Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Yesterday, Friday, I was off work and decided that Matt and I needed an adventure out of the house. The weather was pleasant and we had no obligations to keep up home. I decided it was time to look for something in Savage called Boiling Springs. I had looked for it once before, without success. The first time, I gave up after about 15 minutes of following a trail because I had flip flops on and, from wearing such idiotic footwear, I hurt my left foot so bad that it took a good three months for me to be able to go on walks. (My foot still hurts a little every so often, especially when I walk. Never wear flip flops. They are miserable excuses for footwear.) So I never found the so-called Boiling Springs. I had looked up Savage Boiling Springs on Google, but there was little said about it, and nothing on the precise location and trail one would take to get there. The websites I consulted gave a general location and terse description, terse enough to make me want to fill it out with pe...

The corn maze was so awesome that I'm going back tomorrow with the kids, whoever can come. I'm a-taking the camera. I'll hopefully post some pics this weekend. So this evening, I got home from the field trip all excited to see my kids because I hadn't seen them all day. (I was also curious to see the progress on the driveway replacement--which it looks like is all finished. New driveway! No cracks! No potholes! No dropoffs! No crumbling! Yay!) But I guess the excitement of parental return was only one-sided because when I got home, Matt was gone, and Other Jim was about to leave, as was Paul. And with Paul's leaving, Jim was too because he was driving Paul and a bunch of friends (remember this fact. It is key in the following story). So the four boys/men bailed on me. My poor empty arms. Hayley and I heated up the sad little dinner for two that had been planned for six and no sooner had we sat down and opened our mouths when the phone rang. It was Hayley'...

I'm sprouting wheat kernels. Last week, I had a project for Fake Child--growing wheat grass. She enjoyed spreading the seeds on the dirt and misting them to keep them wet. (My kids have gotten into the fun of it too. I'll catch OJ misting the seeds and Matt will ask if he can do it too) The grass is now close to two inches high. When the seeds had just sprouted, I got a sudden, daring (as daring as I get these days) urge to eat one. I didn't even rinse it off. I just popped it into my mouth. I liked the texture. I ate a few more. I let Fake Child eat a few too. I made OJ eat one. Now I am sprouting some wheat for my own eating pleasure. Mom gave me a sieve-type lid for a Mason jar specifically for sprouting and I popped that on a clean jar and in three days, I should have salad fixings of wheat sprouts! I could also make bread but I will save that experiment for later.

For several months now, we have had a problem with our computer. We would try to access a webpage and, for a nanosecond, the page would materialize on the screen. But then a search page would pop up listing websites selling things. And the things this page was offering was totally unrelated to what we were originally trying to locate. Certain pages on some websites were totally inaccessible because of this pop-up website. This morning, I was on amazon dot com wishing for things, and I couldn't even do a simple search within amazon because of this ask dot com thingie that kept me from my destination page. I wanted to claw my computer's eyes out. So I've spent the morning troubleshooting. And this is after several weeks of googling for remedies. A few weeks ago, following one such method recommended by a search query, I tried messing around with the control panel and accessibility features, but succeeded only in blocking necessary websites (smartmusic dot com and anothe...

OK, not that current. I was frustrated yesterday. And the frustration wore me out to the extent that I was too tired to blog about it yesterday. And the task that caused me so much frustration was not really even my task to do. It's all Jim's fault. First of all, he went on a church mission to Argentina when he was 19 (ok, that part is not frustrating. I'm glad he went and I'm glad I didn't know him then so that the pain of waiting for him to come back was no pain at all. Besides, I was only in 8th grade. I was ogling geeky high school freshmen and TV hunks like Magnum PI. 19-year-old Californians weren't on my radar) Secondly, this was back in the very early 80s when digital camera technology hadn't yet swept picture-taking film into the dusty corner of antiquity. Thirdly, he took pictures with that film. Fourthly, he had the film developed into SLIDES. Slides! Fast forward many years later to a couple of Saturdays ago when we cleaned out the gara...

It's amigurumi showcase time! Hayley went to an amigurumi camp this summer where she learned to crochet, and since then, she has been hogging all the yarn in the house to make little creatures (like she and Matt don't have enough stuffed animals in the house!). Matt knitted a rabbit earlier this year and, with Hayley being consumed with crocheting, he had to get in on the fun. So he knit this thing. He didn't use a pattern, he just made it up as he knit. I could be all helicopter-parent-like and say "Isn't it wonderful? Isn't he so creative?" and give him kisses and stars and have a party, but I break out in hives every time I try to act like a really good caring parent who wants to foster and nurture my child's precious self-esteem. Sorry kids. Personally, I think Blue/Green Rectangular Thing is hilariously odd. It reminds me a little of Spongebob. I'm so glad Matt doesn't create things to get his ego boosted. This is the combined col...

Try again next week. Hopefully then the test administrator won't tell you that you were a little too cautious (don't we want our drivers to be cautious?). And obstacle courses are hard. Regular streets are much easier to navigate. There will be cake when success is finally achieved.

This photo shows the only outside evidence of a pumpkin-loving resident of my house. Sadly, I do not have any exterior decorations for Halloween. It has always been my dream to have a few bales of hay surrounded by pumpkins and gourds of various shapes and sizes, but I never get around to purchasing them, much less setting them up in a festive manner in my yard. So these lights will have to do. I don't even have them connected to an outlet yet. I have to find an exterior extension cord, which is probably still attached to Christmas lights and buried in some unmarked box in the garage. And let me tell you of the trouble I've seen while attending to these lights. First off, I tried to find a place for them inside my already crowdedly-orange house. I attempted to string them across my front window, but halfway through doing that, I realized the curtain rod was not attached securely to the wall and with the weight of these lights (they are heavy. Is it the fact that they are ...

Jimmy is taking a photography class at school, and today he came home full of knowledge and information on ISO and shutter speeds. Then I left for church (to sew some T-shirt dresses for Humanitarian aid--3 dresses total were made and I did 2 of them). When I came home, Jimmy was itchin' to show me what he did with my camera. I have to admit, these pictures are cool. I still don't know how he did it--he said something about having to have the room pretty dark and setting the shutter speed so that the camera lens stayed open for several seconds.

are dead. I was going to post about the rock mentioned a couple posts ago; to answer two people's question about it. But I haven't the heart to post happy things today. Today's chore focus for the kids is the yard. I asked children to weed in the vegetable garden and mostly to pull up the dead pea plants (Key word: DEAD) and pick beans off the LIVING bean plants. Get that? So half an hour later, they came streaming back in with a bucket of beans. I went out to size up their weeding accomplishments and my heart sank. Someone had pulled up the nice green living BEAN plants and left the DEAD PEA PLANTS in the garden. The person who pulled the wrong plants shall remain nameless--I'm not mad at this child, so I will protect his or her identity. I should have gone out there to point out which plants I wanted pulled. But I am still very sad. The bean plants still had months of production left in them. And I still have to go out to pull up the dead pea plants, but I d...

We traveled to Mesa Verde on Tuesday. The cliff dwellings are always interesting (to me anyway). Some of the group didn't get to see the dwellings because of a broken radiator. The dwellings are surprisingly small when you get up close and personal. Of course that is seen through the eyes of a suburban middle class house dweller. The people who study these dwellings estimate that up to 150 people lived here at one time. That's like packing all of my street and the next street over in the area equal to my yard. I think I'd branch out on my own. The kids are waiting in line to descend into one of the dwelling's several kivas--an underground circular room with unknown purposes (unknown to me anyway. I was more interested in capturing the moment in pixels than learning much about what the rooms were for). Those of us who got the tie-dyed shirts (thanks again Jen! They turned out simply fabulous!) wore them for the trip and we got lots of looks and comments. It was...

This morning, I went out to look at the birdies in the nest under the deck. But they were gone. And all I could think of was how fitting it was that they would leave the nest on the very same day that Katie celebrated commencement. I stood there for a moment and wondered what would become of those little birdies, who probably weren't the best fliers, food finders, or hiders from danger. But somehow, nature and mommy and daddy robin help them along and eventually, those two baby birds would survive and live to find their own way and take care of themselves. Now I'm getting sentimental, I guess. I'm not really worried about Katie, even though what she has planned for her life may not come to pass. Somehow, life carries on and all we can do is choose to be happy, regardless of dreams or plans. All we can do is do our best, but if things don't work out, there are always other options. Bye-bye birdies (conscious reference to the musical, which Katie participated in du...

Has no one noticed the new look up above? I figured out how to personalize my header with my own pictures! No need to comment, just notice it please! Also, for no reason, a new word to amaze and disgust your friends: Tonsillolith

Another test of my blogging skills, the uploading of a video. Most of the videos I take are of band concerts, and those are huge files, over 300 MB. This is the shortest vid I found in my files. I apologize profusely to my sister Jen, who is featured in this video. Jen, if you do NOT want this up, email or call and I will take it down (and no, I did not post it to public video sites--this video can only be seen here at the shoebox castle dot com). This was taken at my birthday party in December. Jen flew up from Florida to celebrate my major milestone birthday. She and Katie are talking about some youtube video that was all the rage way back then. The other girl in the video is cousin Anna of the Jake-and-Stephanie faction of the Hawley family (Jake is my brother for those of you who aren't familiar with my sister and brothers).

It worked! This is a picture of Paul finally finding his Valentine treat. It was hidden in a box marked "Trivial Pursuit Silver Screen Edition." He was the second to last child to find his valentine candy. Katie was last.