Thursday Thirteen #16 – Excuses…excuses.

Thirteen Reasons I Missed Thursday Thirteen this Week

1. My kids are insane. ‘Nuff said.
2. I had to wrap 8,497 presents. That is only a slight exaggeration.
3. I got my hair cut and colored. I got a new style I’ve never had and red was added in for the first time ever. Pictures may appear in the side bar.
4. I worked a lot.
5. I wrapped 1,939 more presents. Again, only a slight exaggeration.
6. I had to deal with insurance agencies and doctors.
7. I have been busy trying to learn how to learn how to use our new camcorder and trying to find the best place to find replacement camcorder batteries.
8. I spent way too much time in stores looking for THE perfect gifts for some of my loved ones.
9. I had 10,321 loads of laundry to do. Oh c’mon.. I don’t exaggerate THAT much.
10. By the time I actually had time to sit at the computer (when I wasn’t working), my brain was a pile of goo.
11. I had to keep feeding my children (that are insane..INSANE I tell ya!)
12. I was busy finding shoes, homework, coats, and taking 4 of us to dentist appointments this week.
13. Thursday came and went and I didn’t even notice.

I guess it’s better late then never right?

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[tags]Thursday Thirteen, Thursday 13, TT13, excuses, wrapping presents[/tags]

TGIF! Friday's Feast #5

I’m sooo glad it’s Friday. This was a strange and somewhat stressful week. But it was also an accomplished week as I got a ton of presents wrapped, Cody’s surgery scheduled (December 27th), bills paid, and lots of paperwork done.

Ugh.. I just realized due to the stress and frustration that was my Thursday yesterday, I missed Thursday Thirteen 😦 Boooooo! I look forward to doing those every week. Oh well. I’ll do a Friday’s Feast instead.

Appetizer
What was the last game you purchased? The last game I (we) purchased was actually the latest expansion to EverQuest II, Ruins of Kunark. I’ve had hardly any time to play lately.. and have barely scratched the surface in exploring the new expansion.

Soup
Name something in which you don’t believe. I don’t believe I can answer this question without starting some controversy as the first thing that pops into my head is organized religion. I’m just going to leave it at that. Please don’t fill up my mailboxes with hate mail. 🙂

Salad
If you could choose a celebrity to be your boss, who would you pick? Robin Williams.

Main Course
What was a lesson you had to learn the hard way? I’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way. It’s the way one progresses through life. You live… you learn. That has always been my motto. I couldn’t possibly pick one lesson. Life is all about lessons learned and most lessons are learned the hard way… which to me just equals LIVING.

Dessert
Describe your idea of the perfect relaxation room. Our family room with the lights low, a fire burning in the fireplace, family all together, watching TV together, or reading a book, etc. That’s where I like to relax in the evenings anyway.

Wow, those were some hard questions this week.

[tags]Friday’s Feast, Friday, TGIF, live and learn[/tags]

Bullet Sunday #12

• I think margarine is disgusting and I will only eat and use real butter in cooking. (I’m pretty sure margarine is evil for diabetics too. At least that’s my excuse if anyone offers me that disgusting crap.) So I picked up a clear glass butter dish a while back. It attracted me because It looked big enough to hold two sticks of butter. It turned out to be very thick …. very VERY thick and heavy … very VERY heavy glass and only held one and a half sticks of butter. Does that make sense to you? I hated the damn thing because It was so wide and SO heavy I could barely hold on to it especially if it got slippery with butter. The kids? Well, they just didn’t deal with it. Once they got the lid off, it stayed off. This resulted in the dogs assuming that an exposed stick of butter sitting on the counter was fair game. It was driving me mad so today when I noticed my lovely children once again left the butter dish cover off, I made a point to show them *how* to put the lid back on. I should have used both hands because really, there’s no way they could have put the lid back on with one hand. My point was driven home as I was a little too deliberate when I set the lid down onto the dish. It slipped out of my hand and broke. I think I lost some of my uber ninja points on that one. It might have been funny if steam hadn’t started rolling out my ears at that point. I’m pretty sure I heard suppressed giggles but no one dared laugh out loud.
  

  We got this new normal butter dish today and it has a little handle on the top. Little fingers, including those with short stubby fingers *ahem* should have no trouble with this butter dish lid. You know how they say it’s the little things? Well….this butter dish makes me happy. Then again, can you blame me after having the butter dish from hell?

• We decided to do some more Christmas shopping while we were out today (buying my new happy butter dish) and as we pulled into the parking lot of Target, we were faced with a situation we’ve never quite faced before: Playing chicken with a shopping cart. A rogue shopping cart was barreling down at us at an amazing speed. We slowed down to see if it was actually going to hit us. It swerved and bounced off the curb and came back for us again. Jack stopped the car and we let it hit us head on. I then got out and put it up on a grassy area up against a tree where the wheels dug into where the grass met the bark dust surrounding the tree.

• It’s always interesting to go shopping this time of year. You see all kinds of strange people. If you’re a people watcher, as we are, it’s the best time of year for it. Today the very overweight woman with skin tight high water camouflage pants (not capri pants) got a chuckle out of me. I guess she heard about the flood watch, too.

• After yesterday’s joke of a snowfall, today we’re having tons of rain and wind. (The kind of wind that allows you to play chicken with shopping carts.) I twisted my hair into a knot and secured it with a hair claw as I knew there’d be no point in doing anything else with it in today’s storm. I am pretty sure I resembled Medusa by the time we got into the mall anyway. I could tell I was being ‘people watched’ myself as tried to fix the mess my hair became.

• A couple weeks ago we got the notice of the value of our home. It went down slightly. This might be good thing for us short term as we might see a slight decrease in our property taxes. I think??? I found out I might have been able to protest the value they set when we bought the house. They (whoever they is) claimed our property went up $70k in value in one year. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t right. This real estate stuff can be confusing.

• You have been warned: One of our purchases today was a video camera. We’ve been waiting to get one … for many years. People often gasp at us when we tell them we don’t have one. You have how many kids and you don’t have a video camera? What is wrong with you people?? I’ve used the crappy little video function on my digital camera many times but it takes postage stamp size videos. Kevin has the lead role in his high school’s musical performance coming up in January. I absolutely want a video capture of this and I’m tired of begging others for copies of their videos. We were going to pick one up months ago before I lost my other job, but put it off after that bomb was dropped. Now that I have a job again, it’s time. We got a JVC GZ-MG555U which was the best HDD (hard disk drive) one we could find for the money/features we wanted without going to a High Definition one (although those were temping too). I feel I must post this as a warning because I’m sure until the novelty wears off, I’ll be posting lots of videos.

[tags]bullet sunday, butter dish, margarine sucks, stormy weather, shopping, video cameras, jvc, flood watch, Medusa hair[/tags]

Thursday Thirteen #15 – Forgetful

Thirteen Things I Forgot this Week

Cody brings home books from school to read to me all the time. Today he had a sly grin on his face as he showed me the book he chose today. It was about a boy who couldn’t find his glasses.

Cody explains his choice to me, “I got this book because you always forget where you put your glasses, Mommy!” ………..

The ending was cute, though. His brother told him to look in the mirror and sure enough, he was wearing his glasses all along. For the record, I’ve NEVER done that. Nope. Not me.

In the spirit of things, I’ve forgotten…

1. ok fine, I have forgotten where I put my glasses a few times this week (but I wasn’t wearing them!)
2. to make it to the lab to get blood work drawn
3. to call the doctor
4. to eat breakfast… twice
5. to turn off the Christmas lights before bed
6. to change the theme on this blog (not that I’ve had time..)
7. to buy some replacement headphones since my iPod ones got ruined
8. to move the headphones cord out of the way before I slammed the drawer shut
9. that a shelf not-yet-hung-up with nails sticking out of it was propped against the wall under the window (and thus scratching my ankle as I peeked out looking for snow this morning)
10. that we live in an area where it rarely *really* snows (and yet that never stops me from hoping)
11. how much I love Little Smokies sausages
12. that I can buy Little Smokies sausages year round and not just during the holiday season
13. to fold the laundry… no really, I forgot…

Links to other Thursday Thirteens: Linda | Chris | Noelle | nicholas

Btw, I made the Christmas / Holiday Thursday Thirteen header graphic in this post. I don’t mind if you use it, but I’d appreciate a link back to this post if you do.

[tags]Thursday Thirteen, Thursday 13, TT13, things forgotten, forgetful, Thursday thirteen header graphic[/tags]

Bullet Sunday #11

• The other day I mentioned we go over the river and through the woods to our Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. You know the song, right? It’s a fun little joke in our family because in order to get to Jack’s grandmother’s house, we have to cross the Columbia River, then drive through the Columbia Gorge which of course is filled with trees and beautiful scenery. This weekend as we dig out our luggage sets and get ready for our trip this Thanksgiving, that song gets stuck in my head.

• Remember how much fun we had raking leaves? Well, Jack isn’t having so much fun today. Over the course of the last two weeks since that post, three times as many leaves have fallen in our backyard. The weather hasn’t been very kind to us with all this rain, so Jack gave up waiting for a dry day and has been out there in the pouring rain raking them all up. He’s a drowned rat.

• Friday we saw Beowulf. I give this movie a 3.5 out of 5 stars. First, it’s all CGI which I wasn’t expecting. I hadn’t done much research or watched the trailers closely. That’s my own fault. The CGI was awesome in this movie, though. Much better than I’ve seen in other movies. They (whoever they may be) still need to work on getting the eyes right on CGI humans, but overall I was impressed with the animation and graphics. I was a bit disappointed with some of the gore. I know it’s a graphic tale, but I was hoping they could tell the story without actually showing some of the disgusting parts. Maybe I’m just getting old but I felt an ‘R’ rating would have been more fitting. It has a PG-13 rating… my 13+ year olds aren’t sheltered but they found the gore in some parts disturbing as I did. The story was only somewhat true to the original poem, and it had a very slow start. But once it got going I enjoyed myself.

• That’s all for this Bullet Sunday. Staying home and not doing much other than clean house, play games, and watch movies all day makes for boring blogging I guess. 🙂

[tags]Bullet Sunday, Thanksgiving, fall, leaves, Beowulf, Beowulf movie[/tags]

Thursday Thirteen #14 – Thankful

Thirteen Things I’m Thankful For

1. Without a doubt, the number one thing I’m thankful for is my family. I’m blessed to have a wonderful caring husband who dotes on me and treats me like a queen. Who understands me (most of the time) and puts up with my crap. And my children are truly the joy of my life.

2. I’m thankful for my friends. I’ve never been one to run in a large circle of friends. Instead I’ve formed close friendships with a few people. These friends know more about me than anyone else (outside my husband) and these friendships have lasted more than a decade. In one case, two decades…

3. As much as having diabetes sucks, and the issues with cholesterol and the extra weight, I’m actually pretty healthy. So yeah.. I’m thankful for my health, despite the challenges.

4. I’m thankful our house sold before the market went nuts and that it only took four days on the market. This is a big deal because we were going to try to hang on it it and rent it out. We made the decision to sell rather hastily and I’m so thankful we did. If we hadn’t, we would have been severely screwed if we didn’t get renters in there. Selling it also meant we could finally get some nice things for ourselves such as our 46″ LCD TV, an actual real bedroom furniture set, and a decent couch. We’d never had these things before (we had couches but never new.. only used) and while the items themselves are material and meaningless in the grand scheme of things, having the opportunity to purchase and enjoy them was a great experience.

5. I’m very happy that this year was a better than 2006. In 2006 my mother had a horrible accident, our friends house burned down and my oldest son was there to witness the aftermath (they lost all their pets), and my step father died. 2006 sucked. 2007 with all its ups and downs was cake in comparison.

6. I’m thankful I lost my job. That may sound crazy but other than worrying about finances from time to time, my overall stress level has decreased so much that I’m a happier person overall. It also opened up other opportunities for me and allowed me to see things for what they really were.

7. I’m thankful to live in such a beautiful place. Where the falls are breathtaking, the winters are manageable, the springs burst with life, and the summers are warm.

8. I’m thankful that at any given time if we want to get out of the house, we have our choice of big cities, or the countryside, mountains, the ocean, rivers, and even deserts and all within a few hours drive from our own home.

9. I’m thankful for my new job.

10. Despite the skin conditions and the barking, the meowing and the fur in places it shouldn’t be, I’m very thankful for my pets.

11. I’m thankful I’m already on number 11 because I didn’t realize it would be this hard to find thirteen things I was thankful for that weren’t trivial and stupid. For example,

12. I’m thankful for scented candles. What can I say? Certain scents make me happy and there’s a scented candle for everything now.

13. I don’t know if I’ll be able to post next Thursday (Thanksgiving) because we’re traveling over the river and through the woods (literally) to Jack’s grandmother’s house. In fact, this is something I’m thankful for… that we get to spend another year at Jack’s grandmother’s. She doesn’t have a computer and thus no internet. I’m going to try to post something but if I do find an internet connection, I don’t know if I’ll have time to do a TT.

[tags]Thursday Thirteen, Thursday 13, TT13, things I’m thankful for, thankful, Thanksgiving[/tags]

Bullet Sunday #10 on Monday

Happy Veterans Day!!!

• Can I do a Bullet Sunday on Monday? I stole the Bullet Sunday idea from Dave so I suppose I can since there are like no real rules or anything. And people post memes on the wrong days all the time (like Thursday Thirteen on Wednesday or even Tuesday) so yes, I do suppose this is OK.

• Saturday we took Kayla out for more driving practice. I think I hid my terror well. Even when she got on the highway and all the way up to 50 MPH (the speed limit on that stretch of highway) I contained my panic. Actually she did pretty good. She needs more practice for us to feel totally confident in her abilities to drive on her own but she did great overall.

• With Kayla still at the wheel, we stopped at Costco for groceries and I took a peek at their jewelry display. They have $5000 and up diamond rings in their display case. In fact, most of the jewelry was anywhere from 5k – 20k. Yikes. I could not imagine wearing anything that expensive, let alone owning something like that. To me it seems like such a waste of money. Maybe to super rich people a 5k ring is nothing, but to me the money could be better spent. I appreciate fine jewelry and I love to add bling now and then, but I guess I’m more practical. If I did win the lottery in some bizarre fluke, the last thing I’d buy is jewelry that expensive.

• Yesterday was Sissa’s end-of-football-season party. The kids chose to have it at the skating rink. I have not been roller skating in about 20 years. I took ice skating lessons as a child and used to roller skate every weekend. I had my own skates and skated all over the place. I was pretty good. I thought it would be like riding a bike as I strapped on roller skates last night. As soon as I stood up and almost fell flat on my ass, I knew I was seriously mistaken. I wobbled around the first 1/2 hour or so and almost fell on my face 3-4 times. Then some of the muscle memory came back and by the end of the session I was skating backwards a little bit like I used to be able to.. It was also Sissa and Cody’s first time skating, (Casey chose to watch) and Sissa picked it up pretty fast. Cody flopped around on the wall and around the rink the entire time. He never stopped once to take a break and he mostly didn’t want our help. He got better but never enough to let go of the wall. He was adorable. He said he couldn’t wait to tell his teacher that he learned how to skate.

• You know that whole lack of sleep thing that’s been going on with me? Despite being absolutely exhausted and sore from the skating thing, the weather decided I didn’t need to sleep in and the howling wind woke me up at 5 AM. I did sleep very soundly though so it wasn’t that bad. It’s been windy/stormy all day and I kinda like it. The kids don’t have school today since it’s Veteran’s Day and it’s been nice being all cozy and warm inside while it storms outside.

[tags]bullet sunday, weekends, driving lessons, roller skating, storms, wind[/tags]