do you ever think…

you are supposed to be somebody?  More than you are now… waiting for timing and circumstance and fate to meet… and all at once you’re blasted into the public eye?  That is how I feel.  It is how I’ve felt for some time now.  Maybe I’m not alone in these thoughts.  It elicits such a strong response inside of me.  It is more than just wishing.  I know.  I think I know what it is I am to become and I’m working in that direction.  I’m getting there.  I will get there.  It is my stubborn nature that will not allow me to accept anything less.  It is the waiting that I cannot seem to handle.  I have never been very good at patience and this is killing me.  The waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  I am tired of waiting.  Tim reminded me the other day that patience pays off.  Veruca Salt didn’t fare so well and I definitely don’t want to end up like that. 

Back to my patience box.

work = no post

Wow.  If I had my choice, I would rather write every single day… but this little thing called my job gets in the way.  Very unfortunate.  My brain is so fried I cannot even think of what to write at the moment… other than I don’t have to work tomorrow!!  Yea!!  Instead I’ll be doing my second job consisting of grocery shopping and running and vacuuming… I did most of *the laundry* today so I didn’t have to worry about it this weekend.  There really is something to the whole minimalist idea.  I think I understand why it has taken root.  The less you have… the less to clean up.  Makes perfect sense.  A nudist minimalist must really be living the life.

weird things about me…

I do not like bugs – mostly spiders.  It makes no sense.  When I was a kid I would pick up daddy-long-legs all the time and have them crawl all over me.  Now they give me the iby-geebies.  If I see a spider in the house, I make Tim dispose of it.   He knows I do not care if it is 5:00am.  It needs to go.  Now.

I am TERRIFIED of snakes.  I hate them.  When Tim and I go running I’ve been known to jump three feet in the air mid-stride because I see something that resembles a snake.  He just laughs at me because he’s right – it is a bit ridiculous.  Even pictures give me chills.  I also did not have a problem with those when I was younger.  I have no idea what happened to me.  I turned wimpy.  I may need a round of Systematic Desensitization (trying to utilize that Psych degree…).

I get frustrated when people are sick or injured when I don’t think it is all that bad.  Especially those close to me (Tim).  For some reason my brain doesn’t care how sick or injured someone is (Tim) unless it is painstakingly obvious.  Then I give a little leeway.  I think it has something to do with my mom never allowing me to be sick or injured.  If I was she’d tell me to suck it up or get back up.  This included times I rolled my ankle so badly during a basketball game it swelled up like a grapefruit the next day.  It didn’t matter.  I still played.  She has since loosened up a bit (lucky for my younger brothers).  I try to be sympathetic but it is not natural for me.  It is hard when I actually have to make myself consciously aware of what I am doing (or not doing).  Our kids will be wiping those crocodile tears away very quickly once they realize my sympathy gene is lacking.

I have a terrible weakness for cold or frozen chocolate chip cookies.  I do not like warm cookies of any kind.  I also despise warm doughnuts, warm brownies…. I prefer baked goods straight from the refrigerator.  I know.  I’m weird that way.

I LOVE honey.  I love to put honey on and in all sorts of things. Peanut butter, banana and honey sandwiches (YUM!), honey on rice, honey on chicken, honey on french fries (in my younger eating at McDonald’s days I would get honey for the french fries until they started charging me .10 a packet.)… it must be the salty-sweet thing.  I don’t know.

I’ve found it is difficult to come up with these… because I don’t think any of that is weird…. but I’ve been told otherwise… so I know I fall outside of the “normal” range.

new header

I decided to do away with the bland and go with something I love to look at – the sky.  This picture was taken from our backyard.  That evening, the sky was on fire… we couldn’t help but grab the camera (more like me saying: “Honey!  You have to come and see!  Quick! Get the camera!  Hurry or it will be gone!”  with no real consideration as to what Tim was doing at the present moment.  The sky takes precedent).  I love sunsets, sunrises, neat cloud formations, dark and ominous gray clouds against a lush, green backdrop of trees, rainbows, lightening…. I could go on and on and on…

Needless to say, hope you like it (you being the random person who happened to run across my blog… I don’t think I have an avid audience waiting with baited breath to see my next move… but thanks for checking it out).  If you don’t… I guess it doesn’t really matter.  I’m not going to change it but I’ll hear you out… never hurts to get a second opinion (that was sarcasm, incase you didn’t catch it).

cooking…….not so much

I like to cook.  I like to attempt to cook.  I marvel at how easily the hosts on Food Network create an entire meal all by themselves (or so it seems).  They’re never stressed.  They don’t have water boiling over in a pot while a timer is going off because something in another pan is finished cooking and the oven is yelling saying it is pre-heated and ready for the meat I have yet to get out of its packaging while I am trying to delicately slice vegetables.  Somehow… no matter how closely I follow the directions… my timing is always WAY off.  We tried to make fondue on Valentine’s Day last year.  Let me just say I started prepping for our romantic dinner hours before Tim got home and we never finished.  We managed to have melted cheese with bread and apples by 9:30pm.  The protein course never happened.  Nor did dessert.  Fondue is not on my list of things to try again.  Sounded like a good idea at the time.  Now, if you want fondue, we’re going out.  No questions asked.

I’m good at making a few things as long as there are not too many simultaneous steps involved.  Spaghetti I can handle.  A stir fry is slightly challenging.  Anything requiring two pots and an oven?  You can forget about it.  I cannot chop vegetables fast enough to get them into a pan by the time butter melts.  Not gonna happen.  Ever.  The ironic part is that I work for a college that teaches people how to cook.  I’ve gotten to the point where if someone asks what my job is, I tell them that I am not the one teaching the cooking before I even state my job title.  I am in the administrative side of the building.  That seems to quell the questions.

Sadly enough, my desire to make an extravagant meal usually turns into an interesting and long ordeal.  Tim usually eats whatever I put on the table but I know if he likes it or not just based on the look on his face after the first bite.  If he doesn’t repeat how much he is enjoying his meal I know it’s a dud.  We’ve had a lot of one hit wonders grace our table never to be seen again.  I get lucky sometimes and a dish I make gets to stay in the rotation.  I struck gold with a recipe for “gourmet chicken sandwiches” from a recipe website.  Tim LOVES them and they only require one pan and minimal work in the knife skills area.  Perfect.  I am no little Ms. Suzie Homemaker, though I try.  Never will Tim come home and see me with my hair in place and no remenants of dinner’s creation anywhere on a perfectly pressed apron, waltz out of the kitchen, flashing a smile with a basket of warm rolls held delicately in my hands while leaning over just slightly for a kiss, the hot rolls safely away from his body.  Tim comes home to me scrambling around, cabinet doors slamming, hair pulled back into a ponytail with a determined look on my face, never even glancing up at him upon his arrival.  For if I break the concentration between myself and my current project, something might burn or spill or blow up.

We go out to eat a lot.

never blog when on a diet

I’m not on one… lucky for you.  For if I was my post would probably go something like this:

Chocolate chocolate chocolate cookies cake chocolate sugar chocolate chips chocolate pie (I don’t even like pie… but it has sugar!!!!) chocolate chocolate where is it?!?!  Diets don’t work anyway… everyone knows that!  Give me chocolate!!!

Yes,  much like someone who suffers from OCD.  If you want to feel their pain, deprive yourself of your absolutely most favorite thing and for awhile that is ALL you’ll think about.  Some people, I’ve learned, are salty people – that is what they miss.  Salty things like chips.  I do not understand that.  I could go forever without touching another potato/vegetable/corn chip.  I like them but I don’t crave them.  To each their own I suppose.

Our goal?  Stop eating processed things – which is a lot more difficult than one would think.  We’ve tried to cut out high fructose corn syrup (yes, even though the corn companies are now sponsoring commercials stating that HFCS is “ok in moderation”  It can’t be all that great if companies are trying to rid their products of the little bugger and various cities and other countries are banning it). We’ve come to realize it is in EVERYTHING.  Bread, relish, ketchup, sloppy joe sauce, gatorade (we’re on a search for a recovery drink that doesn’t have HFCS, even if we have to mix it-  if you have a good one to recommend, we’re all ears) various crackers… all weird places to be putting corn syrup.  We’re also cutting out hydrogenated oils.  Also a challenge.  To ensure we do not put those two little items into our system, we now make our own or buy organic.  Yes.  It can be a pain.  Yes.  It is expensive.  But it makes us feel better about ourselves and that IS the whole point when it comes to “diets” anyway.  Little “successes” to allow you an opportunity to cheat because you’ve been “good.” 

Come to think of it…that is one of the only places I can think of that cheating is considered acceptable and welcomed.  We didn’t get to pull out our notes from class during a final exam because we had enough will power to not look over our classmates shoulder for the right answer all year.  We can’t run a red light because we’ve been diligent at stopping, even when it is still yellow, for a whole week.  We can’t cut in line, finagle our taxes, not pay a bill, skip out on a co-pay…. cheating in any other arena is a BIG no no.  Except when it comes to food.  How strange.  If we had as high a moral conscience when it comes to a diet as we do when it comes to cheating on other areas of life, obesity may not be such a challenge.  For those without a conscience, they’d just be fat and we would all know to stay far, far away.

closets… how full are yours?

Tim and I watched a TV show last night about the top things to do if you’re trying to sell your house.  The sale of ours in not imminent… we’ve been trying to move for about…. 3 years now and with the market (housing, stock, etc, etc, etc) the way it is it doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere fast.  BUT we figured we could start doing small things here and there so when “the day” finally came we wouldn’t have ten million little things to do which would result in one big mess.

We started with the closets today – my idea, albeit a bad one (hindsight is 20/20).  They have so much random stuff…Christmas decorations, college binders with who knows what in them, pictures, old sports jerseys from my basketball days, pillows, Easter baskets….  Don’t know what to do with it?  Throw it in the closet!  That’s how it seems to go in this house.  Unfortunately, it has gotten to the point where the closet is no longer a viable option… and the hosts on the TV show said that “your closets should be organized and not packed so prospective home buyers will not think the house is too small, which requires you to store everything in the closet.”  Personally, I think it should be a good thing to have a packed closet.  The prospective buyer should say “Wow!  Look how much stuff they crammed in there!  That means we’ll have plenty of room for our punching bag we’ve never used or our set of luggage we don’t need or all my (fill in significant other here) crap he/she never uses but insists on having!”  I don’t care who you are, you have a closet full of stuff you haven’t seen in years and probably forgot you had.  Why try to bamboozle a home buyer?  “No!  We don’t even USE our closets!  We’ve got so much extra space around the house that we don’t need them.  Purely for decoration.  Aren’t yours?”

Right.

Tim and I just spent the afternoon trying to make space in the attic for the crap in the closets.  We only managed to completely clear out the floor of one (out of four and we haven’t even thought about downstairs yet…).  The rest are still just as full… and the attic even more so.  We don’t have a basement.  If we did, our problem would be solved.  Everything could go down there.  The TV show didn’t mention anything about basements.  I think those get a pass.  The real estate agent probably quickly mentions “a basement” and all is understood.  The basement – aka the great void.  That’s kind of like our closets.  Our void is just distributed over more surface area.

Lesson learned: pick something you can SEE the results a little more plainly instead of just moving stuff around.  It really doesn’t make you feel as successful in your hours long attempt when all you’ve managed to do is move the mess to another part of the house (unless, of course, it is a basement).

i learned a new word today

I don’t know why I do it, but I like to switch words around.  Like… if Tim says “Dairy Queen” I’ll just fire back “Quairy Deen!”  There is no reason for it.  Tim never requests it.  It’s almost automatic.  The words just come out.  I guess I’m strange like that.  I do tend to refrain from this kind of behavior while at work or in larger social situations.  But if it’s just Tim and I… watch out.  No holds barred.

And I just learned that there is actually a word to describe my condition: Spoonerism.  Go figure.

(I just like to do it… the information and research behind it all almost make switching words around seem like a chore…).

my thoughts on laundry

I despise doing “the laundry.”  It is right up there with doing “the dishes.”  In all reality – they are never done.  There is always another shirt or towel or pair of boxers that get thrown into my empty laundry basket that I worked so diligently to vacate of its contents.  Tim knows how much I hate it.  He hates it too.  But we’re stuck with it.

My “doing” of the laundry this morning ended up with a little oopsy.  Tim and I go out to dinner on Valentine’s Day.  We dress up and pretend the troubles of the world don’t exist for a few hours.  It’s nice to be oblivious.  Well, I wore this really great red dress.  It was all swooshy and sparkly and sexy…  Turns out it is like a glitter fairy that leaves its little red metallic dots of joy everywhere.  We found them in the passengers seat of the car yesterday.  Tim cleaned those out pretty easily, so no harm done.  This morning, as I was throwing shirts and socks and pants into the washer,  I also tossed in my red dress from Saturday evening.  I didn’t think anything of it.  The memory of the car seat that sparkled in the sun was long gone… until the washer buzzed, stating it was finished with its contents, and I opened it up to begin the transportation process to the dryer.  It was like the dresses glitter wand went out of control and everything it touched was blasted with those little red dots.  Problem is – those dots don’t wipe away.  Clothes tend to have a way of holding onto tiny things… like glitter.  So when Tim wears a certain pair of slacks for work… or a few dress shirts… a running shirt or two…boxers… socks…… when the light hits him just right he’ll be all sparkly. Very professional.  I know.  I’ll just see how long it takes him to figure it out.  I’ve learned to let him figure out my oopsies now… sometimes it is better that way….sometimes he never knows…

that’s not a tootsie roll…

Tim and I tried really hard with Maddie when she was a puppy to break her of habits she never even had like chewing on furniture, using the house as her bathroom, barking… all the things no one really wants with a dog but may end up with.  As of a few weeks ago – so far, so good.  We’ve gotten through a year and two months of pretty good obedience. Not perfect – but sufficient.  She still likes to jump on people but she doesn’t bark and she knows “outside to go potty” means just that.  Do it outside.  The one thing we heard and read about were the “tootsie rolls” your family dog would find and, once knew existed, would relish in the moment they could snag one.  Now, this isn’t a problem if you don’t own cats or if your cats don’t use a litter box.  But if they do……………. they leave those wonderful tootsie rolls out for your canine each and every day.

Over the past few weeks, Tim and I have found Maddie with a mouth full of litter, all jammed between her teeth, and breath that was WOW - out of this world bad.  Tim went and rinsed her mouth out in the hose outside to attempt to rid her of that god-awful smell once.  It didn’t work.  We’ve learned there isn’t much to do except wait.  Time heals all wounds and freshens Maddie’s breath, apparently.  We thought (operative word here) we were safe because she had never shown any interest before AND we have a Booda dome litter box.  The Booda dome has a lid (the “dome”) and is made to where the girls have to walk up a ramp and turn (yes, turn) right to get into their kidney-shaped box to do their business.  I guess Maddie found a way inside or one of the girls gave her a few pointers.

We’ve never actually caught her rooting around in the stuff, which is the only way for us to associate her head in the litter box as a bad thing.  Until this morning.

I was getting ready for my run in the bathroom and turned around to see where Maddie went.  If she isn’t bringing me a toy or running around – she’s up to something.  Our bathroom is connected to the bedroom and I looked over our bed to the corner of the room (we don’t actually own the bedroom anymore.  It belongs to the felines and canine now) and saw Maddie’s head crammed all the way in the entrance to the Booda dome and I just screamed “HEY!!!! NO!!!!!”  Her head whipped out so fast that the beloved tootsie roll she worked so hard to sneak out flew right out of her mouth onto the floor.  She knew why she was in trouble this time.

I gave her the what for.  She slunk around me while I told her NEVER to go in the litter box.  And ”NO!” countless times.  She may not ever go near that again.  She’s been bringing me toy after toy to try and make up and she’s at my feet right now, sleeping quietly.  So now I’ll go back to what I was doing before and go attempt my run.  Funny how you get side-tracked.  All for a “tootsie-roll.”