 get the 4th free deal. The books in that rotate so I am keeping an eye on them. I ended up getting Harold & the Purple Crayon (50th Anniversary Edition), The Toll Bridge Troll, A Pizza the Size of the Sun (not in the deal), How My Parents Learned to Eat and Sheep in a Jeep.
DH & I have decided to work our way through many of the books in The Well Educated Mind. We're starting with Don Quixote, which the library does not seem to have..... but is interlibrary loaning for us. Shouldn't a library have Don Quixote in it?
On a Hoof and a Prayer is the fourth book by Polly Evans. This time she travels to Argentina to learn to ride a horse and to experience the country. I love her books. I find her stories compelling and fascinating. She is very descriptive about the places she visits and the things she experiences. Each of her previous books feature her exploring a country using different methods. It's Not About the Tapas, her first book, is the story of her travels around Spain by bike. She was a novice bike rider at the beginning and you could feel your muscles aching in sympathy with hers in the early part of her journey. She toured China by train and bus in Fried Eggs with Chopsticks and with her weeks old motorcycle license, rented a motorcycle and cycled all over New Zealand in Kiwis Might Fly. This time around, despite the title, her mode of transportation was more often than not, something other than a horse. There were horses early in the book and occasionally in the middle of the book but they were overshadowed by more mundane airline reservation issues. I don't think she intended to ride all over Argentina on a horse, but given her other books, I assumed there would be more riding than there actually was. It was a very good book, as well written and engrossing as her others, but I was expecting more riding. Her bike was as much a character in It's Not About the Tapas as she was, so was her motorcycle in Kiwi's Might Fly. Much of what I love about her books is reading about her struggles with transportation, the pain of biking up mountains, the crowded buses in China, the fear of opening the throttle in New Zealand. I had hoped there would be more about horseback riding, so I was a bit disappointed in this book. Her next one is about sled dogs in Canada & I'm hoping she spends more time with them than she did with the horses in Argentina. But both countries are very large and you can no more tour Canada by dogsled than you can Argentina by horse.
My biggest crush, started when I was 10, was on Han Solo.
Seriously. How can you not be in love with Han Solo? He's funny, he's dashing, he's rebellious, he's sexy, he's just disdainful enough, he's good with a blaster & is an incredible pilot. He made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs! How can you not love a guy like that?
In the years between Star Wars movies I had a passing crush on most of the guys in Duran Duran at one time or another
They wore make up than I did but that never mattered.
Then the Indiana Jones movies came out.
Indiana Freakin' Jones!!! I was 14 when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out & let me tell you it sparked my imagination in all sorts of ways that Han Solo had not been able to when I was 10.
I've had a 30 year crush on Harrison Ford. I just love that man!
I am a guest CT member for Bree Clarkson at the Sweet Shoppe this month! I've already done 3 layouts so far and am in the middle of a fourth. I love Bree's templates! I did this with one from her Popsicle Paradise set
i did this with one from her Inspired by Karen set
and I used the Popsicle Paradise kit for this one
You can see complete credits in my gallery at Sweet Shoppe, link at the right.
I'm currently working on an amigurumi dinosaur. I don't have a pattern & am trying to figure it out as I go. I'm working on a stegasaurus & I've unraveled twice so I have no photo. The boys have been really into dinosaurs lately.
In book news I read 21 books last month, which accounts for what did instead of scrapping or crocheting. 5 books were rereads, 16 were new. 5 were non fiction and 16 were fiction. 3 were actually audiobooks. So far this month I have read 5 books, 3 of which were light paperback mysteries & each took me about 4 hours from start to finish. Which is why I no longer buy light paperback mysteries. The cost to enjoyment ratio is just too low.
What Your Latte Says About You |
 You are easygoing and pretty simple to please. You don't put up a fuss... ever. You can be quite silly at times, but you know when to buckle down and be serious. You have a good deal of energy, but you pace yourself. You never burn out too fast. You're totally addicted to caffeine... but you like to pretend like you aren't! You are responsible, mature, and truly an adult. You're occasionally playful, but you find it hard to be carefree. You are deep and thoughtful, but you are never withdrawn. |
An Epic washer & dryer. Front loading. 4.0 and 7.0 cubic feet capacity! I can at long last wash my comforters in my own home!! I can also dry a normal load of laundry in less than an hour & a half!
That is the first layout I have done in over 3 weeks. I haven't had much scrapping mojo lately but I'm feeling like if I can get through this week, I'll be in a better mental place to scrap. Plus we're going to Day out with Thomas Saturday so I'll have some fun new photos to scrap as well. That means I'll miss the NSD excitement & sales. I seem to miss it every year though so I am used to it.
I've been reading a lot instead of scrapping or crocheting. I'm about to finish my 20th book this month this afternoon. giving me 15 new reads and 5 rereads.
I've also been working on a Gandalf figure but I'm not having much luck. My stitch counter keeps falling out of the yarn & I'm not tracking what row I am on very well. We have a long drive Saturday to the Thomas thing, so I'm going to see if I can do any better on the way there.
My Library Thing library is now completely up to date. 2042 books. I like that the 42 ended up in there without my realizing it. I actually have something about 1100 of those books in my possession currently.
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Stacey42
Now that this is done perhaps I can get back to crochet & digi scrapping. I haven't done a single layout or picked up a hook this month.
My parents were in town this weekend. The boys spent most of their time trying to get Grandma & Pa to put their books down & play with them, which they were perfectly willing to do. This meant that I could read a book in relative peace.
I read Excellent Women by Barbara Pym in one day. It was glorious. Then, later in the evening I discussed the book with my family. It was a good read. Lots of detail, well drawn characters, with that cozy British village feel. But nobody died & I found that very disconcerting. I have been reading a lot of mysteries lately & forgot this was just fiction. I read the first couple chapters with an eye toward guessing who the victim would be and speculating on possible motives by various other characters for doing away with this person or that person. But nobody was murdered. I was 6 chapters into the book wondering when the hell a body would turn up before I remembered this was not a cozy village mystery but a straight story. It left me feeling the book was a bit off. There was plenty of scope in the story for a murder, possibly even 2 or 3 (to ensure the murder's safety), lots of motives and some people who certainly could be believably driven to it. The main character was one of those 'excellent women' of village fiction, a spinster who just seems to get involved in people's live. Still, everyone persisted in remaining alive throughout the whole book. I liked the book, I was just slightly perturbed by it, but I think that was entirely my fault. I'm going to have to read it again when I am not on a cozy mystery spree.
After I had this discussion it occurred to me what I had said. "I have been reading a lot of cozy mysteries lately." In other words - I HAVE HAD TIME TO READ LATELY!!!! and I didn't even realized it. I am an avid reader. I am the child of avid readers. When we get together with my parents, once the kids are in bed there is a 90% chance we will all sit around reading. Or talking about what we are reading.
I had time to read when Havoc was a baby. I could read when he was sleeping or nursing or playing happily in his bouncer or the floor. Then he started crawling and had to be watched, then he was cruising, then walking, then Mayhem was born and it started all over, only without the 'time to read while he was a baby' part because I also had a toddler. I still had some time here & there, but there were other things I wanted to do with that time & working out how to spend it was tricky. There was little money to buy books, having lost my income & gained two dependants. My sanity was not up to taking a couple of toddlers to the library very often. (I find regulating my children's public behavior to be the most stressful part of parenting toddlers & preschoolers). I reread my existing books & occasionally bought a new one. But where once I would sit down & devour my new purchases in a few days, now a week could pass before I opened one book.
Some time in past 6 months or so something changed. The demons grew. They needed less supervision & were capable of longish periods of play that didn't involve me. Mayhem started school 3 days a week and I could go into a bookstore or a library and actually BROWSE childfree. Their behavior, individually, has improved to where I am not on constant high alert. (together they are still demons). I have new books in the house and I have time to read them. Every day almost I have at least an hour after dinner to myself. Most days I can grab a few 15-30 minute stretches to read. I have to do it standing up at the kitchen counter in order to not be immediately climbed all over, but that is a small price to pay. My to be read pile on my nightstand has 9 books in it, there are 5 waiting to be taken back to the library that I have finished. I have regularly been checking out and actually READING several books a week.
Which explains the lack of new layouts or crochet projects.....
March 31 - the Island of Sodor today
April 1 - I'm not sure who is hauling who
April 2 - beautiful day to play with the hose
April 3 - setting up the castle for defense
April 4 - what trains do when there is no track
April 5 - Curious George comes for a visit & helps make banana muffins
April 6 - Curious George learns to play cow racing.
I've been out on etsy looking at the lovely hand dyed yarns. They are all so pretty my hands just itch to reach through the screen and touch them. Problem is, odds are my hands really would itch if I touched the yarn but I have no way of knowing for sure without actually touching. Sniff... all that lovely yarn and I can't have any!
I just bought some Vinca superwash sock weight wool in a beautiful blue off of etsy. That's supposed to be the really soft stuff and it is soft ish on my hands, but a little scratchy on my legs and I'm afraid to make it into socks for fear I'd never wear them.
I have a wool sensitivity & it extends to cover mohair, angora, llama, and alpaca. I'm allergic to dog & cat hair too, so I'm assuming its just an animal sensitivity. Some wools, etc, are just a bit uncomfortable. I could wear them as a cardigan or shawl, assuming it didn't constantly touch bare skin. Most wools make me itchy and give me hives. Some make my eyes swell shut. Its not the lanolin, which most wool lovers immediately point to as the culprit, I can use lanolin lotion with no problem. Its the actual animal hair itself. How it is processed can make it easier on me. I have no idea how any of the wool yarn I encounter is processed, I just know I find things itchy when others marvel at it's softness. Making it impossible to buy yarn without touching it.
I want some nice, lovely, quality yarn to crochet with. I've been working on my afghan which is Red Heart acrylic, and I'm ready for a change. I'd love some silk or bamboo yarn but I'e only seen blends with wool that I can afford. Maybe it would be fine but I can't drop $11-15 on a maybe. I wish there was a yarn store around me so I could go and and get all touchy with they different yarns & then have some idea of brands & blends to look for. I'm making the drive to the big city tomorrow for Mayhem's hearing screening (he failed the doc's office test, but he can hear & possibly was not paying attention so the full screen is called for). There is a yarn store near the screening place. If Mayhem is in a good mood and not too grubby I may be able to check it out.
I want some nice yarn to play with.
There is this tv commercial running lately. It's for a cell phones or maybe for cell phone service. I'm not sure because the commercial content itself distracts me so much I pay no attention to the logo. It shows 2 people, one sitting outside on a park bench & the other sitting in a home, on a sofa. They are both holding cell phones and texting one another what are assumed to be romantic messages, given the doodles shown over their heads. Here is why I don't know what exactly is being sold & why I do know I am old. Every time I see that commercial I cannot help but say "Why don't they just CALL each other? They are holding PHONES in their hands." Obviously they have nothing going on to prevent them from actually speaking to one another. They are alone. They are not doing anything else. Why would you text someone in that circumstance? I can see texting if you are someplace where you cannot talk easily - someplace really noisy or someplace really quiet. I can see texting specific information that doesn't require extraneous conversation - a phone number, the amount the parking fine turned out to be. I can see texting useful or important info if you know the recipient is not in a position to take a call - in a meeting or at the dentist. But why, why why why, would you carry on a random text based conversation with someone when you are both sitting alone, doing nothing and HAVE PHONES IN YOUR HANDS?? I can see the usefulness of texting, I can even see the fun in randomly texting your significant other affectionate messages, I can even sort of understand texting 'what up?" to your friends but I don't understand the need to fully converse with it. I don't understand why the recipient of 'what up" would text back lots of info that would then be replied to with more info. Why wouldn't the recipient just call back?
So, obviously, I am old.
March 24 - the Pirates of Radiator Springs
March 25 - Mayhem loves to vacuum
March 26 - Car racing outside
March 27 - the Island of Sodor today
March 28 - my laptop is under attack!
March 29 - The trains get in a little light reading
March 30 - Bubble fun
