Snow, Man.

We are still buried under the largest snowfall in 40 years. (Well, the largest in 40 years for this area.)
I realize that much of the Northern Hemisphere is buried under snow and ice this time of year and everyone is probably used to it, but it's really unusual for us. We took a couple pictures today to remember it all by.... the drifts are sort of deep here. (again, for this area it's very unusual to have this much snow.) The first pic is my hubby standing against the front of the house. That's our front porch to the left (His right). Porch is about 2 feet above the ground, and the snow is about 10 inches deep on top of that.
We didn't get 30 inches of snow, but with the wind, it has piled up in certain areas.
Next picture is hubby in the backyard.



















He may be approaching 46 years old, but no matter how cold it is...

No matter how deep the snow....

No matter how far he has to go...


Wait for it....



Wait.....




He can still
GET WOOD!!!

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

(After staring at the picture for a minute, I figured out the circle on top of the wood is actually part of a wind chime that's hanging from the top of the back porch and just happened to get in the way when I snapped the picture.)

Here's a Surprise...

I didn't get everything done over the break.

Actually, since I really like to be an honest person, I really didn't get anything big done. No, I didn't manage to defrost the freezer, but I'm thinking this afternoon or tomorrow for that project. I really can't put it off any longer.

I went to choir practice. I did laundry, I managed a trip to Costco with my good and nutty friend Tami, I cooked a couple meals, made it to Curves five times, and washed all the blankets and mattress pads and sheets from our king sized waterbed. We visited OMSI, went to one homeschool Game Day (the other one was canceled, which figures, I almost never get to go... waaah), I'm not a huge game player, but I enjoy going because I like so many of the people who attend.

I had one Girl Scout meeting, made it to Goodwill three times (did not leave there empty-handed even once), bought a ticket for my daughter to go visit my parents on the 7th of April for a week or so, blogged every day, figured out with Matt's help how to get the music I'm pulling from my vinyl records into MP3 format so I can listen to it wherever I want to, and started another box of stuff I want to get rid of.

I did some research and price comparisons on cameras, decided on the one I want, and ordered it yesterday. I engaged in some angst over it, and I still have a bit of internal conflict about spending so much money right now, but I think that ultimately I'll be happy with the purchase.

I managed to put something on my blog every day, vacuumed the hearth and the living room, washed all the rugs from the bathroom, and have started a container and some lists for the troop's August event. We're going to a council property during that month, and the thing I have planned will take time to get just right. It's going to be a really big event.
I know the girls will love it, which is the whole point.

I'll have to take at least one, if not two trips to the place to do the plotting and complete the plan, but I have a couple parent volunteers who said they'd come help. That's one of the best things about this troop. Every family involved is actually involved. They want the same things I want for the group... for them to have fun and learn stuff.

The last time I planned a big one like this, it took me about two months to plan. I had six lists taped up and it seems I added something to one of them every time I walked by. The back of the Expedition was literally crammed with the stuff I needed, and it took me days to put it all away when it was over. Was it worth all that? Absolutely. The girls had a great time.

My headache is mostly gone today, I think after a shower it will be better yet. I plan to go to Curves this morning. I did not go yesterday because when I have a really bad headache, exercise does not make it feel better. In fact, vigorous exercise has been known to make me barf when I have a headache. Not fun.

Oh...I have to mention that I love my job.

Our life insurance policies are due, and that's a big chunk of money out of the old checking account. We weren't about to starve or anything, but it was nice to get up this morning and find that two weeks worth of grocery money was deposited in my account overnight.

Now, I need to dig up all the receipts I've been saving for the purchases I've made for the troop and reimburse myself for some of it. Last time I added it up it was nearly $200.00. A fair chunk of change.

Speaking of chunk, time for me to shower and go to Curves. Come by this evening about, hmm, 10 E time for tomorrow's writing assignment. I'll post details and your task then.

::wave::

Still Hairy.. and busy

We never made it out to get haircuts yesterday. Lyssa wanted to sleep in a bit (she had stayed up really late Saturday night playing vidiot games with her brother and just didn't want to wake up.) We went out in the evening for me to pick up a couple of items for the project we're going to do at Girl Scouts today, and drove by the haircut place, but they were closed already.

I have a fairly busy schedule this week, although I only have to work today and tomorrow. (Yay!!)
Back when I was a kid, parent/teacher conferences went on for a week and took place in the evenings. We didn't get to miss school for them. Not so with kids now. They get most of this week off for conferences, then all of next week is Spring Break. I'm looking forward to it. The kids I work with are ecstatic. Strangely, most of them hate school.

Wednesday, we were planning to go to the science museum, but I checked the calendar, and both kids have orthodontic appointments. I'm thinking that will be the afternoon I end up defrosting our freezer. Do I lead an exciting life or what?
::sigh::

When we bought the freezer, Eric said, "Let's get frost-free." And the salesman explained that food dried out more in a frost free appliance. Know what? I don't give a shit. Next time I get a freezer, it WILL be frost free, because this is a pain in the ass! And every time I chew a bite of dried frozen food, I will smile to myself and say, "It was all worth it."

Thursday is Game Day, one of Alyssa's favorite things to do. We can't miss Game Day! I'll be doing a bit o' cleaning Thursday morning, too. I've promised myself to do something to get things straightened up every single day that I'm off work.

We decided that Friday is science museum day. I don't know how long we'll stay there, or how much fun we'll have, but they have dinosaur skeletons on display, and Lyssa really wants to see them.
So do I, of course. They had another dino display, Giants of the Gobi there many years ago, and they were amazing.
Back in the old days, I had a membership to the museum because we went all the time. Now we almost never go. Matt always loved it, Lyssa was indifferent, and when he outgrew the monthly visits, we pretty much stopped going.
Lyssa said last night that she doesn't understand why we don't go there more often. :-D

I have a package to send to my parents. In it are two boxes of Thin Mints and two boxes of Samoas. They're the last of the great cookies of 2008, and have been packed and ready to go for about two weeks. I'm thinking this will be the week I manage to get to the post office, too.

When we went out yesterday evening to obtain the rest of the supplies we'd need for today's Girl Scout project, we pulled up at Craft Warehouse about four minutes after they closed. Shit. That means that this morning, I will have to run over to Sprawlmart and get the few items I need. I'm going to have to get away from this infernal machine and shower, methinks.

And I'm reminding myself to wear green, even though I am not Irish and I don't care what day it is. I don't want to listen to kids telling me I'm not wearing green all afternoon.

Tonight is choir again, too. Every term I sing with them, there is at least one song that I actively hate. This term is no different. Aaack.

Okay, I'm off. I'm sure you knew that.

p.s.
oh! Oh!! Oh!! I forgot!
I stepped on the scale this morning, The damn thing is finally moving downward again. 18 lbs lost so far. I wasn't ready to give up at all... was just continuing to do what I'd been doing. But it was getting sort of discouraging to see it STUCK at the same place every time.

He Left Me!!

Eric got up this morning and left to go on a hike.
Without me.
::sigh::

He packed his snack and his coat and all and left about half an hour ago to drive up the Gorge and see a few waterfalls.

Why did he leave without me, you ask?

Well, first of all, a person who gets up before 8 a.m. on a weekend on purpose just ain't quite right.

I'm sorry, I know that's sorta mean, but there it is.
If I can sleep in, I do. I need more rest than I get (who doesn't?) and weekends are a good opportunity to do just that.
So the idea of rolling out of my nice warm bed to go out and freeze my noonies off on an early morning hike is pretty much out of the question.

Also.
My feet hurt.
I keep meaning to get them worked on, but between the busy-ness of my friends and my own lack of spare time, I think I'll be limping along a little longer.

I have a little headache, too. (which will go away after I shower and eat, I suspect.)

He took my camera with him, so I can at least see some waterfall pictures.
If he takes any.

I also have laundry to do, a birthday cake to bake and decorate for my favorite chiropractor, a few floors to sweep and some thank-you notes to write.

I'm also going to play a little this weekend! Yes, on purpose!
I'm going to drag out some scrapbooking materials and try to do at least three full page spreads.

I'm already imagining.

And.

I am going to get the sewing machine out. I have to sew up a butt flap on a pair of pj's. I'm going to try to do that while the cake is in the oven, since the cake and the pj's go to the same house.

Buttflaps and baking.
Wow. It just doesn't get any better than this.

The Words

Since some of you could not understand all the words to the song I posted two days ago here. , I typed 'em up so you can.

Fredrick Silver is the composer of this really clever song, and although it's more than 30 years old, choirs still dust it off and sing it around Christmas. At the Community choir concert I attended this month, four ladies sang the song together. It was very cute, but I'm still more fond of the very first version I performed in.

We had rubber chickens. :)

The first day after Christmas, my true love and I had a fight.

And so I chopped the pear tree down, and burned it just for spite.
Then with a single cartridge, I shot that blasted partridge my true love gave to me.

The second day after Christmas, I pulled on the old rubber gloves. And very gently wrung the necks of both the turtle doves (my true love gave to me)

The third day after Christmas, my mother caught the croup. I had to use the three French hens to make some chicken soup.

The four calling birds were a big mistake for their language was obscene.

The five gold rings were completely fake and they turned my fingers green.

The sixth day after Christmas, the six laying geese wouldn’t lay.
I gave the whole darn gaggle to the A.S.P.C.A.

On the seventh day what a mess I found... all seven of the swimming swans had drowned. (My true love yadda yadda)

The eighth day after Christmas, before they could suspect...

I bundled up the 8 maids a milking, 9 pipers piping, 10 ladies dancing, 11 lords a leaping, 12 drummers drumming... (well, actually I kept one of the drummers) and sent them back collect.

I wrote my true love, we are through love, and I said in so many words, "furthermore your Christmas gifts were for the Birds (four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle doves... and a partridge in a pear treeeee-eee –eeee eeee

Now, off to the shower. I'm going Goodwill hunting with my oldest kid. Kid #2 is about fed up with shopping and would rather stay home and admire her new iPod.

What did I do?

Well, almost nothing.

Had a week off from work. Thought to myself a week ago, gosh, I can get all kinds of things done around the house! Look at all this time stretching ahead of me!

I'll change the beds!
I'll catch up on the laundry!
I'll mop the kitchen!
I'll clean the tub!
I'll clean my bedroom!
I'll organize the kitchen cabinets!

I did manage to cook a very nice Thanksgiving dinner as well as a few other meals.

I made a lovely pot of lentil soup last night.

I don't cook often these days because I am at work during the traditional dinner preparation time. I did some dishes. I did some laundry. I played vidiot games with my daughter.

I did not go shopping except for our excursion to Winco after our orthodontist stuff on Tuesday.
(Was it Tuesday? I'm too lazy to get up and go look at the calendar.)

I read other people's blogs. Left comments.
I hosted a couple homeschool chats.
Watched a couple movies.
I baked cookies.
I slept in a bit.
Visited my favorite girlfriend/chiropractor's house twice. Once to be adjusted (and believe me, no matter how often I go I'll NEVER be well-adjusted... ha ha) and once to help Tami with a writing project.

I don't know how much help I was, but I had a good time hanging out with her kids and making a crafty thing.
Because of that, I'm considering taking some time this afternoon to play with Sculpey instead of doing something around the house.
I have this book about Gnomes, you see, and I was thinking how cute miniature garden gnomes would be in houseplants. What do you think?

I think what's going on with me is that I don't want to do something.
I want to do something else.

White Christmas?

I am a huge fan of Christmas music.

Corny as it is, I know most of the words to all of them and sing them over and over and over during the season. My car does not have a CD player, so I have purchased many cassette versions of the CDs I play at home. Goodwill sells them for 49 cents, so I don't feel all that guilty for the duplication. I drive to work every day during December, singing at the top of my lungs and waving at the other drivers who glance over and laugh at me. :)

I have favorites, and some can make me cry. One of the ones that gets me every time is Karen Carpenter's version of Ave Maria. ::goosebumps::

But I was wandering around on the internet this morning to find the one that someone sends to me almost every year in my email and found it!

White Christmas Go listen. Enjoy. And if you ever find a CD of The Drifters doing Christmas music, will you send it to me, please?

Firefox has a cool feature. It's almost like Google, you just type in a few of the keywords you want in the address field and it searches the internet for you.

Ah. Two posts in one day.

Gingerbread and my house

My house, as usual, is cluttered, dusty, dog hair-y and cold.

My son decided that since he has the day off, he's going to have his girlfriend and another girl friend over this evening and they're going to decorate gingerbread house(s)?



(If they make one like this, and some people show up with money to tour, I'll change my attitude. Yes indeed!)

Actually his girlfriend is spending the whole day over here.

That means I need to get up from this chair and do something about the mess.

The first thing I'm going to do is wake HIM up and remind him that he needs to do a few things. Like sweep. Shake rugs. Clean the bathroom.
Haul some shit to the shed.

My daughter has a friend coming over this morning to play, too. I drop the friend and my daughter off at Game Day on my way to work at 1:30.

So why am I still sitting here at 8 a.m.?

I'm not.

zzzzooooooooooom!

Ami Needs

Okay. Here's something fluffy for you.
Take your first name or your online name or the name of a friend or your dog or your hubby or your kids or ? and type it into Google's search field followed by the word 'needs'.

As in, Ami needs...

Here's what I found on the first page:

Garver has a serious talk with Ami about Yoji. A bad apprentice is a reflection on his/her mentor, and Ami needs to have a talk with him about where his ...

AMI needs a fresh face, fresh ideas and someone who is financially competent to lead the company into the black.

AMI needs baselines of a few hundred to about a thousand wavelengths.

AMI Needs Analysis.

AMI needs to come out of the dark ages.

AMI needs further investigation.

AMI needs help!

I think that pretty much says everything I needed to say tonight.

Stuff in the yard

My hubby and my son are working on a storage shed. Building from the ground up. I went outside this morning to take some pictures and got distracted by all the flowers that are blooming right now. I haven't tried to take too many close up pictures with my little camera, but I think it works pretty well for a budget digital.

Shed pics will be up eventually. :)
Be sure to scroll down. For some reason, Blogger wouldn't let me post more than two photos at once. So there are quite a few. And don't miss the really loooong story after the flower pics.

I'm a winner!!

Yes, that's right. Because of my froggiebloggie post, I have won this major award.
I'd like to thank the little people who got me here.
I stepped on soooo many of them.
It's what I do.

Now I can be both inwardly proud and outwardly modest.
I will not change my lifestyle or quit my job, even though I won.
I just want you all to know, I am still the same Mental I've always been. Thank you, I can feel the love.

She's makin' a list....

I am off this week.
(and yes, I can hear the more smart-assy among you saying 'this week??' in an incredulous tone. Stop it. Just stop. Don't make me come over there.)

So I have this list of things that need to be done.
I thought if I posted the list here it might motivate me. It's a lot easier to fail if no one knows you're trying to succeed, if that makes sense. Since you all will know what I am trying to accomplish, it makes it harder for me to ignore my list. I'm undecided about whether or not to post the before and after pictures of the messy areas.

My list was:
Get to Curves twice.
Choir practice Monday night.

Orthodontist Tuesday morning.
Lyssa's activity Tuesday afternoon.
Pay bills, do banking both for GS troop and me.

Grocery shopping.

Laundry.

Sort sort sort papers (here's where I sheepishly admit I had more than 10 years to go through) and file them and shred them and recycle them.
Mop the kitchen.
Defrost the freezer.
Unearth the computer and chair in my bedroom so I can write.
I did all of it. I even took most of a day off because of a migraine. But the medication worked, and I wasn't subjected to a three day ordeal this time. Yay.

Here's proof that the freezer got emptied and cleaned.

Six of one....

My grandma used to say, "He doesn't know whether to shit or go blind." when she was referring to someone suffering from indecision.

I always pictured a man, standing in a dim room, arms bent at the elbows as if he were weighing something in each hand, and saying to himself as he raised one, then the other, "Shit? Go blind. Shit? Go blind." My little memory camera always turned off before he had decided.
;)

This has been (for me) a busy weekend. I was sick all last week, and although I'm feeling worlds better, I am still very run down and trying to get past that. I'd say catch up on my rest, but for someone who spent most of the past seven days either waking up from a nap or eagerly planning my next, that wouldn't make sense, would it? Yesterday we laid in bed until 10 talking. It's always nice to catch up with each other on those mornings. I did our taxes and got them e-filed. Helped my son with his. And how weird is that? Having a kid who has to file a tax return. Where the hell did the time go? I did a little straightening here and there, ran a load of laundry, did the banking/grocery shopping.

This morning, I got up at the buttcrack of dawn to go to Costco. I like saving money by going there, but I totally hate most of the other people who are there for the same purpose. It's like they all forget manners and the rules of the road the moment they step into the store. I like to avoid as much of that as I can by getting there early. The kids and I (hubby had a blazing headache) left the house at 9:55 and were home by 10:55. That worked really well. I spent a few minutes patting myself on the back for it, then I put a chicken in the oven and started sorting books etc to take to Goodwill. Loaded up the back of the rig with stuff and headed back out.
My son went with me to help unload, then to the local Emporium Galorium (Lowe's) and we purchased a bit of this and that. My troop will be doing some primer painting on their birdhouses tomorrow, and I needed some supplies. Got home and massaged aching shoulders of poor headache man, ate my chicken with some rice, read part of the book currently in progress and fed the dog.

I haven't created anything lately. I like to goof around with yarn, take photos, make little crafts, paint little plaster things, scrapbook.. you get the idea. Projects I can complete in one or two sittings. I was going to get out some of the most recent pictures I have and make some sort of collage with them, but I got sleepy.

I stood next to the bed with my arms bent at the elbows, weighing these two things. Sleep or create? Sleep or create? Sleep or create?

Just got up from my nap. I got warm all through, totally relaxed and didn't create a damn thing.

Now, I'm going to go make strawberry shortcake.

For those of you who were thinking I lead an exciting life, this post ought to tell you otherwise.

:D

Still sitting at home playing with my computer instead of doing laundry

I keep finding myself here, in front of the computer.
I'm certainly not going to work... it's crazy out there.
Here's today's video.

Today's time waster

It snowed today. (Thanks, gay people.)
That means I don't have to go to work this afternoon since the schools are closed. Many people use that sort of 'bonus time' to catch up on correspondence, or clean the house or do the laundry. Well, I'll probably do a little of that today, too. But during my wake up time, I like to play on the computer. While I was looking at videos this morning, I found this one. I had seen it before but forgotten it.