Tales of a Shoebox Princess

I have coughed a lot the last few days. I have coughed enough to tone my upper body in ways it has not been toned before. Yesterday was the worst; my cough and I duked it out over control of my lungs til both of us were weak and weary. I won though, today, my cough is languishing and my muscles are not threatening to burst. I was able to work today, even though while at work, I was unable to do a cartwheel and a bridge. I did, however, manage a somersault. I have skillz, yo. After work, Hayley shared with me her latest internet fascination, Bad metaphors . Go there and laugh. I pity my preteen and adolescent self, with only four channels on the TV and no internet to amuse me.

My van likes to surprise me, or maybe more accurately, play tricks on me. The van started up just fine this morning and we had no trouble on the way to seminary. All was well. When seminary was over, I went out to the car to start it, but it just sat there, ignoring the key turning in the ignition. We tried jump-starting it to another car, but that didn't work either. One of the teenagers who rides in my van from church to school noticed that there was a severed hose leading from the air filter to the engine. Jim drove the white car to the church and drove us all where we needed to be. I was half an hour late to work. Sigh. Jim then went back to church to see what he could do with the van replaced the broken hose and the van started right up. Now because it is November, the month where we consider those things for which we are grateful, I have decided to be more like Pollyanna and am going to list the "fortunatelys" in this situation. 1. Fortunately, there were still pe...

This time, specifically with my boys. Get this: we (and by "we" I mean "the boys and I, but mostly the boys") are going to CLEAN THEIR ROOM! My part is going to be mostly saying "Are you sure you need to keep that? Really? Like five years from now you are going to wish you kept that box of cardboard cereal box cut-outs? No. Really. You are NOT keeping that." Woohoo! It hasn't been cleaned since the Great Room Switch and I'm sure the dust bunnies have multiplied beyond my mind's capacity to comprehend. That and there are ants on the floor.

My life is in flux right now. My body doesn't like to be in a state of uncertainty though, and I've had a nervous stomach since I got an appointment for a group interview with a bank for a teller position. This process of application is long and filled with proverbial hoops. Hoop #1: online application, which leads to... Hoop #2: online screening, which leads to... Hoop #3: phone conversation with a recruiter, which leads to... Hoop #4: group interview. And I don't know that the group interview leads to (provided I pass). It's hard for me to blog when I am this agitated. I'm not depressed; I'm just too nervous to think of anything else. My mind is fixating. In other news, I get to teach seminary this school year. I just got the official call yesterday at church. I have been telling myself that I really need to get up earlier and the Lord heard me and said, "You want to get up early? I'll help you achieve that goal!" Har. No, I'm really ex...

I'm in a foul mood. I used to wonder why my mom used to say that she really wanted to become a hermit. Now I understand. I would love to go into full hermit mode and be totally antisocial (this does not include family. I'll always like to talk to family and do things with them). But instead I'm going to go to a movie. I'm taking my youngest two plus a friend of theirs that I invited, Hermit mode doesn't include this particular friend either because he plays well with both Hayley and Matt and therefore enables my hermitic (eremetic?) desires by keeping them out of my hair. The movie? Up in 3D. Yes, I am finally going to see it. I'm generally not a person who has to see a movie the MINUTE it comes out, especially if it's going to be a blockbuster hit. Crowds and I don't get along so well. Maybe that's not quite it; I guess I just don't mind waiting. If I can avoid the hoopla and excitement, I will. I like a nice quiet half-empty theater...

No time today! I have one day off this week, and of course I've jam-packed the schedule with appointments (one of which is a painful reminder that I am a "woman of a certain age") and to-dos. So you'll hear no more from me today, unless I grab an internet moment while making a cake that I had for the first time last Saturday. We'll see if it works. And thanks to Marissa for introducing the goodness that is the pineapple coconut cake to me, and YES I EVEN ATE THE COCONUT AND I DIDN'T DIE. It was even really good! UPDATE: SO NOT PAINFUL!

In other words, I should have stayed at home. Conferences at the middle school are now TEACHER-LESS. I brought Hayley to the school at the appointed time yesterday (8:20 a.m.---arggh! what was I thinking?). Since I'd been given fake child at 6 a.m., she came along too. So the three of us drive the 10 minutes to the school, get out of the van straight into an arctic blast (it's another cold weekend here in the land of 10,000 frozen nosehairs). We can't run on the sidewalk because it's an ice sheet, so it was slow going to the front door, miles away from where we parked. Finally we insert ourselves into the warmth of the foyer of the school and walk the next several miles in relative comfort. I don't see anyone but a few other parent/child combos. I don't see any staff. No one points the way. There is one signpost in the middle of a hallway intersection that wobbles slightly as the ghost of a breeze passes by. The sign says "Boo Fa r." Someo...

and I think I'm going to revisit the pizza I had for dinner. I blame the cats. My reasoning: About six months after we got our little Magic and Servo (or four years ago), I developed a perpetually plugged sinus cavity. So I went to the doctor. The doctor said I had to lose weight because my blood pressure was too high (and then as a side note, she prescribed Nasonex for the nose problem because she said the tissues were swollen per an allergic reaction and not from a viral cold). I cried because the doctor said I was fat. When my prescription ran out, I resorted to sneaking whiffs of Nasonex from Matt's prescription, rather than go to the doctor again and be told things that my fragile self-image cannot handle. When his ran out, I went to urgent care where I knew they would only deal with the problem I came in for and leave the other issues alone. This afternoon, I got a call from my clinic. I answered it. I shouldn't have. The cheerful scheduler said, "Your Nasonex p...

Let the sewing room receive her stuff! Oof, it's 6:20 in the a. of m. I'm not going to try to rewrite a whole Christmas carol around the finishing of the painting of the sewing room (enough gerunds for you?) at this early hour (I'm only up because fake child arrived at 6:10 and is at present sleeping in my bed). So Jim finished the room. Again, I would have helped but someone had to procure groceries for the family and, in doing so, had to fight crowds and wait in line for long periods of time. Bleagh. Who had the harder time, I ask you? He painted at a leisurely pace, with no one to bother him, and music he likes played in the background. I had to constantly herd a small child around and say no to requests for cookies, toys, candy, snacks, treats, sugar, more toys, and chocolate both from the fake child and from my infantile brain. And I had to brave the below zero temps and park in a crowded lot and jostle and maneuver in a crowded store and wait in line til my ear...

Today is family-minus-Katie picture day. I'll be sad that Katie isn't there to be in the pictures, but she has to be where she is, all grown up and dealing with grown up things. Jen (of Hawleyfocus) will be taking the pictures. We've not had a real family portrait type thing in a long time, other than that other time Jen took our pictures in Mom's back/front yard. Yesterday was a vacant day, one of those few in the year when there is nothing on the calendar and you end up doing whatever you want with no limits. I did have to take Jimmy to work and we upgraded our phones, but that was it. I didn't have to cook for any meal because of leftovers. It was a very relaxing day. I refuse to do the Black Friday thing. I treat the SAVE BIG BUCKS ON DOORBUSTERS sales like I do the lottery: I'll end up not getting what I want no matter what so I might as well not participate. And I don't want to fight the insane crowds (Wal-Mart employee trampled to death?) in t...

Ten things I want to complain about in a light-hearted manner, realizing that many people have it worse than I do. 1. Fake child came at 6 a.m. today. Didn't sleep well, so getting up this early is a bummer. 2. Jimmy skipped seminary today and then MISSED THE BUS. 3. Had to load up fake child in her parka, hat, and mittens and demand that Jimmy wear a coat. 4. Had to fight student traffic at the school. 5. Eyebrows stuck in angry-eyes mode, either that or the cold froze them that way. 6. I have nothing to blog about. 7. Brain is still fuzzy. 8. Can't believe I drove with a fuzzy brain. 9. I have a cold. 10. Angry-eyes unfroze finally, leaving me with Drippy-eyes cuz I'm still TIRED. Thankfulability (yes, even though I grumbled my way through a post, I'm still able to find something to be happy about): Today I am thankful for my vehicle. I haven't always had a vehicle for my own use before. As a teenager, I always had to share a car with my sister. Not...

Did all the little ghosts, ghouls, princesses, and pirates have fun tonight? I didn't think that many kids came around, but near the end of the night I thought that perhaps I did get a lot because I was afraid I was going to run out of candy. We had several very large groups of kids come through. Not a lot of kids younger than Matt though. Here is the lump of dirt with his good friend, Pirate. Pirate lives in a neighborhood of four houses. Knowing this, I invited Pirate to come to our neck of the woods where he had a much larger pool of candy-giving houses. And Pirate and Lump of Dirt and Kitty Cat are all very good friends, and have been since they were all very little. Also please note that you can see the prize I won from Bessie hanging on my Halloween tree on the piano. It's the big pumpkin. Very festive! Here we have Kitty Cat, Zombie, Kimono girl and Black Dress girl. It's hard to believe the giggling and make-up-ing and spraying of hair-ing is not Katie, b...

So you are stuck with a list of things to complain about and then a list of things to not complain about. Shoebox Princess being whiny: 1. Two kids are home sick today. It's nothing to worry over, one has been feeling lethargic and "sort of" yucky and is full of coughs a mile long, and the other is suffering a "weird" stomach. Both have had runny runny noses. So they are staying home and sleeping. 2. My foot hurts after abusing it this week by exercising. My left foot is the wimpiest foot on the planet. I exercise for a week and it moans and groans and refuses to heft its half of my weight. 3. My sewing room is still full of stuff. There is a lot of stuff in it. 4. The lawn hasn't been mowed in a while. Between Paul's CC schedule and homework and Jimmy's work schedule and homework, there isn't a lot of time when they are available to mow. I plan to let Hayley start mowing soon, but she's sick today. 5. I have tons of apples on my...

Today, we begin the back to school preparations. School won't start for another 2 weeks and change, but Hayley has schedule pickup and pictures at the middle school this afternoon. My huggy baby girl is heading off into the world of middle school with its preteen angst and sudden need for being popular. Katie was ready for it, Paul and Jimmy welcomed it, and I was fine with those three growing up, but Hayley is still, in my mind anyway, one of my "Little kids." And she's much more of a little kid than Katie was at the same age. Katie was chompin' at the bit to shave her legs all through 5th grade, and I wouldn't let her until she was officially a 6th grader, which meant she came home at the end of fifth grade after the last day of school, dropped all her end-of-the-year crud on the entryway floor, and barged into wherever I was and announced, "OK. I'm not a fifth grader anymore. Time to teach me how to shave." But not a peep out of Hayley re...

I'm just posting a quick note to tell you that I'm not back yet. Hopefully tomorrow I will be back to posting. Right now I'm using Katie's new little friend, a green Dell laptop. It's a cool little machine, but I miss my old workhorse of a Gateway. It has all my settings and bookmarks and shortcuts. Sunday night was a frustrating night for Jim. He was the person on the computer when it went down. He fiddled with it for hours. But the virus was too much for him and the Gateway. Curse our inattention to updating our security! Anyway, he took it in to the Geek Squad and they are working their magic. When he took the Gateway in, I suggested that he scope out laptops for Katie. I had saved a few pennies to get her one for graduation and as long as Jim was at the computer store, we might as well see what we could get for the cash I had on hand. Hence the little green Dell. Again, I hope to be back tomorrow with fun and pictures. Until then, here are ten reasons to hate Mo...

They bite. But that really isn't the bad part of it. Pick up the mouse, bam!--it bites you, you feel a bit of a pricking sensation, you drop it and it runs back into your garage to leave little mouse droppings under your garage shelving. Takes maybe 2 seconds. 2 and a half, tops. No, the worst part is then you have to dig through the cupboard to find your phone book while you worry about turning into a were-mouse, only to pull out the yellow pages for Savage, which doesn't have your dr. office which is in Burnsville. You pull out the second one, but it's for St. Paul. Luckily it has your clinic listed. Then you dial the wrong number within the vast network of your health care organization, get transferred three times, wind up on hold for another 15 minutes, then sheepishly explain to the tired-sounding call answerer why you need to talk to a nurse. Then you get put on hold for the nurse only to have her call you while you wait for her to answer your call (can't ...

Still no jury duty, although if I'd been in groups 1-7 (I'm in 11) I would have had to show up at the courthouse basement (where they have installed the abattoir--Jurors check in, but they never check out--TOTALLY A B-MOVIE HORROR MOVIE IDEA! Someone call *insert name of famous schlocky horror movie director and/or producer here*) at 8:15 a. of the m. today. Katie had her band awards night last night She got a pin for being in Jazz band, a pin for being the drum major, some Minnesota-shaped dangly things for contest participation, a flute keychain for being a senior, several certificates signifying her participation in various things band-related, and she got a hug from a mono-riddled band director. I hope she lives. And she got a DVD of China band trip pictures. Birdies in a nest under our deck:

1. Jim is still gone; he's probably in Nebraska by now. 2. I actually heard the alarm this morning. Jimmy, who usually does, didn't. 3. Katie never hears the alarm. We have to beg and prod and cajole her out of bed. I got to do that today. At least there is no seminary so I didn't have to get up SUPER early. 4. Dinner is a heinous chore when Jim is gone. 5. I hate driving too. 6. I still on jury duty. But so far, NOTHING. Good thing today, though. I don't know who would have done the after school driving, since Jim is gone. 7. And I hate doing dishes. 8. But most of all, the evenings are boring and I have no one to talk to. I could talk to the kids, but it's hard to talk to the children ABOUT the children. They think I'm lecturing. 9. Jim is going to miss the band awards night for Katie. 10. This is getting old. This reads like a major downer, but really I'm fine. And I'm doing all the things that I "hate" doing. And I'm fine...

Called back today at 11:30 a.m. The message for all potential jurors was...(wait for it)... "Call back at noon today." Half and hour. I have half an hour to live. Update: I called in at noon. They said call back at 4:30.

It's part one only because I've only mentioned jury duty in posts with other topics discussed. This post is all about jury duty. I called in at 11:30 a.m. today like I was supposed to and the recorded message said to call back tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. Boy, jury duty sure is fun (written with a medium serving of sarcasm).