Tales of a Shoebox Princess

I scanned a photo album's worth of pictures into my electronic repository. The photos are from 1999-2000. Here are some of Hayley that I am particularly fond of. I love how Hayley folded her feet underneath her when she went to sleep here Hayley and an amaryllis She chose to use a pillowcase as a sleeping bag and here she fell asleep on a giant Pikachu. The children are still mourning the loss of this stuffed animal. It's their fault that it had to be thrown away--they loved it to shreds. Hayley and her version of a smile. Easter dresses and a rubber snake The little cheeky! She looks so different now.

I've been walkin' these streets so long Singing the same old song, I know every crack in the dirty sidewalks of Savage. Where "suburb" is the name of the game, And fat girls gotta walk their way in the snow and the rain. I got a load of exercisin' on the road to my horizon. But I wanna be where the lakes are all around me... OK enough of that. I took a walk this morning in very pleasant weather and surroundings. The picture about is at a local park where I sat and rested.

Today was the first day in a week that I felt capable of doing housework for an extended period of time. I was a madwoman in the basement...mostly because certain people don't pick up their clean socks and put them away, nor do people move the dumbbells to vacuum. We are just generally a bunch of lazy pigs in this house. We still had all the detritus from the recent computer switch sitting on the two-couch. I had to clean all that off and sort it out. I cleaned off the computer desk. I had noticed earlier in the day when I went to take a picture with my camera that my battery charger was missing! I panicked for a while. How was I to photograph the cats without a battery??? How was I to document the Halloween decoration set up? How was I to record further installments in the never-ending parade of pictures of band concerts and running meets? In my dedication to cleaning the two-couch, I was rewarded because I found the battery charger while I was cleaning up the computer-switch...

This recent lack of blogging activity is brought to you by a cold virus, lack of sleep, and too many projects that needed my attention. But now two of the three are over. The cold and I are still inseparable though. Here are some random pictures to peruse whilst I tend to my runny nose. You'll have to caption the pictures yourself. I am headed for bed again.

There. I've done all the work for you, Jenni.

Piddly tasks like cleaning out dresser drawers. I don't know what cleaning out dresser drawers has to do with party prep or graduation, but I made the little kids do it last night anyway. Matt filled three plastic grocery bags with clothing he has no use for anymore, and Hayley filled two. Now I won't have to hear anymore complaints about dressers not being big enough for all the clothes they have to put away. Plus Other Jim, who has a legitimate complaint about not enough room for his clothes, will get two drawers in Matt's dresser (drawers which were formerly filled with Lego sets and action-figure-type toys) and more space on a bookshelf because of some recent cleaning. OJ has previously used my laundry baskets to store his clothes that won't fit in his admittedly small dresser and therefore I was always scrounging around for laundry baskets. I hope this cleaning and purging makes scrounging unnecessary. (not likely) Katie arrives late tonight, party in 2 days,...

Remember my rock ? It's still around but... ...it's now inside, sitting in between the entertainment center and the wall. It came inside because I needed it for inspiration for a paragraph in an assignment for my class. So it's hanging out with me inside the house for a little while. Bet you were interested.

When I was a little girl, I loved metallics--anything gold or silver in color. I especially liked silver. I wanted silver shoes in the worst way. I finally got them when I was nineteen and wore them out. Yesterday, my love for silver was rekindled. Witness: Wow, my fingers look like uncooked sausages. Here's a picture where they look a little slimmer: Sister Jen, I'll have you notice that I did not get finger nail polish all over the skin around my fingers. I would like to mention that most of the time I don't wear nail polish. I don't get manicures (or pedicures). I have a nasty habit of chewing on my fingers and I've noticed that nail polish isn't all that tasty. But. I do like to wear it to keep myself from chewing on my nails every 6 months or so when my nails start to get long, which they are right now. And I saw this polish at Target and just HAD to have it. While I don't get manis or pedis, I do go to a salon to get my hair colored. I did ...

I haven't done a retro post in a while. I looked at my photo albums (back in the day when I used actual film and had the pictures printed up and then I stuck them in albums) and pulled one out to fish around for any usable pictures. I looked through the album and thought, "These aren't retro." But they are quickly approaching retrohood. The photos are nearly eight years old and as far as the two subjects are concerned, they are even older than that (and possibly never really happened at all). The first one is OJ asleep with a beanie baby on his chest. I think beanie babies are like cats; this one is presumably trying to suck OJ's soul from him as he sleeps. It's even got its tongue out, drooling in anticipation of owning OJ's soul. By the way, that quilt is now approaching threadbare-hood (threadbareness? threadbarity? It's gettin' old). And here is OJ in his "creative sleep" mode. Who on earth would willingly sleep like this? He has ...

Someone with a facial hair fascination on her blog sent me this. I think I look pretty smashing. I've always loved a goatee and a 'stache. Hayley says I look like the "Burger King guy."

I'll call this picture "A Tribute to 80s Big Hair and Glasses" (even though my hair isn't as big as big hair could get back then). A co-worker from my cashier job took this picture during work hours. I'm glad she took it so I could show you my LOVELY brown smock! And the shirt I sewed for myself (although you can only see a little bit of it). If you look closely, you can see the packaging of one of my favorite chocolate truffles. OK, the big hair is gone for the moment in this picture, ONLY because I washed it. The gigantic glasses, however, are still there. I don't know who took this picture--either Jen or Jake. I could do kind of an I Spy thing with this picture: find the hand with the missing finger, find the clarinet, find the fuse box (that was a joke for Travis who couldn't find my mom's fuse box when he and my sister visited for Christmas and he had to ask ME where it was. Mom either didn't know herself or she was busy. Fortunately, ...

This is a test of the emergency post-filler system. If this were an actual emergency, I'd be rambling on about hangnails, grocery shopping, spider stories, or something equally irrelevant rather than posting a few pictures sans comment.

I just loaded a bunch of pictures onto the computer. This is what you get when children steal your camera for their own nefarious purposes: Lots and lots of pictures of Star Wars Lego machines and characters. Then this is what you get when something funny happens (say that Paul didn't know what Jimmy was making) and you think you can squeeze a blog post out of it and then you forget. You have a picture of chocolate pudding that Paul thought was a)frosting, b)Hamburger Helper, and c)ketchup. Jimmy laughed at him for a long time for not knowing it was pudding. This is what you get when your son Jimmy convinces you to take several pictures of water streaming from the faucet because he says it'll look cool. You get pictures of a really dirty sink (how did THAT happen???) that you have to crop so the filthiness doesn't show, because the water droplets really do look cool. This is what you get when you really like flowers and can't stop taking pictures of them. Purple! This ...

I got a new camera. I saved my pennies (I call it embezzling from myself) and purchased a camera that will be able to handle capturing Paul running track and has better zooming capabilities. My old camera is a decent camera overall, but it didn't zoom very far (which is bad for band parents who sit far away) and it couldn't deal with action shots. There was a huge delay between pressing the "ignition" and the shutter actually opening. I really want to get some good shots of Paul running track this year and cross country next year. I gave my old camera to him, too, since he is next in line for a camera. Of course when one gets a new camera, one must play with it. Here is a sample of the playing: Tom Servo Kitty Paul texts. This is one of a series of continuous shutter action. I have a great new feature on my camera that lets me take a series of pictures in quick succession. Footprints in the snow My favorite Minnesota transplant Tom Servo in profile This pictur...