Tales of a Shoebox Princess

ONE WEEK. I can hardly stand it! Congratulations to a niece who got accepted to a great place to go to college (which is the same place EJ went for 2 semesters, and where he will return to in April most likely--we hope)! Since EJ and Niece could possibly cross paths, I suggested to my sister, Niece's mother, via text that EJ could possibly set Niece up with a couple of returned missionary friends. I think that would be great! My sister must think it's a great idea too, because she texted back a couple of exclamation points. Dang, it was hard to get up today. Hayley and Matt got the day off school and seminary AGAIN because of the cold, and Jim didn't set his alarm. 6 a.m. came very early. I did not want to get up. It was frigid outside, the bed was warm and cuddly, my pillow was cushy and molded perfectly to my head. The room was soothingly dark. No one else was up. I could find so many more reasons to stay where I was, but because of yesterday's decently low bp rea...

Ten things I am grateful for (and I'm gonna try to be honest and serious, instead of being silly, like being thankful for children who misbehave because then I can meet the recommended daily allowance of yelling for 10 minutes at 110 decibels, which allows a parent to operate under the illusion that they are really in charge) 1.  ........... It's hard to be serious. Really. Everything I come up with devolves into some sort of joke. Either that or what I'm thankful for sounds trite. Of course I'm thankful for my family. Most everybody is. They bring happiness and joy and (and here I start to think "and blah blah blah, it's all been said before, even though it's true")... I'm grateful that the big boys got up and went to play football. Why? Because they are doing something they will remember as "having had a good time" for the rest of their lives. They are practicing being adults, living without their parents. And I am practicing ...

PSA: Elect some people! Got that out of the way. I'm supposed to be exercising, but I couldn't sit another minute on the bike. So I'm taking a wee break. 10 Things to occupy the worry center of my brain now that Halloween is over: 1. Exercise. Too many Snickers. 2. 4th time in six months (rough estimate) that a blood vessel has popped in my big toe. My toe seems to be falling apart. 3. Engagement ring lost a piece that holds the diamond in place, and for fear of losing the diamond, I have taken it off. (Envision me with a sad face--see that picture of me in the upper right corner? The one with the deranged grin and feral eyes? Well, turn that deranged grin upside down in your mind. That's what I look like when I remember that I can't wear my engagement ring (Yes, the same ring that mysteriously got bent in September . I'm beginning to think that either the ring is sick of me and so it's contorting itself into unwearable situations or someone else is sick ...

Another field trip today, this time to a corn maze. I am very excited! I hope I don't get too lost. Our driveway is getting replaced today. It has deteriorated this summer into an undulating puzzle made out of asphalt chunks. If we let it go another winter, we'll have a black gravel driveway. I forgot to thaw out the roast overnight. No roast in the crockpot for us today. It'll have to be hot dogs for dinner because I'll be working all day.

It's field trip today with my job. I get paid to watch "Toy Story 3" and eat free pizza. Life is hard! Boo hoo for me! (yeah, I know. Not really. I'm looking forward to it. The only downside is that Hayley and Matt can't come with) People in hospitals are on my mind today. Jim (not my husband) and Larry, we are thinking of you and hoping for good things. Staying in a motel three blocks from an ocean beach sounds wonderful--I might actually get to do it for three days next month.

Ten things on the day of Ten. (I got a little kick out of writing 10-10-10 on a letter today and thought I have to blog something to celebrate the convergence of the number ten. If only I hadn't had to get ready for church, I could have done it at 10:10 this morning. But alas) So I'm going to list ten things about me. Most of which you'll probably know already. Or maybe you don't. Pay attention, there might be a quiz in November. 1. I don't like wearing shoes (or socks for that matter) in the house. I'll wear shoes (and socks) in other people's houses, but in my own, I prefer that my feet go au naturel. Not that I think my feet are good-looking, but because I use them as information gatherers. Is the floor clean? Bare feet can tell. Wearing shoes hinders that process, plus it makes me feel like I'm not in contact with the ground. 2. I like making up bingo cards. I have a set for Halloween, and one for birthdays. I am currently working on a set...

That's what it should be at least. I don't know many men who have their nails done. ANYWAY. In preparation for the bank teller interview last week, I had a manicure including acrylic nails for the second time in my life. Normally my nails are a shoddy mess because they are thin and brittle so they break and flake and rip all the time. I did manage to grow them out a couple of times and I discovered also that my nails curve and bend in a most unattractive way. (we will not even be discussing my toenails. You are not prepared for such hideousness. Especially of the kind presented by my pinky toenails) So for a situation where I have to look my best, my natural best is best covered up. So we have fake nails. Why is it that whenever I have fake nails, my body breaks out into continuous itching? These acrylic nails SUCK at satisfying any kind of itch. It's like trying to scratch something with the edge of a ceramic dinner plate. So for today's post, I have a list of ten...

Number of times I shrieked out loud today: 4 Number of times I shrieked out loud because of an earwig running around in a laundry basket: 1 Number of times I shrieked out loud because of a huge, gross, dead spider in the sink: 1 Number of times I shrieked out loud because of a large, floundering moth: 1 Number of times I shrieked out loud because an aglet hit my arm while on a walk: 1 Number of times I thought the aglet was a giant, hideous, evil, flying insectoid killing machine: 1 Number of times someone (a passing jogger) heard me shriek out loud and politely ignored it so as to lessen my embarrassment: 1 Number of times a child laughed at me for shrieking out loud: 3 Hayley needs a time out. And the bugs need to leave me alone. And aglets need to announce in verbal and written form of their intention to bang on my arm like a deer fly after a blood snack so I don't freak out in public. PS: The cat ate the moth--right in front of me. Gross! (Servo--now go get the earwi...

Children bring things home from school for me to sign/look at/remember/participate in. If I don't have the papers right out in the open, I forget and the children get all disappointed in me. I should sign things right away, I know, but sometimes I'm not home when they put things for me to sign on the counter. Pens and pencils reproduce like bunnies. I leave two of them out on the counter and pretty soon, they have baby pencils and pens that scamper around and eat the papers that are supposed to remind me to do things. There is always that ONE thing sitting on the counter that I can't decide where it goes. Right now it's a squat canning jar. All my canning jar hidey holes are full. Where do I put this little orphan. Heaven forbid I should trash it. Also, Christmas cards with pictures. I have nowhere to put them! Projects that need my attention get put on the kitchen counter as well. I borrowed my mother's genealogy binder and have yet to do anything with it...

I have a confession to make. I obsessively read several blogs written by people I find extremely irritating. And don't you dare think that you are one of those people. I am not talking about anyone on my bloglist to the side of this commentary. Or anyone who has ever commented on my blog or anyone I know in real life. If you are reading this and you say to yourself, "Gee, she must be talking about me" then you know for sure that I AM NOT. This means you, people whose names start with J, S, K, D, M, A, T, etc... who actually read my blog. I guarantee that none of the irritating people whose blogs I read out of some sort of deranged sense of indignancy and self-righteousness has ever read mine. These are people I do not know even cyberly. I stumbled upon them through blog-surfing and connections from places on the web. Do any of you do this? Without going into detail or giving links, here is why: One I read because I want to validate my reasons for not homeschooling...

Another Mother's Day has come and gone. To celebrate Mother's Day, I told each of my children that live in the same house why I'm glad that I have them as a child. I'll have to tell the other child, the one who doesn't live here, in a letter or a text message or something. I am glad to have each one of them. Because of Katie, I learned how to be a mom. She was the paver of the way for me. Good thing she helped out the process by being a child who didn't seem to mind coming to me with problems rather than hiding them and pretending all was well. I know she hid some things from me, but for the most part, she asked lots of questions and reported the good and the bad. She still does. Because of Jimmy, I have learned patience and consistency. I learned not to give in as much as perhaps I could have. I also learned that despite my wish that parenting would be easy, it wasn't going to be so and I would just have to suck it up and deal with it. I also lear...

Struggling to come up with something to blog about, I turned to a creative writing prompt for an idea. And the prompt that I randomly selected was "10 reasons why I should NOT write my life story." Kind of oxymoronish--here I am blogging about my life and I'm supposed to come up with 10 reasons not to write about myself. 1. It would be way too long. I have the need to explain every little detail or thought process that led to a particular decision and so my life story would take forever to write. And sometimes I can't tell if a decision is important enough to include, so I would include everything I can remember just so that people might get a better understanding of why my life is the way it is. 2. I would never finish it. I'd be writing my whole life, and someone would have to finish it for me. 3. I would have to include the episode at the Excelsior beach at night when someone had me in a headlock. And we weren't wrestling. 4. I would have to relive so...

Once upon a time in another blog-iverse (on the blog-planet CGB), I wrote a blog post about New Year's resolutions in which I determined that I was just fine as I am and resolutions were stupid because they were guaranteed to fail. I won't repost it here, because I wrote it as a different person and it's a bit edgier (inasmuch as I get edgy--I'm as edgy as a glob of Silly Putty) than what I usually post here. I still roll my eyes at New Year's resolutions. I can't even keep to a schedule for more than three days; what makes anyone think I can keep a resolution for the whole year? I was pretty pleased with myself for keeping up the Halloween Decoration Special Feature for a whole month, but notice I didn't try anything similar for Christmas! But still, federal holiday law mandates that I must make some resolutions, otherwise I am subject to New Year's holiday penalties such as, but not limited to: severe restrictions in the amount of fun I am allowed t...

Reason #21 for the exasperated look on my face: Hayley mentioned during dishwashing time last night that she wanted to hurry up so she could go back to Matt's experiment. I asked what he was doing. She tried to explain, but the words got all tangled up in her mouth. From the kitchen, I saw Matt in a semi-dark living room; he was rubbing his face on the couch. "What are you doing?" I asked, perplexed. "Hey mom! Guess what! When I rub my face on the couch really fast, lightning comes out of my nose!" Oh, the wonders of static electricity. He could totally be a super hero. Naso-Static Boy! He fights e-vil with boogers of SHOCKING power! And then Reason #22 for the exasperated look on my face: After I barked at Matt to get over here and help dry dishes and stop asking me questions like "What if the heaviest thing in the world was a man this tall?" (holding his hand four inches above the floor), Matt turned to Hayley and said, "Hey Hayley, when ...

I looked in the microwave and what did I spy? Peas a-poppin' right before my eye. The garden has grown me a handful of green, And I wrecked them all by cooking them in that machine. I had picked a handful of sweet green peas, To eat with my lunch of salad and cheese, It's not at all fair, cuz now I have no pods, And my microwave is covered in hard green clods. (Sung to the tune of "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree") Reason #1 not to cook freshly picked peas in the microwave: see above.

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 ...

Because sometimes, during an intense craving for chocolate, you just might find a couple of stray Nestle's Creamy Caramel Treasures that must have dropped out of the last bag you bought two weeks ago into the pile of mostly clean clothes by the bed for you to find later. If the room had been CLEAN, you would have eaten them immediately after they dropped onto the floor. This way, they were hidden until such time as you might have needed a pick-me-up but didn't have time to go to the store. Two lost Treasures were enough to tide you for the moment!