I am not complaining

really. I swear. This is not a complaint but a simple statement of fact. The reason for the disclaimer is that what I am about to say relates to my internet connection and as I have said before complaining about my internet connection is just my 'thing'. The one topic I am guaranteed to have something, usually negative, to comment on. Let me reiterate, this is not an actual complaint.

But Stacey, you may ask, did you not a mere week or so ago tell us how fast your new connection was? What could you possibly have to complain about now? As I said, this is not a complaint. I find my new fast speed to be a bit of a detriment to my established surfing style. I admit that is a negative statement, but it is not a complaint. See, when things loaded slowly I would have 2-3 browers open and while a layout in a gallery loaded in one, I was reading an already loaded thread in another, while waiting for a comment to post in a third. Having just one browser open did not make things load faster, it merely annoyed me to have to sit & wait. So I developed this multi-browse thing so I always had something to read or look at & could comment in 2 or 3 places simultaneously. The pages load too fast to do that now. Sure I can still have 3 browsers open & once something is loaded it will stay loaded, but it messes with my thought process & makes it hard for me to multi-task. I'm used to clicking on a thumbnail & having a chance to read most of page 2 of a thread while waiting for the layout to load. now the layout just loads. It's like my world is now missing chapter endings or commercial breaks. There is no natural pausing or break point any more. It just keeps going. I'm sure I will get used to it but this is a nearly decade long habit. It may take me some time

On a side note this window switching process of mine is why I don't use Firefox. People seem to love the tabs for multiple site. I prefer seperate windows. I've tried the tabs. everyone I know just raves about the tabs, but the tabs just didn't do it for me. Maybe now that pages load faster I might like it more. I know its partially habit. I look down to see my sites on the menu bar. tabs are at the top. That's just wrong. :)

acrostics

I'm really bad at this sort of thing. I had to go to Thesaurus.com

S - silly
T - tolerant
A - ambiguous
C - complex
E - easygoing
Y - youthful

I guessed correctly & did not make Round 3. Oh well, I don't have to think about giving up my paying job at 1hourscrap.com now. I would have if I made the DET but it would have been hard to do.

I've been flitting about elementalscrap.com, digitalscrapdivas.com and digitalscrapbookpages.com (Digitals). They all have great challenges. Digitals wants you to use their stuff & I have nothing by anyone there. You can still do the challenges but you are not eligible for the prizes. They have some good sales right now but I have so many kits I bought in the past 6 weeks that I haven't used I can't justify buying more at the moment. Maybe next month.

this is my latest layout

Where was I?

I was at work. My bosses Dh called her & said he heard on the radio a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center Towers. Nothing was up about it on the Post or MSNBC websites yet so I called my DH, who was home overseeing air conditioner installation, and told him to turn on the TV. People are getting calls from freids and family about it. I have the only unrestricted internet connection in my immediate area so everyone is coming to me for details. YOu can't get any online, the sites are swamped. Everyone assumed it was some tragic accident. While I am talking to DH another plane hits the other Tower. Everyone is in an uproar when I announce this. (keep in mind I work in a call center, we have about 50 people taking inbound sales calls while another 10-30 people are milling about talking. everyone is on the phone. Rumors & reports are flying) Then we hear about the Pentagon. We are close enough to DC that people here have family there. I remember being on the phone with DH and him saying "There is only one tower standing! The other one has collapsed." and just praying for the people in the other that they can get out. Then it falls. HR gives up on trying to keep people informed and brings a tv up to our area and puts it on the empty desk next to me, turn it to whatever local channel we get with no cable and tell people they can come up & watch during their breaks. Some people go home. Most stay. Our main office was on Long Island. They were completely shut down by what happened and I had to deal with rerouting those calls to other centers. Not that there were many. The world is ending, you don't think about ordering adirondack chairs right then. The next day we would not be able to cope with the volume of flower order calls, but today would very very, eerily quiet.

I didn't really think about it at the time. I was interested in the story, but I spent 6 solid hours seeing the planes crash over & over, seeing the towers fall over and over, listening to the whole horror, over and over. Wondered if anyone I knew was in the towers or the pentagon (I knew people who worked in both) and knew there was no way right then for me to find out. Phone lines were jammed. I sent emails and hoped for the best. When it was time to leave I was worn out. Allthat exposure had affected me without me realizing. I was shaking & crying on the 20 minute drive home. When I got there I saw friends had come over & they were with DH watching it and talking about it & I just could not face any more of that. I was watched and talked out. I was scared and sad and shocked beyond anything. I wanted it all to go away for awhile. So I hugged DH and asked everyone to leave me alone. I went right to my bedroom, shut the door and turned on SciFi. They were doing a Star Trek marathon and for 2 hours I watched a bright, happy future, where mankind had abolished war and the human race was one happy family. I really needed that.

At 8pm I went in the living room and talked to DH (We'd spent a good chuck of the day onthe phone together) and called my parents and watched the news again. Nothing had changed of course. Speculation, but nothing real. I went outside and looked at the sky. Again it was eerily quiet. Just knowing there were no planes in the air in the country was freaky. Not that we saw many where we lived, but *knowing* it, bothered me. Knowing that if this had happened a week earlier I would have been stranded in Long Island now, I'd be watching it all live from the 8th floor of our corporate headquarters. I remember seeing the Towers from their call center windows. How can they be gone? What sort of madness would make someone do this? All those people...how, why?

The people I knew at the WTC and the Pentagon were all alive. Some had lost friends or coworkers. I was able to watch shows about it that first year, about the WTC and the Pentagon. I can still watch some shows about technical stuff, structure, that sort of thing, but it is really really hard now for me to watch shows about the people. The survivors, yes I can watch sometime, but I can't watch about people who died. I can't stop crying when I do. I've never been able to watch anything about Flight 93. It was incredibly heroic, but it is all of my fears, all of my nightmares and I simply cannot face it.

My children were born after 2001 and this is history to them, the way Kennedy was to me. Something old people get very emotional about but time dims the reality of why to the people who were not there. Last year I spent part of Sept 11 building sand towers that my sons knocked down with great joy. It was a game we had played all summer. But suddenly I remembered what day it was and I called the game off & had to shut myself in the bathroom & cry for a little bit. They are too little to explain to yet. Someday in a few years they will come home with the assignment to ask me & their dad about it. Will I b able to explain what I thought & felt? Will I still cry when I think about it? Will I still be wondering why, still trying to grasp all of what happened?

thoughts

100 words? Only? I ramble. We who ramble cannot be constrained by mere numbers. We must be free to go where our thoughts lead us, use as many graphic, evocative & creative adjectives as our minds wish. Ruthlessly ignoring the rules of grammer. Participles dangling, sentences unparsed (whatever that means) and verbs placed so far from their nouns, with so many intervening prepositional phrases, it is difficult to tell if they are the correct form or tense. Even the original topic is subject to discarding as thoughts free associate. 100 words? A mere 100? Exactly? Have you lost your mind?

oh so THIS is broadband!

For those who don't know how these things are defined, apparently the regulatory body incharge of such things defines a broadband connection as being over 400kpbs for download and upload. My connection speed all these many months has been about 200 for download and as low as 27 for upload. Not technically broadband, but better than the 19.2kbps I was getting on dial up so I was not complaining.....not too much anyway. OK I was complaining, but complaining about my internet is just what I do. It's my *thing*. Everyone has a thing, I'm sure you do to if you think about it. There are worse things to complain about than your internet connection I am sure. But back to the matter at hand. We now have a blight on our landscape in the form of a 50ft pole and assorted guide ropes that results in me surfing at 557kbps download and 463kbps upload. DAMN! I'm surfing the DET contest gallery and pages are loading at incredible speed! Of course I am also perched on an upended milk crate in my badly lit junk room with my laptop on a wonky table, but I have 557kbps! And then there is the whole blight issue.... it's not a blight to 99.8% of the area. It's obscured from the road by trees and the curvy dipping nautre of the road. The house on our side of the street to our right might be seeing it, but maybe not, hard to tell given the distance. The folks who built the new log cabin across the road can certainly see it and it does sort of dominate that area of the yard from our perspective, especially as you come up the drieway but is mostly hidden from our veiw when we are in the 'play area' of our yard. If this weren't the country I am sure something would be said about it. Something may still be said about it by the folks in the new cabin, but maybe not. The think just *looks* like a radio tower, a short one, but still. I'm thinking since cell coverage sucks around here I might contact Cingular or Verizon & offer to rent them space on my pole for $100 a month (which is damn cheap BTW). It's up high enough to provide a decent range to an extender. :)

DH has gone into the office to get the proper equipment to make the pole official. The right bolts, weatherproof boxes, stronger rope and enough cable that I can move out of the junk room and back to my desk in the living room. So life is good at the moment. They are predicting thunderstorms off & on the next 48 hours. We'll see what have the antenna up above those pesky trees does about signal loss during storms. This one is supposed to be better at not icing up than the one on our short pole. I hope so, because I could reach it on the short pole to knock the ice off. I can't to that with the new one.

woe is me!

Internet issues again. We had that all day storm yesterday and leafy trees + thick misty rain = no internet for Stacey. Well, almost no internet. I did manage to rig up a dial up with the internal modem from my dead PC to the laptop, with some network cable, duct tape & a really really long phone cord. The things you do for love. :) Connection was the usual 19.2 but the error rate was low enough to remain connected to the download of the DET kit, which was what I was most interested it. So over an hour & a half later I had the kit. Good thing I was on the dial up too because the power went out in the middle of it & the laptop stayed on battery with the phone line connected. Had I been on broadband I would have lost the connection. (and I only had 1 DL attempt left due to previous failed tries)

Last night I did the preliminary of my layout. It needs a little something & I have not quite worked out how I want to do it, so I am browsing the DET contest gallery. There were 43 layouts when I started commenting. There are 47 now and I still have half the original 43 to comment on. I really really want to try to keep up with everything this time around but my connection speed defeats me. I'm going to do my best though to comment on everyone. It just may take me a while

Broadband is back but can't be counted on. However we have a new pole we are going to put up later in the day on the theory of radio signal that "higher is better" Maybe we can get above those pesky leafy trees. We are technically just below the signal but how low remains the question. A 20ft pole failed to make any difference. This one is a 50ft pole. Remember, whatever men may say, they know darn well POLE SIZE MATTERS. :)

dinner score

since Monday

menu - 2
laziness - 4

We went out 3 times. Thursday was date night. DH & I went to Bavarian Chef,the boys had PB&J. Friday the boys had fishsticks & spinich salad. I had spinich salad (still full from the previous night). Saturday we went to Waffle House and tonight we had KFC because my allergies gave me a screaming headache. This is not good. Tomorrow night DH won't be home for dinner, so I'm going to do the squash mac & cheese (DH is not a mac & cheese fan). Tuesday I will make the turkey roll ups I was going to make today before the allergies made me cry. The rest of the week is open but we have gove over & above the dining out budget so we MUST stick to the menu.

scrapping news

One of my favorite scrap sites has closed down. Traci decided to close Scrapmommies after another hacking a few days ago. I don't blame her in the least. She's had to rebuild the site several times in the past 6 months due to server problems & hacking issues. But that leaves me without my main source of scrapping challenges. They had about 40 or so a month. They were not designer or kit specific. I love DSP's challenges but I'm not always interested enough in the kit or word art etc required to buy it. I generally like everything but don't have the budget to buy it all so I get picky. So I have been roaming around looking for something new and I came across 2 things.

One is over at Jen Wilson's site. She is doing an 8 week long challenge/contest - A Meaning*ful Contest. More details can be foundhere. She is giving out some cool prizes.

The other is at The Digi Dares Blog. It runs every week, though this first dare runs for 2 weeks. They are giving away a freee kit to everyone who participates in this first challenge & then there are prizes every month.

I've had some time today and managed to knock out both those challenges as well as the Play by Numbers Challenge on DSP.

This is for the Meaning*ful Contest



and this does double duty for the Play By Numbers Challenge and the Digi Dare Contest


**Now for some shameless self-promotion**

I finished a couple sets of 2007 calendar templates that are CD sized, since that seems to be popular now. I also did 2 paper packs to match up, so people can choose from a casual or elegant font calendar and a pastel or bold paper pack. They should be up in the 1hourscrap store by the end of this week and will be 30% for a week after. Here are 2 of the previews I have for them.

What do you like best and least about where you live?

Best: We live in the middle of nowhere. There are nothing but farms around us, low population, no traffic. Nothing

Least: We live in the middle of nowhere. There are nothing but farms around us, low population, no traffic. Nothing.

These things are great when you want to be able to let the kids out to run around & play in the yard. They can strip naked & play with the hose, scream, yell, and have plenty of space to do whatever they want with no neighbors to disturb. I don't have to keep my lawn mowed unless I feel like it. I can paint my house any color I please & if I want to leave a well worn statue of the Muses on my roof for 6 years there is no one to complain about it but the cows. Sound does carry so I can't host a rock band nightly, but apart from that my restrictions are few & far between.

These things are not so great when you need milk, or your kids would like to play with someone other than themselves, or when they want to do something besides play in the yard, or you want a cup of coffee or to show for a new pair of pants. The absolute closest place to buy milk is 10 miles away. Any kid related activity is at least 20, ditto for shopping.

Ideally we want to own 40 wooded acres with a 2 mile long driveway that ends across the street from a shopping mall with a grocery store, coffee shop, B&N and a Target. All the seclusion and easy access as well. :)

What did you study in school, or what was a favorite subject?

Did you receive your education somewhere other than school?

My favorite subject has always been history, followed by English and any language classes. I should probably clarify what I mean by "English". I mean the writing part and some of the reading. I did not enjoy dissecting novels for their subliminal messages or the hidden meanings behing a character type. I'm a straightforward person. Please don't ruin a perfectly good story for me by telling me what the author was 'really saying' I read Animal Farm years before I had to for English class. Great fantasy story about pigs taking over a farm. Imagine my surprise that is was all an indictment of communism. Wizard of Oz, apparently about the evils of the gold standard. Then there was some really boring 'great literature' we had to read. Plus nuns never tell you the more salacious meanings behind some of Shakespeare's quips, so you miss the intended humor. I've never been able to join a book discussion club because of bad school experiences in that area. I'm always afraid I am going to be asked to 'contrast the protagonists experience at the setting with the view commonly held of such things now (please quote examples in your work)' or some such. I adore reading books, sometimes I like analyzing them, especially non-fiction. I just don't like having to do so unless I am inclined.

Well, that went off on a tangent I didn't intend when I started this.

I originally studied journalism in college because I like English but wanted to avoid having to dissect To Kill A Mockingbird or The Red Badge of Courage and then basis a thesis on the motivation of the secondary protagonist with regards to his view of women. But I am not really journalistic material. I can't interview people to save my life. I'd been minoring in history all a long & loving those classes much more than my journalism ones. So with no job prospects in sight as graduation approached I decided to go to grad school and focus on what was then called Medieval & Renaissance History, Tudor England specifically (I think they now call that period 'Early Modern'). I qualified for a scholarship based on my GRE scores & then got an assistant post as well. I really loved being a TA & if I hadn't been so burnt on learning when I finished my MA I would have looked for work teaching at a Community College. But I was burnt out, took a general job as an office assistant, discovered I am clever with computer hardware & software and my career went in a different direction.

The short answer to the question is I loved history & English in school & studied them in college. But I received my education in my ultimate field of telecommunication on the job.

2 week menu

DS1 starts school Thursday. His school is 40 minutes in the opposite direction from the grocery store, so it is important I get back on the ball with the menus. Groceries now require more effort & planning. I got 365 No Repeats by Rachel Ray recently & am going to try out a couple new recipes from it.

Broiled salmon with cousous
salmon cakes or fish sticks
pasta to be determined
veggie soup & sandwiches
Scotch eggs & spinich salad
calzone/deep dish pizza or PapaJohns
Squash mac & cheese (365 No Repeats)
braciole with 'oven fried' zucchini
apple cider chicken (365 No Repeats)
Chicken salad
meatloaf w/hidden veggies
Turkey roll ups (365 No Repeats)

I've been going through my pantry to make my grocery list & have discovered that I need to keep up with rotating my stock. I am making veggie noodle soup for dinner (not on the menu) & need 2 cans of broth for that. I grabbed 2 from the shelf & then as I was opening them I glanced at their 'use by' dates. One was Feb 2007, the other was Sept 05. The other cans are all still good, so I assume that one got overlooked. I've had that problem with Couscous & flavored rice sides lately too. Everything seems to have expired in mid 2005 and I never noticed. I guess I must have stopped rotating things around then & just put the new purchases in front. Makes me wonder how old the cans of beans & tomatoes are. They don't have dates on them. I buy them sporadically so I can't say if they have been there for 3 months or over a year.

What are the last 10 things you did last night before bed

I'm going to have to do this in reverse order

10. read a couple chapers of SPQR
9. put away clean laundry
8. took sleeping pill
7. brushed teeth & aligners
6. filed down rough spots on new aligners
5. changed clothes
4. cleaned up snack mess
3. watched Mythbusters
2. had a snack
1. put the kids in bed

now for the good stuff

We had a really good time visiting my family, despite the car woes. My folks rented a cabin at Oglebay Park The boys got to know their cousins again. We only see them once a year. The girls are each about 5 months younger than the boys. Plus they have an older brother who DS1 just adores. DS1 was shy at first but warmed up as time went on. I was able to mostly convince my family to just leave him alone & let him decide in his own time to say hi. They are all outgoing people & think the shy just need lots of 'encouragement'. I hated that as a child & am doing what I can to shield DS1 from it. Yes, Grandma thinks DS1 should give Uncle a big hug but Uncle is really a stranger to DS1. Would you encourage a child to hug a stranger? Grandma seemed to get the point, kinda. But left alone DS1 warmed up just fine to everyone within an hour.

We took all the kids to the Zoo on Saturday. They saw the new kangaroo exhibit, got up close to deer, pet the goats, saw the huge model train display and rode on the tour train. My brother & I talked about how empty the ride had become. When we were kids it circled the whole zoo and had these anamatronic Old West scenes in parts, in addition to going through or past most of the animal exhibits. Now it goes through the ostrich area, passes the wolf sanctary turns around, goes back through those areas, passes the station, goes off around the barnyard area, turns around & comes back to the station. But the toddlers loved it. They wer riding on a train after all. DS2 fell asleep in the middle of the ride & even the train whistle didn't wake him up. Dh & I also went to Gabes (a discount 'overstock' clothing place) to get stuff for DS1 for fall and some things for DH as well. I got a really cool pair of purple pants I later saw at Old Navy for $10 more than I paid. I think the sizing must have been off on the pair I bough at Gabes. They fit me fine, but the same size at ON was too small. I also got a dozen smiley cookies from Eat N park. These 2 stops were as much about nostalgia as shopping.

Sunday we took the kids to Cabella's. They loved the giant aquarium and the huge mountain animal display. DS2's favorite thing was the elephant. DS1's favorite thing was getting to shoot at the laser gallery. You use a laser rifle to hit various targets ina western farm setting& it makes the coffee pot dance, the snake hiss, the chickens cluck etc. DH sighted the rifle and DS1 pulled the trigger. We also took the opportunity to go over the Eddie Eagle warning about 'stop. don't touch, tell an adult' if you see a gun someplace. DH looked at camping stuff & I bought a long denim skirt I had been looking for. The cousins were over in the afternoon and we went to the Lebanese Picnic (SIL's father's family are Lebanese) & took a long walk together.

Monday we went boating on the lake. Peddle boats . I used to love those things as a kid. I remember speed peddling in races with my friends & feeling like hardly any time had passed when they called us in. OMG! it HURT to peddle those boats. Especially by yourself. (i had DS1 with me he is too short to reach the peddles) I pulled some muscle in my leg & could not believe how long 15 minutes could last! The boys loved it! I let DS1 steer & he had us going all over the lake. we spent some time at the playground & then since it was clouding up we went to the indoor pool rather than the outdoor one. The boys had a blast. They both were brave enough to jump off the side & be caught by one of us. They did it over & over. No kiddie pool for our boys. They wanted to be in teh big pool. But since neither can swim & we had no floaties that meant they had to hang on us the whole time. DS1 could stand in the 3ft area & I did get DS2 to do some kicking while I held him.

Tuesday morning we went back to the indoor pool. DS2 decided he was afraid of jumping & just wanted to be glided around by one of us. But DS1 evenually reached the point where he would jump into the 3ft end without needing one of us to catch him. He ended up underwater a few times but came up every time all excited "I went underwater!!!". We all went for another long walk in the afternon & spent some time watching road workers pave a section of road (the boys were thrilled to see machines up close).

grocery list

this is the list I took to the store today...just stuff I need to fill in until my big grocery shop on Sunday, plus stuff I have to take to DS1's school orientation tomorrow.

fish sticks
buttoni ravioli
alfredo sauce
veg - random
spinich
milk
yogurt
bananas
grapes
peaches?

4 pack of toilet paper
Paper towels
2 pumps of antibac soap
2 things of baby wipes
coloring book

well thank goodness that is over

It was a nice vist with my family. I'll write about the nice stuff later. First lets get the stress out.

Almost $1500 to fix my car, plus an hour spent just hanging around the lot of the repair place because even though they said "Yes it is ready" when we called, it was not actually ready. Fortunately the boys were napping in my folks car so we didn't have to keep them out of trouble. Car evenutally is actually ready, we pay the money & drive off. As the boys napped for an hour before we ever left town they naturally wanted out to run around about an hour into the trip & didn't fall asleep again until 10pm. So it was a long, slow, whiney drive that ended up being 90 minutes longer than it actually is. Then there was this point about 2 hours from home where we kept hearing a metalic rattle coming from the front of the car. It sounded like a loose chain occasionally banging against something. Naturally it is well dark and we are on a lonely stretch of road in WV, a good 45 minutes from someplace lighted to pull over & look. We wondered if it was the semi trailer in front of us, but we'd slow down so it would get some good distance & we'd still hear the chinking. This is stressing me out. what the hell is wrong with the car now? we finally reach a point where we can pass the semi & we don't hear the chinking anymore. It must have been some sound carrying, night middle of nowhere thing that was making us hear the clinking just as loud no pmatter how far the truck was away from us.

So we drive the last 2 hours, make the turn onto the road that leads to our road and run into a "ROAD CLOSED" sign. 7 miles from our house. I knew there was a sign at the other end of the road saying the same thing but I hadn't realized they were shutting the whole 10 mile road down. So I drive in a 20 mile circle to cross over the road 3 miles from where we had been. And I do that on faith alone that we are not going to encounter another ROAD CLOASED sign there. Fortunately we didnt because I would have gotten out & moved the damn sign gone across it anyway at that point.

There are 5 main ways to get to our road. 4 of them involve the driving on or crossing over the road that is closed. The 5th would force us to make a 35 mile circular detour from our original encounter with the sign, backtracking up 15 miles of road we had just driven. It would haveadded about 20 more miles to the drive from the road I was hoping to take. And midnight is just not the time to be meandering down twisty country lanes looking for roads you think you remember the names of. But we got home. And most wonderfully, as the cats are at a kennel, the house was not full of cat poop in every room. The boys went right back to sleep when we carried them to bed.

So far this morning I have washed 2 loads of laundry & dried one. Trimmed both boys' hair. Done a grocery list, cleaned out the fridge, stripped the beds and had some coffee. We have to pick the cats up at 1pm so we'll be leaving for the grocery store soon. Hopefully DS2 at least will nap in the car while we get the cats as that is a 40 minute drive home. we have a sitter coming at 6pm to watch the boys while I go to a MOPS committee meeting & DH goes to a Board of Supervisors meeting to request special permission for the company to put up towers (that'll be a wrangle). I should get home right at the boys bedtime & then I am going to be myself I have been completely drained by the last 5 days, even the good stuff was exhausting.

unbelieveable!!!

And no, I don't mean that there is an internet signal in the cabin (very poor often times out, but an unexpected blessing)

What is unbelieveable is this...we drive 6 hours to get here, cross the Appalachian Mountains, get to the bottom of the very last hill that we have to drive up to get to the cabin & suddenly the engine starts making a whining noise & the car won't get in gear. Due to past unfortunate experience with my previous car I know what is wrong - tranmission. We get the car up the hill. The whole time I am swearing because not only am I going up hill with a car that won't stay in geear (and therefore drifts backwards from time to time) and not only is the road well travelled enough I am sure I will either hit someone while drifting or they will whack into me as they round a blind bend, and not only because the road is too narrow to actually pull over, and did I mention it is midnight?, but mostly because I know this is going to cost me $1000!!! Pardon my language for a moment but A THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS at least, after we just paid (and are still absorbing) the $780 it cost to fix DH's truck last month.

So we get the car eventually to the Lodge, pull into the parking lot, call my folks & they come get us. Fortunately they are only 5 minutes away. That is the blessing of the whole thing. The transmission could have gone on Sidling Hill (3 hours away from my folks & our house) or up by Cooper's Rock (almost 2 hours from my folks) where there is *NOTHING* for miles & miles & God only knows who we would have called or what we would have done, or even if there would have been a cell signal to call. So if the damn transimission had to die it at least picked a good spot to do it.

Dad called around a few places this morning, someone came & towed it, the guy said it sounds & moves as if the whole transmission has to be rebuilt. He's going to pull it apart Monday & let us know for sure. He also says he canhave it done by Tuesday. We're supposed to leave Tuesday. DH has a major meeting & presentation with the County Board of Supervisors at their monthly meeting on Wednesday night. So he *has* to be back by then. Last time my transmission died (Jan 2000) it took a week to fix and it was a Cavalier so it's not as if it was that hard to find parts. Hard to say how long a PTCruiser could take. Worst case scenario is DH rents a car one way & goes home Wednesday & I get the joy of a 6 hour trip alone with the boys whenever the car gets fixed.

but at least we have a place to stay rent free while the car is being fixed and DH is close enough to do that. In Nov 2002 we drove to FL (18 hour trip spread over 2 days) when we had an accident, bent the frame all to hell hitting a giant rolled up tarp that fell off the back of the tractor trailer in front of us on the highway. We were in the middle of nowhere in GA on I95. Had to stay an extra night in a hotel, rent a car to get to FL, get a taxi to the car rental place, then had to stay an extra 4 days in FL beyond the 7 we had planned while they fixed the car, rush back up to GA to pick up our car & return the rental by 6pm to avoid another $89 day charge and pay $500 in deductible plus almost $1000 in auto rental because our insurance didn't cover that. And we had a 6 week old with us.

we're supposed to drive to FL in December, frankly I'm not thrilled with idea. But I am certainly not flying down there either.

3 items for a desert island

The laptop. I'm assuming there is electricity and a super fast internet connection already available (after all this is paradise:D).
The 21 yards of cotton fabric I have in the sewing room. I can make clothes, sheets and shelter out of it. (I am making a set of quilts)
My current cross stitch project. Maybe I'd actually finish it.
Assuming no electricity I would swap the laptop for a box of books, chosen at random from my bookshelves.

We're going to a resort cabin for the next 5 days (no internet so it isn't paradise:D, but the food should be ok and the insects minimal). I'm bringing the laptop, my camera, clothes, some toys for the kids & a book. This sounds like hardly anything but somehow fills 2 suitcases, a dufflebag and 2 laptop cases (DH & I are each brining our own laptops) and takes up the entire back end of our car. DH complained we were taking as much stuff for 4 days as we take to FL for a week. That is because we are. There is a washer & dryer in FL so I pack 5ish days worth of stuff & do laundry there. We don't take toys to FL so they are taking up the space the the additional day or so worth of clothing would have taken. If we didn't need to take diapers & sippy cups we'd be almost one bag less.

healing

When I have been sick or just through an operation the one thing I need to do to help me feeling I am healing is take a shower. I need to wash away the illness, the hospital scent, the 'icky' aura that lingers around me. That was really the hardest part of my c-section. They wouldn't let me shower for almost 3 days because I had a reaction to the waterproof pressure bandage. It made me all grumpy & out of sorts that I couldn't wash the 'ugh' feeling off of my skin. My appendix & gall bladder were removed with laparascopy & I was able to shower in 24 hours. A nice hot shower with some good smelling soap & a loofa works wonders. I remember I was always shopping for the 'right' bath scent in 2004. Being sick & sweaty so much I wanted to smell good, even if only temporarily. I went through a lot of loofas too, scrubbing myself off so often.


what is my ISP doing today? everything is timing out on me.

I finally bought the case to make my old secondary HD into an external HD. I did not realize I bought one that needs it's own power supply.... So now I have to find 2 plugs, not just one, when I take the EHD with me. And if I copy all my scrap stuff to it, I can't scrap on the sofa. Not that I scrap on the sofa much, but the fact that i now can't makes me want too. That problem can be solved though. I can buy a new wireless router that has a USB hub, which cna make the printer & the EHD wirelessly networked. But that will have to wait until next month.

As I suspected there is no internet in the cabins, but there is a station in the lodge. I can see myself bunking off to the lodge sometime on Sunday or Monday to upload layouts for challenges that end on the 14th. :)

OMG!

It just occurred to me! I'm going to have to spend 4 solid days with no internet! we're going to visit my family Sat-Tues. They have rented a cabin at a local park for everyone to stay in. I'm nearly positive there is no internet in those cabins. Maybe at the main lodge but our cabin is no where near that. Sure, I will want to spend time with my family but I know how that goes. There will be chunks of time where everyone but me is napping or reading or in pursuit of other solitary activities. Time I could spend on the internet. I suppose I will just scrap. That might be nice.

serious illness

I've been blessed, there have been very few serious illnesses among my family & friends. The worst illness I have ever had hit me about 7 weeks after DS2 was born. It started as a cold. Just a slight cold, but then I had to go into the hospital to have my gall bladder out. While I was there I must have picked up something because three days after the surgery I had bronchitis & walking pneumonia. I also had anemia from blood loss during DS2s birth & my immune system was weak. The pneumonia cleared up after a week but the bronchitis lingered, and lingered and lingered. I'd feel better for a week or so & then be floored again with coughing, an inability to breathe deeply, chest congestion, & fever, for couple weeks. I couldn't sleep, which made things worse. Nothing seemed to stop it. Various meds would work briefly but it would come back. My doctor kept insisting I needed plenty of rest to let my body recover. I had a newborn & a 1.5 year old. No family nearby & none that could come & take over for a week or so. DH had used up his sick leave after DS2s birth & the gall bladder thing. I couldn't just spend a week in bed recovering. So I didn't recover. The bronchitis lingered until well into November. I was on another round of meds when we went to Florida to see my folks for a week. They were super mega meds. Between them & a week where others could do things for the boys, I finally recovered.

It depresses me. DS2s whole first year of life is mostly remembered by me as a miserable time for me. What I can remember of it. Illness & lack of sleep blur everything. When I think abut 2004 I remember DS2 birth & first couple of weeks. I remember the gall bladder surgery & then it's just a blur of feeling miserable. DH & I were stressed & tense with one another. I was so tired all the time. And the boys were growing up. Certain things stand out & I can look at photos & remember moments, but overall nearly that whole year is fog.

meet the in laws

I met my future MIL about a month after I started dating her son. His family was having a 4th of July party & he brought me with him. (He needed a ride) My first impression of them, remained a lasting one. They were *loud*. He has 3 older siblings, all were married & had 5 kids between them. It was a lot more people than I was used to at a family gathering. They were nice, a little distant & a bit tactless, but decent people. I liked them on our first meeting & they seemed to like me. I was just DH's latest girlfriend, not that he had had a bunch but no one attached any significance to my being there. I liked his mom. She was a very nice, down to earth person, who chain smoked & drank endless cups of coffee. It was a nice time

favorite clothes

what would we be wearing if someone dropped by?

Well, at the moment nearly everyone is in shorts & tees, but that is unusual. Normally I am weaing PJ bottoms. They are the only pants I own besides my 501s that fit me properly & it is too hot to wear jeans. My shorts are all too big, most of capris fit in the hips but not the waist or are too tight in the waist. So I wear drawstring PJ bottoms most of the time. Loose, cool, comfy.

DS1 is normally fully dressed but often is only in his underwear beacuse he likes to play in the sink & if a drop of water gets on his clothes he *must* take them off.

DS2 is usually missing his pants because I am lazy & never put them back on him after changing his diaper, unless we are going out.

DH is almost always found in his 'business casual' work clothes - tan pants & polo style shirt with company logo.

6 places of my life

If you could tell the story of your life by taking someone to a half dozen places, where would you go?

First to the house I grew up in. My parents lived there for over 25 years & I lved there for 18. It was the center of everything for me growing up.

Second to the park. The local park in my hometown is a large place with lake, miniture golf,a playground, a pool, tennis courts, etc. They do daycamp every summer for ages 3-12 and hire kids starting at age 13. I spent every summer there from ages 3-19, (minus the summer I worked at DisneyWorld). Some of my best childhood memories are of that place. I grew up there. I love taking my own kids there when we are in town.

Third to WVU. So much happened to me in college. I loved it. I saw & did & learned so many things in the 7 years I was there.

Fourth to my last job. I grew a lot at this job. It was not my first 'grown up' job but it was the one where I felt most mature, capable & confident.

Fifth to the hospital where my sons were born. Life altering moments.

Sixth to the house where I live now.

indulgence

Right now my indulgence is solitude. Time alone to read. I can be on the computer withthe boys around but it hard to sit & read a book with them underfoot. So whenI am feeling indulgent I wil shut myself in the bedroom (lock the door) with some chocolate & a good book.

How would I like to indulge myself? well, this is only partly for me, mostly it is for DH. I would love to have a night nanny. Someone who works midnight to 8am and deals with all the middle of the night wakings and the up for the day 5:30am wakings. DH does it now because I am drugged to sleep & am usually too groggy and out of it to cope, though I have staggered back to the boys room a few times & blearily changed a few diapers, mostly it is all on DH. I would like us both to be able to sleep in together. So my big fantasy indulgance is a night nanny.

childhood games

I don't remember playing specific games when I was a kid, apart from things like hop scotch and jumping rope. I played with dolls with the other little girls, making up stories about them. When the boys played we played with Weebles or those plastic army men you can buy by the bag, or with cars. i remember having a lot of adventures in the woods behind our houses too. There was an old tree that fell over and created a sort of bridge between 2 small hills. Lots of action went on there. It made a great pirate ship and was perfect for "None Shall Pass" (1972 I saw my first Monty Python episode. None Shall Pass was from a skit that later appeared in the Holy Grail as the Black Knight) The fall was relatively short from the tree & the dirt was as soft as loose dirt can be to land on.

Most of our non-all girl games invovled some sort of physical risk. I think a lot of mom's I know today would freak out if thier kids were playing a game that involved deliberately trying to throw one another off of a tree. Our parents didn't much care. We spent our days roaming around the woods & the neighborhood, playing whateveer game came to our imagination. Only the mock swordfights ever got us a warning, the famous "You'll poke your eye out" one. But they didn't stop us. They just warned us to be careful & left us to it. When I actually did break my collar bone, falling off the monkey bars, I was under full parental supervision. So there you go.

menu for the next 2 weeks

It's been awhile since I posted one. This focuses on both a main meal and then a leftover meal (sounds appetizing doesn't it - 'leftover meal'? I need to come up with something a bit more tasty....'reinventions' perhaps?) These are in no particular order. We had Kraft Mac & Cheese for dinner tonight (like Mom used to make:) ) which is not on the menu, so so far, menu 0 laziness 1.

Main Meals
Ravioli
Broiled Salmon w/sesame glaze
Steak & Spinich Salad
Chicken with beans & artichokes
Pork Loin w/teriyaki noodles
Burgers on the grill (DH is cooking)

Reinvented Meals
Pizza with steak & artichokes
Salmon cakes
Spaghetti with ragu of pork sauce
Chicken with coucous
Casserole to be determined.... (sounds like a threat to me)

That is 11 meals over 14 days (assuming the casserole needs made), plus we have had mac & cheese and we won't actully be home 3 of those days so technically I am one meal over what is required. This menu was designed to use my pantry. All I need from the grocery store for it is steak, pork loin & spinich. We're still absorbing the $780 in auto repairs from a couple weeks ago & I need new tires, so the grocery bill needs to be as small as possible this month. The pantry include 4 more boxes of Mac & Cheese, as well as fish sticks & taquitos, so I can be lazy at no additional expense :)

speechless?

What leaves me speechless? Generally, anger and shock that someone could actually *SAY* that (whatever that may be). There was the guy at the garage who told me they rotated my studded tires, rather than changing them out with the ones in my trunk, as i had asked, because I had told him to rotate them & it's not his problem if women have no clue what they are asking for. I have to admit the main reason I was speechless was because I was telling myself not to kick him in the nuts. When I had convinced myself not to give him teh crack he deserved I pointed out that he had been too busy oggling another woman's breasts to have the slightest clue what I may or may not have told them and anyone with half a brain would know better than to put studded tires on the front of a rear wheel drive, IN MAY! After making an incredible fuss, one I am both proud of & embarassed by, they fixed the tires free, I filed a complaint with the BBB & never went back to that shop.

Dh occasionally overexaggerates things when we have an arguement. I am usually so infuriated by these that I simply cannot say anything for fear I will get really nasty in my reply.

internet again

I cannot upload files after 7pm-ish. This is a regular thing. DH says it is because someone on the same tower, with a higher error rate, is online doing something & it's distracting the signal box. Sorta like having several people say "Hey look at this! Hey look at this! Hey look at this!" all at once, over & over, only one of them keeps dropping the thing, so they have to pester even more, making it hard for the others to get the attention. And one of the others is clumsy as well, only not as clumsy. It's annoying on the one hand. On the other it's good to know *I* don't have the highest error rate. :) I'm sure my online presence in the afternoon is annoying the daylights out of someone else for the same reason. So I suppose it is just fair.

advice to the younger me

Manage your money better!!!! Save more, spend less. You don't need 4 different versions of the same pair of shoes, 14 purses and 60+ tarot deck. You'll never use them all. Think harder about what you are buying & why you are buying it. She who dies with the most stuff does *NOT* win. Put that money in the bank, you'll need it down the road. Establish better spending habits now so the older you doesn't have to struggle so hard to overcome the entrenched bad ones.

tagged

I was tagged by a couple of friends with this.

1. Have you ever been searched by the cops?
yes but so was everyone else in the apartment. They busted a neighbor for dealing drugs and searched all 4 apartments in the quad because they were not certain it was just the one neighbor. Not my apartment, but I was visiting when the bust happened.


2. Do you close your eyes on a roller coaster?
I used to often but not all the time, when I wore contacts. I haven't been on a coster since I had LASIK though. I think I would keep them open now


3. When's the last time you've been sledding?
A couple years ago


4. Would you rather sleep with someone else, or alone?
Alone, that way I get all the blankets


5. Do you believe in ghosts?
yes


6. Do you consider yourself creative?
yes


7. Do you think O.J. killed his wife?
I don't know. I lean toward yes but I don't know enough about the situation.


8. Jennifer Aniston or Angelina Jolie? (silly, I know ... but very "now")
Doing what? This is another thing where I don't know enough about the situation to really make a choice


9. Can you honestly say you know ANYTHING about politics?
Yes, I do actually know a lot about this. DH is a 'gun nut' & active on a very political message board. he keeps me informed.


10. Do you know how to play poker?
Straight poker yes, texas hold em & the variations not so much


11. Have you ever been awake for 48 hours straight?
Sadly, yes, on more than one occasion. Once was a drive from WV to FL. I don't sleep in cars well. And a few times while DS1 was a newborn. He had some serious sleep issues the first month of his life, only sleeping in 20 minute bursts & screaming inconsolibly in between. There were a couple times when DH's work schedule left me alone with DS1 for 2 nights in a row & there was just no sleep for me until he came home. Turns out the kid was hungry & I was not producing enough milk.


12. What's your favorite commercial?
I like the Pizza Hut commercial where the guy says he likes to share a pizza with his girlfriend because while she thinks its sweet he wants to be with her instead of his buddies, actually she just eats less than they do.


13. Who was your first love?
Harrison Ford - 1977, still going strong nearly 30 years later


14. If you're driving in the middle of the night, and no one is around you, do you run a red light?
depends. On a country lane yes I might. On a more trafficed road I wouldn't


15. Do you have a secret that no one knows but you?
yes


16. Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees?
um, is this a baseball question?


17. Have you ever been Ice Skating?
yes, lots when I was a kid but not at all since college


18. How often do you remember your dreams?
every soft often. Some stick with me better than others


19. What's the one thing on your mind?
Food


20. Do you always wear your seat belt?
yes


21. What talent do you wish you had?
singing


22. Do you like Sushi?
yes


23. What do you wear to bed?
underpants


24. Do you truly hate anyone?
no, there are people I don't like & there are people I avoid because I really don't like them, but I don't actually hate anyone.


25. If you could sleep with one famous person, who would it be?
Pierce Brosnan


26. Do you know anyone in jail?
not currently


27. What food do you find disgusting?
brains, liver, kidneys...that sort of thing


28. Have you ever made fun of your friends behind their back?
when I was a teenager


29. Have you ever been punched in the face?
yes, each of the boys at one point in the first two years of their lives has whacked me good in the face


30. Do you believe in angels and demons?
no

I PMd this to Meg & suggested it as a blog prompt for today so I guess youc an say I tag all the bloggers on DSP. :)

a recipe

Now that I have gotten the family meal memories out of my system I've got a recipe for you. This one is an original by me, inspired by a couple different dip/dishes that I have had at other's homes on bunco nights. (bunco is a dice game played by 12 people at 3 tables). I combined a few ingredients of different dishes and added one of my own. As with all my recipes you get a rambling explanation of why I use the ingredients I do, variations that I have tried and only vague proportions to work with. But I hope if you do give it a try, you like it. This is a variation on 7 layer dip, it's meant to be served with tortilla chips along side the guacamole & salsa, but I'll admit right now I have served with a spinach salad and called it dinner.

1 pound of ground beef or a bit more.
1 or 2 avocados, depends on how much you like avocados. I really like them so I use 2. The little dark green ones, not the big light green ones. One of those would probably be sufficient. You want them to be just a tiny bit past ripe, not too soft but with a nice 'give' if you squeeze them gently.
1 or 2 tomatoes for the same reason as the avocados. I'm not big on tomatoes so I use one small one. DH claims this is a skimpy amount of tomatoes & has me put 2 in if its for a party.
Sour cream, the 16oz container size, though I generally use only about 12ozs of it.
One bag of shredded 'Mexican mix' cheese or you can shred up some cheddar, pepper jack & monteray jack cheese as a nice blend as well.
Packet of taco seasoning. I like Ortega mild but choose per your personal preference. Manwich sauce works well also. I'd originally intended to use Manwich when I thought up this dish but the Wal-Mart was remodeling & had moved the cans of Manwich to who knows where (not that I knew where they were before this. I'd never bought Manwich sauce before but it was used in one of the inspiration dishes) and I decided on taco seasoning instead. I found the Manwich stuff at safeway & tried that version. It's more liquidy than taco seasoning but works well.
Lettuce, if not serving with a separate salad. Iceberg is best with this, or really crisp romaine. I use about half a head of Iceberg

Cook the ground beef according to the taco seasoning/Manwich instructions. Let it cool a bit. While it is doing that, chop up the avocados & tomatoes, shred the cheese if needed and chop up the lettuce if using. You want a small dice on the avocados & tomatoes & bite sized on the lettuce.

Get one 9x13 non-metal pan. Layer in the beef on the bottom, then spread a layer of sour cream on that. I think the whole 16ozs is a bit too much sour cream, so I only use about 12ozs now. Then sprinkle the avocados & then the tomatoes over the sour cream. Top them with the lettuce, if using, and finish with the whole bag of shredded cheese. Serve with big sturdy tortilla chips.

family recipe

The prompt today is to write about a favorite family recipe and to do a layout of it for the CIJ Holiday recipe challenge on DSP. I don't know if I'll get a layout done & here is the reason - we don't have recipes in my family, unless you consider opening a jar or can or box to be a recipe. I always joke that my spaghetti sauce is my Mom's secret recipie...no one can open a jar of Ragu like Mom can! :) Mom doesn't really like to cook. She had a husband & 2 kids to feed so she cooked, but I think easy & efficient were the main points she was going for in her meals. Nutrition too I suppose - though I don't think boiled to death canned green beans or boil in a bag cauliflower with cheese sauce are really brimming over with nutrients, but then I am still working to overcome my dislike of veggies & I blame those things for causing it, so I don't have much good to say about them. I don't blame mom & I am not knocking mom for serving them. I genuinely *enjoy* cooking but being expected to produce dinner for 3 other people nearly every night does take some of the enjoyment out of it. I use frozen veggies myself, only they don't come smothered in cheese sauce (frozen cheese sauce is evil).

I don't remember most meals my mom made except meatloaf & something referred to as 'chili' that would send chili lovers screaming from the house in horror. (ground beef, tomato paste, can of kidney beans and a dash of garlic powder. I have no idea why it was called chili, but nearly every mom in the neighborhood made it) Dinner was a piece of cooked meat, potatoes of some sort (mashed or boiled usually, occasionally she got out the slicer & we would have baked french fries), a veggie of the canned or frozen variety, reheated and sometimes a salad. Nothing wrong with these meals, but none of them were really family recipes if you know what I mean. I tend to think of baked goods when I think of recipes. Or stews, lasagna, that sort of thing. Things with more than one ingredient.

I don't know for sure, but I think my grandmothers felt the same way as my mom dd about cooking. I don't remember either of them enjoying cooking. It was just something you had to do - and usually involved putting a ham in the oven & walking away until it was time to mash the potatoes & heat up the canned green beans. At both grandmothers' homes. They all served canned green beans, even when they had fresh in the garden (those had to be saved for canning). I cannot now eat green beans in any form. That was the standard holiday meal. I serve rib roast and carrots to may family on holidays. So I'm not really doing anything different, just using different stuff. I am experiementing with sides, hoping to come up with something that will become traditional in time. We rarely made Christmas cookies, though apparently they were a big deal in DH's family. I am trying to do cookies with the boys & get them involved in the regular cooking as well.

I may have to hunt up a photo of a can of green beans and do a layout about it. The recipe is simple- open can, pour in small pot, bring to a boil, leave simmering a good half hour or so to heat thoroughly. Serve.

Are you pleased with what you look like? If you could change any part of yourself what would it be?

For the most part I am happy with what i look like. There is one part that I would like to change but am not having much luck with. Its the barrel that has taken the place of my abs. Not that I ever had the rock hard 6 pack or anything. i always had a bit of bulge below my navel but it was not this thick barrel that extends from chest to crotch. The muscles under it are firm after all teh ab work I have done, but the thick layer of fat disguises that. It started out as baby weight. 2 kids in 2 years and non-stop breastfeeding munchies kept me 20lbs over my pre TTC weight. I lost 10 of it & firmed up all those muscles. But the remaining 10 lbs is keeping the barrel roll look in place. I'd love to claim it as baby weight but I am too honest with myself to do that. The baby is 2.5 years old. This is cookie weight. Exeercise I can manage. Diets ain't my thing, but I suppose I really need to just indulge less and make some better choices. Or the roll will never go away

advice

The only sort of advice I remember people actually giving me is straightforward things like - "Dump the jerk", "don't mix beer & liquor when drinking", and "don't sit too close to the tv, you'll ruin your eyes". All useful, but not really profound. These are 3 other pieces of advice I have picked up along the way. Mostly from stuff I read.

"this too shall pass" - good, bad or indifferent, nothing lasts forever. Cherish the good, endure the bad & let the indifferent happen.

"treat others as you would like to be treated" - which is challenging when you are feeling very testy because the stupid phone system has hung upon you twice and you have been on hold for a total of over 40 minutes in an attempt to convince your satellite provider the receiver they gave you is a piece of crap. You end up muttering it like a mantra while having evil thoughts.

"don't slam the door on your way out" - you never know when you might have to go in & face everyone again later.

the proposal

Let me preface this by saying - waking me up out of a sound sleep, unless the house is on fire, is never a good idea.

DH & I had been dating for 4 years and living together for 3 when he proposed. We'd talked about it before & hadn't wanted to get married. We didn't want kids so there was no real reason to get married (apart from the 'what will the neighbors think' issue my mother had, but we were living 5 hours away from her neighbors & didn't really care what they thought). So we are going along with life, perfectly happy with the status quo and one night, out of the blue, DH wakes me up and says "Let's get married." I said "Are you nuts? What time is it?" he said "No really, let's get married." I replied "If you are serious, ask me again in the morning."

Sounds callous on my part I know, but this was the situation. He was awake because he was studying for finals. He'd just started looking for professional work. He'd recently given up smoking. The Cheers series finale had been on earlier that night. I figured the stress had gotten to him.

My alarm went off at 7am and as I was getting out of bed he rolled over and said "I do still want to marry you." and I said "ok".

Not the stuff of romance, but it is a good story. I'd never really considered the proposal, but I never rally considered the wedding either when I was growing up. everyone else had their weddings planned down to the table linen by the time they were 8. I just figured the right guy would ask me to marry him & then there would be a party of some sort. The whole thing would be casual & fun. That is what I got too.

my voice

I don't really have my own voice. I have Douglas Adams'. The majority of my sayings tend to come from his books. I read the repeatedly at an early age and they are just a part of me. Lately I have been getting a lot of "Why are they buildign that Mommy?" questions from DS1. Constuction is booming in this area, we can't go anywhere without running into an excavator or dumptruck or shell of a building. There are only so many good factual answers to his question and after a bit just respond. "It's a Target. You've got to build Targets" which is from Hitchhiker's Guide "Its a bypass. You've got to build bypasses" I've also been known to stop an endless flood of questions by saying "42". The boys now realize Mommy has give them the Ultimate Answer & no more questions are necessary. I'll make comments about "having the sort of day that would make St Francis of Asissi kick babies.", refer to broken items as "the alleged *item*", answer complicated math questions with "A suffusion of yellow" and mention that "people are a problem".

I also quote old movies, like Clue - "So he says, but does he know?" and "but look what happened to the cook."

It's really amazing how often the opportunity to use things like that come up IRL. Not so much online. But one of the 'requirements' of my coven is that you have read everything by Douglas Adams or at the very least have watched lots of Monty Python. Not for religious reasons but so you can keep up with us when we start tossing around one liners & quoting things.

My own personal voice includes the work 'freaking' which is said in place of the less appropriate F word. I use a lot of contractions, drop final 'g's and have an accent in certain vowel sounds.

I don't tidy up my voice when I am writing very often. Usually just for clarity. Journaling is more thought than spoken word & there is a difference for me in those 2. I have a much larger mental vocabulary than spoken one and mentally my grammar is better. However my though process tends to ramble, whereas I am much more concise verbally. So often when I am journaling for a layout I will lean more toward my spoken voice than my mental voice. When I am journaling here I tend to stick with my mental voice - which should be obvious from the rambling nature of this post.

The favorite room in my house is my bedroom. Not because of the decor, it's painted a rather flat matte grey green, (nice color, but DULL) or all the natural wood furnitue. Certainly not because of the big metal gun safe in the corner :rollseyes:. But because of the bed. It's a very NICE bed. We bought a Tempur Pedic mattress last year. It is soooo comfy. Add to that my mass of pillows and a big poofy comforter & it's a great place to curl up with a book (as long as the males in the house are out of the house or the door is locked). It is quiet & peaceful, a wonderful retreat when "I have had enough!" as I tend to announce to the males. I'd take a photo of it right now but the males are all napping in there & I don't want to risk my lovely peace & quiet in the living room by accidentally waking them up.

take a stand

This isn't something I do very often. I can see both sides of too many issues to have firm hard opinions on things - not the sort that I am going to go to any great length to defend. I have strong opinions about things, I just prefer not to discuss them most of the time. I'm talking about the larger issues - abortion, immigration, the environment, etc. There are plenty of smaller issues for which I will draw a line in the sand - vodka or gin martini? Hunts or Heinz ketchup? whether you should return your shopping cart to the corral or not. But I think I will tackle today a very important issue.

NUTS DO NOT BELONG IN BAKED GOODS EVER! (except baklava)

Brownies, cake, cookies -all are irrepairably harmed by the addition of nuts. It spoils the texture. You have this nice soft, chewy brownie you are nibbleing at then WHAM your teeth sink into a small rocklike object. Totally ruins the experience, throws you off your brownie eating stride. Cookies are worse because the nuts are the same color as the cookie dough so you can't even pick them out. Brownies at least have a color contrast to work with. They add nothing to the taste of the cookie or browning, in fact, they add a totally foreign element. It is one thing if you are eating pecan pie, nuts are obviously the objective. But chocolate chip cookies are just that - chocolate chip cookies. Not chocolate chip and bits of walnut cookies.

Fortunately I am married to a man who agrees with me on this (and it would have been a deal breaker) so I never have to worry about what my lurking in the baked goods.

The boys have a book called "A Wocket in my Pocket" about a boy who lives with a bunch of creatures in his house including - a Bofa on the sofa, some Nuboards in the cupboards, Yeps on the steps and a Yottle in a bottle. I've decided I want a couple than are not mentioned in the book. I would like some Nishes, to do the dishes and Bondry, to do my laundry.


A cat that didn't consider the whole house his litterbox would be nice as well.

$100

If I found $100 today, sadly I'd use it for grocery shopping or to ransom our TV from the repair shop. DH's truck just cost us $780 last week in repairs, and a lighting storm messed up the TV the same week. It is $125 to repair (but totally worth it). Unfortunately these expenses caught us in the same pay period the mortgage & auto insurance are due, so we are in the red at the moment & $100 would be nice.

What I would like to do with $100 is buy an iStation for my iPod mini. It's a set of speakers. I'd like to have it so I can listen to audiobooks while cooking or listen to music in the bedroom. It was going to be my birthday present this month, but I am getting a repaired TV instead.
iStation at Circuit City

inside out?

Does your outside reflect your inside? For the most part, these days, I'd say yes. at least the outside parts I have control of. Wrinkles happen and while I feel younger than I look, I am not the type to put any real effort into wrinkle reducers. So my outsides do and don't reflect me at the same time. :)

I've stopped denying the less admirable parts of myself & am working with them instead. So they show up more outside than they used to. I have less problem sharing negative things than I used to. The desire to constantly please, to be liked by everyone, to avoid conflict, led me to agreeing to things I didn't want to do (like camping or organizing a party) and not do things I wanted to do (because they were not 'cool') I'm much better at saying no or going my own way these days.

I feel comfortable with myself inside most of the time, even with the uncomfortable parts, and I think I reflect that on the outside. Most of the time.

summer words

The words that caught my eye initially were - hot, sticky, sweltering - which describes the weather around here most of the summer. Then the words - inscects, bugs, camping - the first 2 explain why I dislike the third (so do the previous three actually). That was followed by - carnivals & fetivals - which are some of my favorite ways to spend summer evenings.


Where does the time go? I had really intended to do more scrapping this month. I did get 2 challenges at ScrapMommies done(using the same layout) adn I did finish a mini album I have been working on, using a mini album by Stacey Stahl. I have also created the wallet sized mini album for the freebie for next week and one quick page set. So it isn't as if I haven't done anything. But I just thouht I would have more challenges done. There are lots of them & I had no intention of completing them all but I'd sorta thought I would have done a few

At DSP I'm interested in the Daily Life, AAM, Boot Camp, IOTW, White Space(ends today) and Scraplift the Spotlight. Most of those end by Saturday or the next day. Plus I like Mission Possible & am interested in Staceys new chat.

At ScrapMommies I was hoping to at least do the Sketch, ABC, Scrap Therapy, Quote & AAM. I did get the Wedding & Alter ones done.

The weekend just flew by. Saturday was when I did both of the mini things, while laying in my room. Sunday I had coven & then we almost immediately went to a movie & then dinner. Dh & I are taking turns reading "Scream Free Parenting", & I read a couple more chapters last night, so he could read them tonight. And then it was bedtime. My parents are coming for a visit Thursday and staying until Sunday. I want to check out the galleries and everyone's blogs. I need to schedule my time better. Scrap during the day & do teh forums etc at night. I can sit on the sofa with the laptop that way.

comuter habits

Write about your computer habits and space: When during the day you like to sit at the computer/email/scrap etc. Do you have snacks or coffee nearby? What about a pic of your computer space? (optional)What do you have on your desk, walls.

I am at my computer in the morning, while drinking my coffee & eating breakfast. I check my email & a couple of chat boards then. I get back on in the early afternoon, during 'quiet' time. ::eyeroll:: (like my kids are ever quiet). I visit DSP then & do any scrapping that I feel like. I often get on in the evening after dinner when it's Daddy Time. I'll check email & the boards/galleries and scrap. I try to attend chats in the evening but if the kids are at all a challenge to get to sleep I usually just collapse on the sofa & read.

I change my desktop photo every month. I use PSP to add a monthly calendar to whatever photo I choose. I have stacked monitors. I was not about to give up my 19 inch flat screen when I got the laptop to I arrange it so the flat screen is the top of the desktop & the laptop is the bottom. I can keep more windows open that way.

I may have a pic around here somewhere of my new set up. I'll upload it later if I can find it. Right now i am in my bedroom 'laying down' because I have a sore throat & generally don't feel up to rambunctious little boys.

something memorable

All the males napped today. I had more than 2 solid hours all to myself. Mayhem as usual took a bit to go down but Havoc & Daddy went out just fine.

Unfortunately later no one wanted to sleep. Havoc's cough kept him up. Mayhem was dropping off at 6:30 at Chili's and then could barely stay awake for story time, but as soon as we laid him in bed it was as if he'd just drank a pot of coffee. He bounced all over the place, collapsing to sleep in our bed at 9:30. I put him in his own bed and he turned up in our room at 3:15. DH went to sleep in the playroom and Mayhem laid there playing for over 2 hours. He's been doing this lately & it is really getting on our nerves.

Independance means...

There is rather a lot of ground to cover in this. I'm taking the personal path. I'm not good at talking politics, so aside from mentioning I am a registered Independant who has not voted for a majority party Presidential candidate ever in her life & regularly votes 3rd party whenever possible in other elections, just because they are 3rd party, I'm going to leave politics out of this.

Personally independance to me means being able to choose to do things, or not do things. I have chosen to be financially dependant on my husband currently. I have chosen to live rurally, with my nearest neighbor a mile away and a stranger to me rather than live in a subdivision with people only yards away, there if you need them. I have chosen, reluctantly, to live away from my family, because I chose to work in a field that had few jobs in the area my family lives. I have not decided if I will homeschool or not.

Independance also means responsibility. You are free to choose but you also have to step up take responsibilty for the results of your choices. The fact that I have no babysitter is the direct result of where I choose to live & the price of my independance from nosy neighbors & interfering relatives. I can't blame anyone for that but myself. When you are young & your think about being an independant adult you mostly think about the power, I can stay out all night, I can eat whatever I want, watch whatever I want, wear whatever I want, etc. But you don't think about the responsiblity that goes with it - you have to get up & go to work at 8am after staying out until 5am. And if you are late for work then there won't be any money for the food, the clothes & the movies. And while you are free to choose your food & clothes, eating nothing but sweets will make you sick and so will wearing shorts & a tank top out in 30 degree weather. Yes, you can do whatever you want, but you will also reap the consequences of those choices. It's not all fun & games being independant. Lots of people fail to notice that until it is too late & then they go looking for others to blame rather than accept the responsibility of their choices.

You can't have one without the other.

exercise?

Since my internet connection is cooperating I am tryingto get caught up. Please excuse the typos I am trying to get this done before the wind changes.

I belong to the gym. I love it. It is the best use of $60 a month (includes unlimited childcare) I could have. Sure sometimes my sole motivation for going is to take a shower uninterrupted by small children, but hey, it gets me there and once there I feel morally obligated to do at least 20 minutes on one of the cardio machines. Other days my motivation is an hour away from the kids & if the price for that is 2 20 minute cardio sessions & and some ab & thigh machine work, then it is worth it. Unlimited childcare is a wonderful thing. Pity you can't leave the building...

I try to go 3x a week. I usually do 15-20 minutes on a cardio machine, there are about 7 styles available, I use all but the bikes. Then I do a round of weight machines, getting arms, back, abs, legs & butt worked (or some variation, I don't get to each of them every time) sometimes I just use hand weights. I always do ab work, one of a couple different ab machines. Then I do another 20 minutes on a different cardio machine. I listen to audiobooks while I work out. Some people are motivated by music, but there is nothing like a good murder mystery to keep my focused on my workout.

I try the classes every so often. I like the yoga & the cycling classes but I am just not a class person. I can't listen to my murder mysteries in them. So I am bad about attending them.

The last time I laughed really hard

was probably while watching Who's Line Is It Anyway? reruns before bed. It has become a habit from back when Mayhem was born. I'd get into bed with him about 10pm and watch Who's Line while nursing him until we both fell asleep. I still watch it nearly every weeknight. The sketches that make me laugh the hardest are ones that involve Colin & Ryan having to do accents. Neither of them is very good at it in the long term. They can manage one sentence in a Russian accent but not a second sentence. So the accents are all over the map. My favorite skit is one I just saw recently with Kathy Greenwood, Wayne Bradey & Ryan & Colin. Colin was the mad director & he had this weird middle European accent going on & told them to do the scene "In the doork. ..no light..it's doork" which for some reasons just cracks me up. Plus they were doing Zorro and everyone was supposed to have a Spanish accent but Ryan's character had apparently spent years in Ireland and Cathy's had a Swedish mother. And they were making fun of themselves on top of it. I usually end up laughing really hard a couple times a week at Who's Line.

what would I take with me

if I had to leave the house in a hurry?

I do think about this from time to time. Given the layout of my house, if there is a fire, I won't be in a position to grab anything but the boys and my bathrobe. My house is built into a hillside, not near a fault line or flowing water and is over reinforced. I can't really think of any sort of weather that might cause us to evacuate, but if the nuclear power plant had a meltdown I'd be moving fast, even though I live outside the evacuation area. I would grab my laptop, all my photos, music & audio books are on it. I'd stuff the giant suitcase with whatever clothes I could grab for everyone, everyone's bed pillows and the boys loveys. Plus my purse.

The pillow may seem a strange choice but think about being in a strange place, with nothing of your own. Laying in a strange bed, after a traumatic event, stressed out about everything. But right there under your head is something that is familiar to all of your senses; it's sight, feel, smell, the sound your skin makes as you turn your head, even the taste of the fabric as you roll over brushing your lips on the fabric. Its comforting. It's 'home' even though home isnt there. Sort of a lovey for adults. I take my pillow with me when I travel, sacrificing clothing space to pack my pillow in the suitcase. I'm definately grabbing it if I have a chance.

be careful what you wish for...

I am so screwed.

You know how I hate my sofa adn would like nothing more than to have to buy a new one? You know how I just spent nearly as much on a laptop as I would on a new sofa? You see where this is heading?

One of our cats has PEED on the sofa. And not just on a cushion than can be taken to the laundromat, but in the corner, so it is on the nailed into the frame upholstry. That can't be washed and no amount of Febreeze is going to eradicate the smell. The cat will do it again. The cats are 13 years old & have been peeing on all sorts of things since the boys were born..mostly the boys toys, but also in the bathrooms. Cats are not disposeable to me so I can't just dump them at the shelter and I can't see placing an ad that reads "wanted good home for cat that pees on everything." So I don't know what to do. Odds are they will pee on a new sofa too. If we were in a position to buy a new sofa, which we aren't because we just bought the laptop. I'mnot returning the laptop. I need it far more than I need a sofa.

So as an experiment & to buy some time, I am taking the cushion and the sofa cover to the laundromat for an industrial strength washing tomorrow. Tonight I am going to soak that corner of the sofa in Febreeze and vinegar. Tomorrow I will also go to the furniture store & price sofas. (I told DH we shouldn't have given away our old IKEA sofa last month) The cats have just become outdoor cats as opposed to the indoor/outdoor cats they were. well, they will be out when we are out. Unless they do it again & then they are out for good.

Maybe people will just have to sit on a pile of pillow until Xmas, when we will have saved enough to buy a new sofa.

10 things to do before I am 40

and I better work fast because I only have 13 months to do them in

1. BUY A NEW SOFA! (won't happen but it's nice to hope)
2. take ballroom dance classes with DH
3. clean out & reorganize my junk/sewing room (it will take me a year to do this)
4. lose the last 15lbs of baby weight (the baby is 2.5 years old)
5. brew mead
6. get another tattoo
7. think of 4 more things to do :)

the computer saga so far

There have been times in the past 3 days where I wished I was a complete newbieto computers. That I could just turn on a new one and be like "WOW This is so great". But I've been doing this a long time. And I have had my curent CPU for 3 years. It's been modified, tweeked and souped up. Slowly and over time. Now I am faced with making all those changes at once to my new computer & that is fairly overwhelming. Just the vast number of progams is daunting, never mind basics like what color my window bar is. Somthings I changed so long ago I forgot they had been changed. "Why is it telling me this?" "Why didn't it tell me this?" So I broke it down into manageable tasks

Tuesday - Make It Your Own
delete all the 'helpful' crap it comes with - google & yahoo toolbars, easy internet connection set up, free trials of earthlink, AOL, norton; plus most of the dozens of games. Strip it to basic, connect it to the network & transfer over my wndow scheme. begin long tedious copying of My Document and all that entails

Wednesday - Downloading & Reloading
I was stupid and in a hurry and rather than wait for the CD versions of software to arrive, I downloaded them. And cannot find the original downloads(some of them were months and months ago, they might have been burned to CDs but I can't find them). So I have go and download them again, plus updates & occasionally email tech support because the verision I paid for is no longer accessable and I am not buying the upgrade. Once all they are done then I have to reload everything I have the discs for & then download their upgrades. Setup Outlook & import everything into everything that can export my existing settings. (I love that PSP has workspaces you can save!)

Thursday - How Many USB Ports Do I Need? or Fun with Peripherals
All the externals must be sorted through & connected. Most especially my adored 19 inch flat screen monitor (because SIZE DOES MATTER). The monitor is the main reason I have been reluctant to change to a laptop. I am almost too fond of my monitor. I have it set up now as the top of the screen & the laptop as the bottom. I think this will work. But I have to sort through printer, keyboard, mouse,scanner, tablet, cords to Ipod, cameras, other random stuff that I am not sure what it is and printer isn't USB. Can you buy a 15 port USB hub?

Friday - What Did I Miss?
final tweeking & search for stuff I may have missed

Saturday - Actually Use the Thing!!!
maybe even scrap & get caught up on DSP & everyone's blogs

Sorry I haven't been to visit anyone lately. I will catch up soon though!

3 ways in which someone can compliment me

1. I am prompt & meet deadlines
2. I am a good listener
3. I am decisive when necessary.

I have a new laptop! It's still in the box. DH & I decided to spend the extra and get the good laptop. He got a bonus this paycheck and it was just about the difference in cost so it seemes fate. The PC is now just humming along as if it never had a problem a day in it's life; itmust know it is being replaced. That is fine by me because to save money I went with am 80GB HD. My PC has 2 HDs, the main is 100GB and the secondary one (my scrapping one) is 120GB. In a month or so I'll buy one of those boxes they make to turn an internal HD into an external one, but until then I'd be happy to be able to use the PC as a networked giant external HD.

Hopefully I'll get to open the box soon. but I can't do that with small boys underfoot and no one shows any signs of napping today. Maybe I'll put Madagascar on & lock myself in the bathroom......

bad news

my primary HD appears to have overheated & caught fire. There is a burn mark onthe bottom of the floppy drive slot and a smoke trail running up it, to my DVD RW drive, and that is just on the outside of the computer. I'm afraid to look inside it. The HD will boot occasionally for a few minutes & I am using that time to copy over to the secondary drive what things are still on it that I really really want - My Documents mostly & export databases from my Life Journal & Outlook & then go through the software & see what to copy over if just to avoid endless updating on a new computer. Fortunately my PSPX and all my photos & scrapbook stuff are on the seconday drive already.

I am sooooo not happy about this. DH wants to gt a laptop for me. I appreciate it but I'm reluctant to put anything on credit right now. I have $500. The laptops I am looking at are $800-$900. I was really hoping to get 6 more months out of the PC

What would have happened if I had stayed home?

Havoc would not have gone to vacation bible school. He cried a bit when I dropped him off but he did let me leave and he told me after that he had a good time, though he isn't too sure about going back tomorrow. It was his very first ever 'school' day.

I wouldn't have gone to the gym. This would be bad for my morale & my waistline.

I would not have gotten the photocopies done that I need for a project I am working on and today was the only time I could get them.

I wouldn't have gone to the library and therefor would have no new reading material until I had the time to try again. I've been trying to get to the library for over a week but the boys just can't remain calm long enough for me to browse.

Lastly, if i had remained home today I would have spent even more time in a house with a broken computer & feeling incredibly frustrated because of it. My computer is DEAD, officially & irretriveably dead, as of 12:45pm today. Though had I been home I woud have realized it about 8:30am. I am on my mom's ancient laptop that she gave to me a year ago when she got a new one. It is 6 years old & cannot run PSP. or just about anything else except Word, Excel & IE. So at least I can surf the web & I think it has an email program I cen use too. I don't have the money right now to buy the revved up laptop I want, but if I buy another bottom line PC, that will be $500 I'll have to resave toward a laptop. And I recently got a DVD writer, an secondary internal 200gig HD and 2MBs RAM for that PC (and no PC on the market uses that style RAM) so I am feeling a tad bit frustrated. But at least it has been 4 hours less frustration than it would have been.

what do you consider a good party?

Since we were just writing about our teen years my first thought was a frat party! Good looking guys (for the most part), beer, drinking games, a band (or great DJ) and a theme that gets everyone to dress up in some goofy way. I was in a sorority in college (in an attempt to overcome my anti-socialness). We were the #1 party sorority at the #1 party college in the nation. If there was a party going on the AOII girls were there in force! TGIF parties started at noon on Fridays. When the weather was nice all the houses on frat hill would have cookouts and we'd hop from house to house and then nap in the early evening, get up and go to the evening parties. Football Saturdays were one long party, starting with a Wake Up (screwdrivers, bloody mary's or regular OJ & donuts), then the tailgate, the game, a nap & meal then the evening bar hoping (the whole strip was one big party if we won). Just remembering it makes me happy! I had SUCH a good time the first 3 years I was a sorority girl. (4th year kinda sucked on a lot of levels). Hearing Rock Lobster brings back such strong memories I have to pretty much stop what I am doing & relive them. God, I loved college! (i earned 2 degrees almost in spite of myself)

Nowadays a good party involves good friends, some new acquaintances, good food & drink and some games - trivial pursuit, croquet, various dice & card games. On site babysitting is nice too when you can get it. I also LOVE murder mystery parties - friends, food, a game and dressing up in costume (some things don't change much) I haven't been to one since the boys were born but I am thinking of hostin gone if I can arrange some babysitting.

What were you like as a teenager?

I was anti-social. I liked to stay in my room & read, write stories, or watch TV. I was not into organized sports. I was shy & I really did not like going to 'events' unless it was a carnival or fair. Meeting new people was agony to me. I had a small circle of friends & kept to myself. I did not put a lot of effort into my appearance (when you wear a uniform all day & have your hair, makeup, jewlery & shoes stictly limited, there just isn't much motivation IMO. I made up for it in college)

My parents are VERY social, so I was a big problem to them, though I might not have been to less socially active parents. I was not really a rebellious child. I didn't stay out past curfew or sneak liquor or cigs. I didn't mouth off. My parents were well known in my home town. No matter how sneaky I thought I was being, someone would see me & tell my folks. EVERY TIME! I learned that lesson very quickly when I was still in grade school. As a teen I knew I would get busted & there was never anything I wanted to do so bad that was worth the risk. Anyway, from about the age of 14 I knew I was going to go to WVU, the then #1 party school in the nation & I could do all the wild stuff I wanted to then with no parental reprocussions (as longa s it didn't involve bail). So I waited. My brother cound;t be convinced of this & regularly was surprised to be busted for sneaking out, underage drinking, tearing his car around in vacant lots, etc. Mostly for sneaking out & drinking in the woods. Which was really dumb of him. If we wanted a beer, even at 16, (the drinking age was 18 then) we said "Hey Dad, can I have a beer?" and he said "Sure, you have to drink it in the house." So what was the point of getting some one to buy you a six pack & sneak of into the woods? I never got it. I never really had a curfew, though my car had to be home by midnight. I was free to drop it off & leave again. My parents wanted to know where I was, who I was with, when I might be home. But they were open about the curfew thing and cut you no slack if you stayed out until 2am and had to get up at 6am to work or something. Logical conscequences were a big thing with my parents. The only thing they were really adament about was no drinking & driving & no getting into a car with somoene who had been drinking, even just one beer. I never had a boyfriend in HS so sex was a non-issue.

My parents main issue with me is that I didn't want to go along to watch my brother's baseball games or to 'family events' that the Jaycees were sponsoring (my dad was very involved in jaycees) and I had no problem sharing my unhappiness at being where I was with everyone in my vacinity. I was a sulky, whiny teen when I was dragged out to things I didn't want to do. Eventually they stopped making me show up at most things.

I never really grew out of the anti-social thing. At least not IRL. I am much more social online than I am in person. I've never apologized for my sulking & whinyness. But then they have never apologized for pushing me so hard into social & athletic situations. Mistakes were made all around as I see it. I could have behaved better & they could have eased off on the pressure. My parents and I accepted our difference shortly after I graduated from college & that was closure for me. My older son is very shy & slow to deal with social things. I am trying to both respect that & encourage him out of it. But I am not going to drag him repeatedly to things I know he doesn't enjoy on the theory he'll just get over it, because I know it doens't work that way.

Finding peace

I have a 3.5 yo and a 2yo, peace can be a rare commodity in my house, especially if you follow it with "and quiet". I've gotten better about finding it more often in the past 6 months - getting more sleep really helps the mental equilibrium. I've also adopted some Buddhist thoughts that help. Mostly about letting go and accepting that things are as they are. Soem things are just not going to change soon, if at all & I have to work with reality, not with what I wish. Toddlers can be whiny at dinner and little whirlwinds in stores and messy in general. That is toddler nature. Getting all bent out of shape about it may provide a temporary relief to stress, but it is not a constructive way of dealing (She says during a quiet naptime that her children went down for without a fuss - for once) It's easy to say that & believe that when things are going well but in the midst of a meltdown screaming fit by 2 little boys in the checkout line at Safeway, it's not so easy to believe. Screaming at them or with them seems to make much more sense right then. So it's a slow process but I am getting better at it. I recommend the book "Buddhism for Mothers". It is based on Buddhist principles but the methods & recommendations it gives can be applied by anyone of any faith. the message is about finding peace & showing universal love.

I do mindful meditation too & that helps a lot. I focus on a task & experience every moment of it. Usually I do this in the shower because I have never really been able to think "now I am scraping the food off the plate. Listen to the sound the fork makes as it slides across the ceramic" without rolling my eyes at myself. But I can stand in a shower & think "Feel the warm water, feel the slight roughness of the loofa as you wash off". I alwys feel very relaxed adn peaceful after I do that, assuming that no small boys were pounding on the door shouting "JUICY MAMA! WANT JUICY!!" while I was doing it. Being 'in the moment', actually focusing on coloring with my children, rather than thinking about what I am going to make for dinner while I am coloring has really helped me.

To me finding peace involves acceptance of things that cannot be changed, knowledge that all things end (good, bad or indifferent), paying more attention to the things I don't want to change and faith that things will get better.

blast from the past

As long as we are talking about 'remember when', let me tell you something I am reliving right now. My teeth hurt. My teeth hurt in that special way teeth hurt right after you get your braces tightened. Why do they hurt this way? Because I got braces today - 25 years to the month after having them removed. I had braces from 6th-8th grade. They tell you to wear your retainer. They don't tell you you have to KEEP wearing it for the rest of your life (and it gets expensive to keep with it). My teeth have been shifting for about 10 years now. Within the past year my front teeth stopped meeting when I bit into things and my back teeth have shifted so much it can be painful to chew sometimes. I have no guarantee this isn't due to degeneration of my jaw muscles but only time will tell and my teeth are crooked even if it is. So a couple months back I plopped down $6000, had impressions done and today received my first set of OrthoClear aligners. I'd been willing to go with a repeat of a mouth of metal if it would be cheaper but because the orthodontist thinks these will work better, faster. I'll still end up with some metal for 4-6 months after about 18 months of the aligners.

I popped these things in and it was an instant flashback to a pain I had not forgotten but had not thought about in years. And I get to re-experience it every 2 weeks for the next 2 years. It will be nice to bite into things properly when this is over.

Monday's prompt

How did you get started using computers? When did you first get "online". Do you predate the Internet being available to the public or was it always here for you?

Oh the memories this brought back! My first computer was an Atari that my parents bought sometime in the early 80s. 1982 at a guess. They never used it. My brother played games on it. I played games but I wrote programs too. There was an Atari magazine that had games in it, but it was just the code. You had to type the code into the computer, complete with line numbers, and hope you made no errors & you would get to play a text based came if you got it right. I don't think I ever got one right but while entering the code I began to figure out just what command combinations produced what results. My very first ever computer program was for a school schedule. You entered your grade & depending on it you could choose classes for 2-4 of your 8 class periods. Then it would generate random schedules, complete with teacher names (and getting to choose only certain teacher for certain classes was the real challenge for me). Sometimes you got lucky & it assigned you 4 periods of lunch :). It even drew lines around the schedule & between the classes. HIGH TECH STUFF.

We got computers in my high school in 1984. TRS-80s that had to be all connected together & only one person at a time could send information over the wires. We each had a floppy that held our work because there were no hard drives (NO HARD DRIVES!). I recreated my school schedule program on it for class with a few refinements & got an A.

In college I use the university Apple's & discovered local BBSs. I remember chatting about a lot of books and playing RPGs online on them. Then in 1991, DH bought his first comptuer, a 256. It cost $1100. I remember because his Discover card only had a $1000 limit. We were living together then & I paid for a Prodigy membership. Prodigy was one of the first nationwide BBS, not quite the internet today, but a starting point. I was never offline again. I later added a CompuServe account & then an AOL account. I'm not sure when the nationwide BBS experience that was AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve became the WWW as we know it. I remember researching things online but it wasn't IE based with www.something.com names. It was more like telnet. You had to connect to the site, often with user names & passwords, sometimes manually dialing in. Then suddenly there was IE and http:// stuff and email that could be sent outside AOL or Prodigy (or maybe the email came before IE...I think maybe it did). There were listserves, and webrings and html! It was pretty incredible.

And now I feel old. When I was in high school (and in college for that matter) & a paper had to be written you looked stuff up in the encyclopedia at home or you went to the library and flipped through the card catelog looking for relevant books, or you sat at a big noisy machine & looked though the microfish at scanned newspapers or scanned old documents. You didn't just google Margaret of Anjou and start cutting and pasting notes. Hard to believe nowadays.