Shopping with a side of lobster.

Friday afternoon Paul and I took off from work early and headed out to Frisco, Texas. I was glad to get out of town early as the week had been long and there is absolutely nothing better than beating I-35 traffic on a Friday afternoon. We checked into our hotel room and then spent the evening at IKEA where we bought little items, but items I love, and having dinner at Mattito's, which was delicious, and apparently very well loved by the entire city of Frisco as evidenced by the large crowd. Against our better judgment, we stopped off at a local frozen custard dive and indulged in dessert, which wasn't spectacular, but custard nevertheless.

Saturday morning we slept in, for the first time in years, had ourselves some breakfast and then went and splurged at some of our favorite stores. We made out like bandits at just about every store and we are coming home with way too many clothes. Not that I am complaining, I'm just saying. (That's my new catch phrase, "I'm just saying..."). We spent the early afternoon trucking down the highway to Wichita Falls (where I grew up) and spent the evening hanging out with my parents. I love coming to visit my family and am still in that phase where I am figuring out how funny and cool they are.

We laughed until it hurt at lunch today and, get ready for this people, I tried shell fish for the first time in my life. The extent of fish I have consumed in my life has included deep fried catfish (very little), salmon patties (made by my mom) and tuna fish salad sandwiches, the end. Until today. Today, I tried lobster, shrimp, both grilled and fried, crab meat and rainbow trout. It was an adventurous lunch hour for me. It was all fine, not thrilling but I'll probably try and phase myself into fish. I said, probably. I think I am just going to lump all of those into one item, "shellfish", for my list. No need to limit the other items I need to try...

Three day work week, here I come. Then Michigan. Ah, Michigan.

salicylic acid anyone?

Last weekend I broke out all over my jaw line and neck. I'm not talking about one zit on each side of my face. I am talking about THIRTY-TWO spots all down my jaw, chin and neck. I cannot get them to go away. I feel like I'm being paid back for all the years I didn't have acne. It's like a pimply teenager has a voodoo doll of me and is making me pay for having it so easy when I was their age. I never had more than two spots at a time and from the time I turned thirteen until now I probably have only had a total of thirty-two zits. So in one week, I have probably doubled the total number I have ever had. Thanks acne for being 10 years late. I would have preferred you come when I was thirteen, at least then I would have blended in with all of my friends.

Suffice to say; today I am wearing a scarf to cover up the madness.

8:52 PM

Every night at 8:52 the alarm on my stop watch goes off. Every single night.

I don't wear this watch unless we are out running so it goes off every night while sitting in my jewelry box and it is loud enough to resonate through our small old house.

It drives our evening and overnight guests absolutely crazy. I seem to recall one night my mother-in-law asking what it was, we told her and within the same 22 second alarm it bugged her so much she asked again.

When I first bought the watch, it took all the patience I had to figure out how to even set the thing properly. I was just happy that I got the time to plug in correctly while holding down the upper right and lower left buttons at the same time while touching my tongue to my nose, but it wanted me to adjust the date and the day too?! I like watches that all you have to do is pull the knob on the side out and then turn it until it's the right time on the right day. Whoever came up with these sporty digital watches must have been smoking crack. I don't know why I find it so difficult to set them but once the alarm on the watch got set, there was no going back. I lost the piece of paper that tells you how to set an alarm and how to turn it on and off (i.e. instructions) and have just decided that we will have to live with the 22 seconds of beeping that will occur every night indefinitely.

I have no idea why I would have set an alarm for 8:52 in the evening. There is nothing of importance that ever occurs at that time, nor do I have a routine that I do when it goes off. It just goes off, and whether we are eating dinner in the dining room, watching re-runs on television or cleaning the kitchen it doesn't seem to make a difference to the time keeper. The watch wants me to know that it is 8:52. The beeping doesn't bother me, in fact, I rather like it. It gives me a benchmark for the evening and gives a strange sense of comfort by letting me know that until that battery dies I will always be reminded that it is 8:52 pm. It's a good thing to know, what time it is, right?

I am starting to fall madly in love with this chair. It's a much girlier version of the Bertoia chair and I love the idea of putting them out back in the garden with their blue cushions!

Mountain Goats & Sunburns

Friday evening was a lot less stressful than I had planned for it to be. I left work early and grabbed a couple of options from our local grocery store for dessert (brownies vs. funfetti cupcakes) and then ran home and threw the chosen (brownies) into the oven. Ran to meet some girls at Hobby Lobby and by the time I got home, I found my rugs vacuumed, the lawn being mowed, the garage organized and my husband packed. Ladies, if you do not have a husband like mine, I am terribly sorry, because he is absolutely wonderful.

We finished packing up and spent the remainder of the evening just enjoying the fact that he was no longer sick. Bright and early Saturday morning, we got ourselves moving and packed up the car. Our friends Eric and Lauren met us at our house and we quickly got ourselves out of town and on the road to meet the rest of our group at our destination. It took us a lot less time than we had originally planned but we were glad to get there a little early. There were going to be 11 couples from our church class there (and about three kids) so we met the other eight couples that were going to make it early and go on the hike and immediately headed up the mountain. I have forgotten how much I loved summer camp at Quartz Mountain. I used to spend weeks in this area and loved every bit of it. I suppose you could say over the course of 10 summers I hiked up and down those mountains 30 times. This hike however, proved to be a different kind of hike. We started on a trail that was called Sunset Trail and was supposed to be about 1/2 mile hike that would take us approximately 1/2 hour. WRONG. We got ourselves off of the trail pretty quickly, with what we called the mountain goats leading the pack, and made the majority of the hike off the map. There were several husbands in our group that were/are in much better physical condition than the majority of us that were blazing the trail and telling us the best ways to go (those are who we have coined "the mountain goats").

About 50 minutes later, after finding a cactus in my foot and a log in my leg we found a trail. We didn't care what trail it was, as long as it wasn't heading up, we were going to get on it and take it since we were meeting the other three couples for lunch. There was also kickball on the beach, a cook out, and smores at the fire pit. All in all, it was a much needed weekend and I apologize in advance for all of the photos.

Paul took this photo about halfway through our hike. It's a pretty cool lodge and resort to visit, that is if you are ever in the middle of rural Oklahoma.

I'm sure people saw this look on my face a lot on this hike. I prefer my city girl status.

exhausted

What a week. My body and my mind are so exhausted from the events that occurred over the past week that I cannot wait for this weekend to start. I have never been the "working for the weekend" type of girl. I love my line of work and I never want to hate the Monday-Friday routine. But this week, it took everything I had to just make it to today. TGIF people, TGIF.

I have a very sick husband at home right now. We're hoping it is a quick stomach bug as we have plans to go out of town with about 20 friends this weekend. All he has done since he got home yesterday afternoon is sleep, watch TV and lay on the bathroom floor. He absolutely hates being sick but I think the rest is doing him some good. Last night, since he had been in bed since 7pm, I had nothing better to do than to shop online and watch Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, which proved to be somewhat dull. I never realized how much we do together every night and when he isn't capable of doing those things with me, my evenings seem to drag on. Here is what I found online though:

This wasn't the only thing I found, but it might be the only thing I buy. And for $15 (on clearance) I can't really find a reason not to go for it.

There is a lot to take care of this evening before we head out tomorrow morning. I have a dessert that needs to be made for the weekend, a trip to Hobby Lobby to buy decoration supplies for an upcoming Dr. Seuss baby shower, a house to clean, a garage to slightly organize, bags to pack, a lawn to mow and a car to clean out. Why bother with the cleaning of the house, the garage and why mow the lawn you ask?! Well, my parents are helping my brother move back to school tomorrow and we were holding some of his stuff at our house and in our garage for the summer. My mom and my brother are severely allergic to our cats so I don't want them to have a hard time breathing at the house tomorrow trying to get the furniture out. So rugs need to be vacuumed and corners need to be swept. And the garage is where they are storing their very large TV, that over the course of the summer, items began to be piled around and on top of and I don't want them to spend an hour cleaning our garage just to get their stuff. I don't know how I feel about being the one to mow the yard, since I haven't done it in almost three years, but its getting too long and I don't want it looking awful all weekend, and since my husband can barely make it to the kitchen before getting queasy, I figured it would be best if he didn't do it.

So here's to feeling better, new cardigans, hotels and brownies. Have a great weekend!

clever design

I love this too.


I love cable and rod systems. We have them all over our office but for graphics and signage. I think this is super cute!

Thanks to Favorite Things for finding it first and sharing!

One of my wake up in the middle of the night genius ideas has been to find an old vintage pistachio or red refrigerator door (or two or three) and have it/them inset into a kids bedroom wall or into a daycare wall so you can hang all of their artwork on the fridge door!

Ava, Las Vegas & Blessings from Curses

Today was nothing short of the awfulness that was this weekend. I have however, decided that today, and hopefully from now on, I am going to take the high road.

The morning started poorly since my night was one that resembled nothing like a legitimate source of rest. I tossed and turned all night knowing that I would have to deal with a client meeting today that was on a less than desirable topic. The first two and half hours at the office were jam-packed as I was on the phone with 30 different people and up and down the stairs to pick up prints. I was bombarded by a local company on a conference call that should not have taken place and was overly surprised at how well I handled myself when all I wanted to do was jump through the phone and punch the girl that called me pretending to need something else. (I had my chance to later as she had to bring me some fabrics, but refrained. I could see the receptionist and all of my bosses finding a local furniture dealer lying on the floor of the lobby and knowing that I was the only one with enough guts to sack her.) The meeting went as well as a bad meeting could go and more errands and work are to be done to ensure a better outcome at our next meeting. I had to leave after that for a doctor's appointment to review the blood work and information my OBGYN had gathered at my last appointment. I scarfed down a Braum's cheeseburger with fries and a coke in the 15 minutes I had to spare (sitting in the parking garage at the hospital) to get to my appointment. This was all after a song came on the radio in the Braum's parking lot that made me burst out into sobs. I was sure people were staring at me, but I couldn't stop myself from crying and I don't think I would have if I could.

My doctors appointment lasted the inevitable 2 hours (which should never be the case, but with this doctor it always seem to be) and decided at 4:30, when my appointment was done, it was time to call it quits and to head home.

I became an aunt today! Ava Rose Ryckbost was born today and weighed 7 lbs and 1 ounce. Hopefully I will have some photos soon. I'll be up there in approximately two weeks and will get to meet her in person. The idea of being an aunt is growing on me.

So until I have photos, I leave myself with positive affirmation that my life is going to get better, hopefully tonight or tomorrow, but if not, soon.

"Nothing good comes easily. You have to lose things you thought you loved, give up things you thought you needed. You have to get over yourself, beyond your past, out from under the weight of your future. The good stuff never comes when things are easy. It comes when things are all heavily weighted down like moving trucks. It comes just when you think it never will, like a shimmering Las Vegas rising up out of the dry desert, sparkling and humming with energy, a blessing that rose up out of a bone-dry, dusty curse." Shuana Niequest, Cold Tangerines.

frick

Yesterday, I am sorry to say, was a horrible day. Mainly because I was out-of-control irritable and moody. Our house that needed and needs to be cleaned so desperately sent me into horrible fits of sobbing and nothing my sweet husband did would help. No matter how hard he tried, I made him suffer, which I am not bragging about. It is incredibly embarrassing to even think about and I don't know why he didn't hop in the car yesterday and drive away forever. I was horrid.

The house is dirty and not necessarily because we are slobs but because our cats are and I do not have enough energy at the end of every day to vacuum the corners of the hall where their hair seems to accumulate. It's been too long since we have mopped and dusted and washed windows and yesterday was so overwhelming. Instead of just trying to clean what needed to be done, all I wanted to do was fix all of the problems with our house. There is no quarter round in our office people! Just unfinished baseboard and I couldn't stand it. Every time I got close enough to sweep around it, I broke out into sobs again thinking about how trashy it looked. And then I would look up and see the ceiling drooping and the tears would keep pouring. I hated our house yesterday. There was more to do than not and I wanted to pack everything up and leave. All I could see were the imperfections, which are still glaring at me today, and I wanted nothing to do with this house. I am hoping this phase will pass as I can't afford to take care of everything I want to. Leaving this post still frustrated.

con·fi·dence

One of the comments I found on an old (Xanga) post from a high school acquantance was "How do you always seem to have so much confidence?" I remember thinking about that statement when she wrote it but have not stopped thinking about it this time around after re-reading it.

She's right. I do have an insane amount of confidence and my thinking about her question has started to make me ask even more questions about my spunk. Why am I so confident or why am I so good at giving off the appearance that I am? Where did it come from or from whom did it come from? I'm not always confident, there are plenty of things out there that terrify me. My mom says that from an early age I learned how to handle situations better than other kids and I was always a step ahead. I watched, I learned and then I went for it. She agrees that there were certain things I never was good at but that for the most part, I was more confident than not. I have, from a very early age, liked being a leader. I think I got these characteristics from her (my mom) even though she would argue with me about this subject. She's said many times before that I amaze her with my drive and even one time I believe she used the words "I can't believe you had the kahonas (her more pleasant word for balls) to say that!" I think I learned to be this way from her, but maybe I've just stepped it up a notch or perfected it. The first story that pops into my head about my mother's confidence (and there are many more, but this is my favorite) was one that involved saving my brother.

For as many times as my mom actually tried to kill my brother (and I'm not speaking metephorically or symbolically here, she really did have a couple of close calls) this time, she saved him. We were at my great-uncle Billy's farm in California and my brother had gotten into the goat pin (where Billy told him he would be fine) and this goat went balistic. He was not having this ten year old boy interupting his afternoon and went to check him out and got Keith backed into a corner between the barn and another shed. My brother started to get a little scared because the goat wouldn't let him move and then his slight fear turned into shear panic and the goat knew it. He started charging Keith with everything he had and my mom hoped over that fence, ran straight at the goat, grabbed it by the horns and yelled at it like it was one of her children. The goat started getting upset that my mom had it by its horns but she refused to let it go until Keith ran past her and climbed over the fence. Maternal instinct to protect her child? Yes, bit it was more than that for me. At that age, I knew my mom would take care of us but the maternal thing hadn't really resonated with me yet. All I saw was how brave and confident she was and I learned from it.

I think that over the years I've become more confident with every passing accomplishment. I was so terrified during my first interior design presentation my freshman year, but leaving that presentation with an A and all the compliments someone could receive, I now rock at presentations. It took a lot of practice and I have gotten better each time I do one, but they don't scare me anymore. I know my stuff and I am not afraid of my client (no matter who they are). I love being told that I am good at things. And everytime I am told that I am good at something, I add a little bar to my confidence level.

I've been told I even walk forceful. Not heavy, not stomping, but foreceful, purposeful. I like that I walk like that. It means I am going somewhere to do something with a purpose. I am ok with being sure of myself and of what I am, what I do and where I am going in life. I like that people see how confident I am. I want to make a noise in this world and I want people to miss it when it isnt there.

I could propably write another 15 paragraphs on this topic but I'll end on this one. I graduated with 400+ students from high school and I was not the valedictorian and I was not in the top ten and that was not my place to shine. I graduated with 200+ students from college and again, not the valedictorian or top ten. My place to shine is every day life. Not those big milestone events, I just make it to those and get through them like everyone else. But the way I feel everyday and the places I plan to end at, those are my moments to shine and I plan to.

Favorite Things - Passion Tea Lemonade

What I wouldn't do for one of these right now. I typically don't like buying coffee at Starbucks as coffee is something that I am fully capable of creating myself. But this little beauty, I can't make and therefore have no problem shelling out four dollars for. Mmmm Passion Shaken Iced Tea Lemonade (sweetened of course). Now if only they didn't have a crappy business model last year when they proceeded to close the newly opened one across the street from my office.

Last night we picked up the dry cleaning (from the ghetto), gorged ourselves on Taco Bueno (which will always be one of my favorite things, no matter how great of a cook I become) and then got ourselves to the grocery store to pick up some last minute ingredients for the week. I needed to bake magic bars for the United Way bake sale and prepare dinner for this evening all while getting the house picked up so that it could be cleaned thouroughly. My mom and brother are incredibly allergic to our home (i.e. cats) and any hair in the house just kills both of them. So I had a lot to do. Instead of making progress, we hit the gas in reverse as hard as possible. I wanted to purge instead of clean and so the one room that had been completely clean is now covered in all sorts of things from the office. What a mess. I will need the whole weekend to get everything in good shape.

At the end of the night, even though there was still stuff strewn all over the room, I plopped down on the futon and re-read my post about blogging and Xanga, and it made me want to pull up the old site and start perusing my old posts. I giggled at some, rolled my eyes at others and had a few of those cringe moments. I was so close to getting all the way through the posts (three months left) when I realized it was 11:30 and I needed to go to bed in order to get up for work. So tonight, I'll be reivewing the first three months, copying what I love and then probably finding the deactivation button. I forgot that even though there would be sweet memories in there and things that would make my heart flutter, there would also be things that would hurt and that I would want to get rid of. So I am editing my history a little bit, keeping the things I love and deleting the things I don't.

For the love of blogging.

My love of blogging started just a few short months before I started college. At OC, every student is given a laptop (and by given, I mean, they have upped your tuition enough that they can provide you a laptop). They started the program probably eight years (or more) ago with IBM ThinkPads and my freshman year they changed to Dell Inspirons. And of course, the year after I graduated they started MacBooks with a free iPhone.

Ok, back to my love of blogging. I got my laptop from OC right after I graduated from high school and had it for the entire summer leading up to the beginning of my college career. By providing thousands of students in a small area with laptops, you are encouraging marketing. What I mean by that is, one student finds a cool website or a funny video and literally within 30 minutes the entire campus has seen the same website/video. I saw it happen a thousand times. The first craze was Xanga. Ah, Xanga. Everyone and their pet fish had a Xanga at OC including myself (minus the pet fish part).

I had never liked writing before Xanga came along. Term papers, essays, all of those pretentious forms of writing are such a burden to me and I can hyperventilate myself into getting the best help from my husband on them. How do you think I got through Comm III? Having a mini freak out in the dining room the night before a paper was due, and my big brave husband came to the rescue, that’s how. The idea that writing must have a structure terrifies me. Opening paragraphs, thesis statements, closing arguments, they all make me want to jump off of a bridge. But you give me a notebook, or a letter or a blog to write with and I can produce stuff that (sometimes) makes for great reading. I won’t toot my own horn too much; I put the word sometimes in there for your benefit. So Xanga was a relief for me. I could write about whatever I wanted to write about and I could change from past tense to present tense in one sentence without getting an F. I loved writing on Xanga.

I met my husband on Xanga. I don’t know how many people know that, but we met because we were blogging. Sort of weird? Yes. The fact that we are married isn’t weird (because we are perfect for each other) but the idea of how we met is weird. I would have never imagined in a thousand years that I would have met the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with by writing about the “unknown gravy boats of death” that were being served in the cafeteria and that he would live 1,000 miles away from me. For that reason alone, blogging and Xanga have their own little corner in my heart. I, to this day, still have not deactivated my Xanga account even though I have not written on it since before we were married. A) Its sentimental and all of our stories and things that were happening when we met are on there and B) I am a little too lazy to dig through the website to try and figure out where the deactivation information is.

I didn’t realize how much I missed blogging until I started this one. I wanted to (and sometimes still have the desire to) post nine or ten time a day. I had (and have) so many things to write about but i've refrained. I love coming up with things to write about and finding photos to post even if my husband is one of three people who reads it (and he hears it all and sees it all anyways).

faux finishing is a beeeeep

Apparently you can paint linoleum flooring. Now in two weeks I may have a different opinion on the whole matter but as of today, it is doable and looks good. We painted a base coat yesterday and I couldn't say that I loved it but it wasn't any worse than the original linoleum that was down. We decided it was a little flat and that we would faux finish it with the darker color we used in the kitchen and office a few years ago. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. After a few choice expletives we got the floor blended and we both like the color but I refuse to look at it again until it has dried. My arms are quivering from the pressure I had to put on the rollers to do the blending and the sheer thought that it might look awful is enough to keep me at bay for a little bit. I'll post pictures when we've decided we're finished with it.

UPDATE: It looked awful and blotchy, so we painted over it again.

On a completely unrelated note, our cherry lambic sorbet turned out great but is not as pretty of a color as the photo or the real thing in the store. May have been my cherries but I may just add some red food coloring next time.

#73 - Old Fashioned Picnic

The plan was to go out for our picnic this evening for dinner but it feels like it is 900 degrees in Oklahoma today. So we decided to go for lunch since it would be cooler at that point in the day. So we packed up our basket after church and headed to a park and had a great lunch. We had our blanket, a basket and a pie so I'm calling this one done.

Big Truck Tacos and Julie & Julia

We started the morning by waking up on our own time. Well, the cats' time actually. They are very fat and love to eat and at 6:30 in the morning at that. So after they were fed and we drifted back to sleep, then we woke up on our own time. After a few minutes of stretching and getting dressed we left the house in search of breakfast. It was a beautiful morning. It was the temperature I wished it would have stayed all day but alas, 20 degrees later, I am sitting in the television room dreading the fact that I picked a meal we have to prepare outside on the grill. Back to breakfast. We walked the two blocks it takes us to get to the newest restaurant in our neck of the woods, Big Truck Tacos.


As for the name, the owners went to LA to buy a truck to serve tacos out of around town and decided to also open a restaurant to compliment their new truck/food business. Great idea. This is now one of our many favorite local restaurants (yes, after one trip I am willing to include it) and it will probably get more of our business than Iguana, due to location. The breakfast tacos were delicious and I can't wait to try dinner there soon.


After breakfast we took the short trip home and immediately jumped in the car to go look for garage sales. We came upon two very sad looking sales and decided to just keep going. We made our way up north and caught an early showing of Julie & Julia as I had planned. Adorable. I really liked the movie not only for the food but for the back story line. I felt like it accurately portrayed so many things about life and marriage and perception. I, like Urban Grace, also loved the set design. I love seeing sets that have had a lot of thought and design put into them. I have always thought it would be interesting to be a movie set designer. So again, cute movie, go see it if you like chick flicks.

Paul then suggested we go looking for an old fashioned picnic basket (and I suggested a new vase for my future plans of marking things off of my list). We found both and are now planning for our old fashioned picnic to occur tomorrow night for dinner. Planning for it has been fun and I can't wait to have another picnic. It's nice to be away from the TV, phones and all of our other modern day distractions. We are spending the evening watching bad television, grilling steak on the trusty Weber and cleaning/prepping the bathroom floor for the floor paint it is about to receive tomorrow afternoon.

these are a few of my favorite things...

I am sorry to admit it sometimes but I love stuff.

One of my favorite blogs is My Favorite Things. They have some of the coolest things on their site and I spent a good hour last night perusing their old posts. I will admit, I shamelessly stole their idea for a title and tag line for the compilation cook book I am putting together. I've titled it, "our FAVORITE things," with a tag reading, "bright copper kettles...". It's super cute - trust me. Or don't, I'll just post photos later to prove it.

I guess the reason I hate admitting the fact that I love stuff is because I also hate clutter and junk. We currently have too much stuff. I would love to purge our home more but I love a lot of the things we have and I still want more! I regularly purge rooms in our home to get rid of unnecessary clutter but seem to fill the space quickly. Whether its kitchen gadgets, books, home accents, clothes, accessories, it doesn't matter. I just love it all. So, I'm going to intermittently share my favorite things.

Today's favorite item you ask?! Well my co-worker Libby was looking at this site today and I quickly got excited about all their gorgeous products! I don't need coasters, a tray or a paper weight but would seriously consider buying these.



Makes me want to go back to Holland and buy the cottage we stayed at last August on Lake Mac. I am sure he has sold it by now, but I would "J Crew" the hell out of it if it was mine. I am thinking about getting some address labels though.

What a crazy pregnant girl sounds like before she's even positive she's pregnant...

Let me clarify a couple of things before you finish this post. We are NOT pregnant. My monthly friend took it's sweet precious time to get here but it is here now so once again, we are NOT pregnant. Next, we do not know when we are going to try or get pregnant so do NOT get excited, yet. I'll let you know when the time is appropriate for giddiness. I was cleaning out my inbox and sent items folder at work and found this email that was written a month ago when we thought we might be. See that last bit of that line? "Thought we might be...". That's an important line to remember. The last thing I need from this blog is people going to my parents or my in-laws all giddy about Paul and I getting pregnant. Hold off people. Ok.

I wrote this in an email (this is only part of it) to my husband after my optomologist prescribed some steriod eye drops for me that recommended you not use if you are or could be pregnant. We thought we might be "with child" as I was eleven days late but didn't know for sure since the tests (and yes that is plural) said negative. Re-reading this made me laugh at how crazy I sounded. (Should be read in sort of a panic stricken tone).

I called the doctor's office and the receptionist was A) rude and B) asked the doctor for me and told me "he thinks you'll be fine..." BUT get this, I'll have to get a new eye prescription if I am pregnant because it could change. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it lady but if you kill my fetus with this eye drop first, then I won't be back for an eye appointment. EVER. I think the eye doctor either thinks its not a big deal or is just too lazy to do another one. But I feel like this is not an issue to be relaxed about. I am incredibly worked up over this for some reason and I don't know why. I am emotional and sweaty and argh. I just refuse to jeopardize this if it is or if it is to be.

I was at the office when I wrote this email and not only was I sort of yelling/crying at the nurse out in the hall for wanting me to get a new glasses prescription when I was so concerned with the state of my maybe non-existent child, I really was sweating and things just kept getting worse. For example, I used the word "argh" like a pirate. I also like my ending there, nine two letter words in a row. Who writes like that? A panic stricken 23 year old girl who thinks she could be pregnant and refuses to let some B-list eye doctor ruin that for her, that's who.

I got a kick out of re-reading it and thought you might too.

"Life itself is the proper binge." Julia Child

We are going to go see Julie & Julia this weekend. Since I saw the first ad, I've thought it looked cute; the more ads I see (and all of the hype that has been going with it), the more excited I get. I have always known of Julia Child but some recent digging has helped me to get a clearer picture of this woman. I want her first book. Not necessarily because the food looks delicious and it certainly won't help me with my goal to get rid of extra cook books but I love the vintage-ness of it. I have one more recipe to make out of one of our cookbooks before I am ready to pass three of our books on to someone else to use. One of them is an old vintage cookbook that some women (I don't even know them) in my hometown made (sort of like an original Rachel Ray concept). I stole it from the trash pile my mom had thrown it in a couple of months ago with disgust that she was willing to get rid of this vital piece of my childhood upbringing. These were the recipes she cooked for us as kids! These were some of our favorite recipes! Never mind the fact that my mom had combined them into our church cookbook - which I own a copy of, that didn't matter. The old vintage cookbook had a sentimental value to it. As I am sure this book would have if I could find a copy of it at a used bookstore sometime. Ladies and gentlemen, keep your eyes open for it because I will pay you back if you find it. Just don't spend a fortune on it, because then, I may not pay you back.


I love to cook, even though I can get entirely too lazy and skip full weeks of cooking at a time. I love the food we create, but I love the tools and the fun stuff that goes with it. If it is Le Creuset and red, we own it....except for this. And I want it.
Maybe we wouldn't have such an itch to eat and cook if we didn't watch the Food Network ALL THE TIME. But alas, the television tends to stay on that station the majority of the time it is on. I also own three aprons and use only one of them but would seriously consider buying this one - again for its shabby chic vintage appeal (found here).


Well, enough about what I want to spend money on. I think I'd rather get my kitchen renovation underway but it seems like a much larger (and more expensive task) than a cookbook, apron and frying pan.

b-e-a-utiful weekend

This weekend is going down in the books ladies and gentlemen. Please note that nothing of significance happened this weekend.The house is still incredibly filthy and the laundry is still sitting in large piles on the bedroom floor (to which the cats are not complaining). Yesterday after I gave all that talk about getting up and cleaning the house, I sat on my rear and watched the ends of two or three various movies on television and then read Harry Potter as I laid on the front porch swing waiting for the husband to get home. I could sleep on that swing if it was just a foot longer. Once he got home from his golf tournament we proceeded to take a two hour nap. Five o'clock on Saturday evening, we finally decided to crawl out of bed and go grab some dinner and do our grocery shopping. I LOVE grocery shopping. The evening ended with some rather chunky orange no bake blobs (instead of no bake orange balls, which aren't supposed to be chunky) and a line that went something like this: "you can't unload the dishwasher angry! Go watch TV, just let me do it!", and watching golf.

Today was a smooth morning and a great day at church. Got a car wash, came home and made a delicious lunch.


I am about to head out for a baby shower (30 minutes north of our house) which means I'll be gone for two hours to spend just one hour at the shower. Bleh. The house will probably stay dirty all week at least until next Saturday comes and we go through the same cleaning debate. But as I stated earlier, if I went back to do it all again, I wouldn't have changed anything about this weekend.

fear of failure, fear of people

So after a fabulous hair cut at my favorite salon with my favorite stylist this morning, cleaning the house seems like a disgusting chore. Note to self: do not go pamper yourself first thing Saturday morning, you will ruin whatever else you had to do that day. Everything will pale in comparison. I also ran to Babies R Us to get a gift for a friend from my church class who had twin baby girls. Everything is more expensive when you have two of them! I still need to get my eye brows waxed, go to the grocery store and of course....clean the house.

But instead of cleaning the house, I've been sitting here thinking about the ridiculous things I am afraid of. One of the many art classes I had to take in college worked very hard to get you to overcome certain fears. Mainly, fear of failure and fear of people. I don't seem to have fear regarding my work any more. The class did its job I suppose. I have no problem letting people see my designs or my photos or my art. But other things terrify me. For example, on my list of 100 things to do, I have "drive a sea-doo". Why is that on my list of 100 things to do you ask? I agree that it seems like a ridiculous item to include on a life list but I am scared to drive one. I did not grow up on or near a lake and when my family did make the rare trip to the lake we were on a friend's boat. We never knew anyone that had sea-doos. Right after graduating from high school I heard my family talking about an extended cousin who had just gotten married and while on her honeymoon in Mexico, her and her new husband decided to rent and ride a sea-doo together. The sea-doo flipped and they both died. ON THEIR HONEYMOON. IN MEXICO. I cried. I didn't even know this girl, but oh did I freak out. Now that I have married into a lake family and community - wherever one lives on the lake or goes to the lake all the time - I am constantly trying to find excuses for not driving a sea-doo. I ALWAYS ride with Paul. ALWAYS. I had a great excuse last year when my friend Betsy came to Michigan with us and there were only two to drive. Betsy got one and Paul and I got the other...but that isn't always the case. Is this not one of the most ridiculous fears you have ever heard of? Well, we are going to Michigan in September and I am going to make Paul teach me how to drive one and then I am going to do it.

The next fear I have come to realize I have over the past few days is my fear in learning a new sport. Like golf. I want to play golf. I really would like to be able to go out with Paul on a Saturday morning and know what I was doing. More than that, I want my own set of clubs and cute golf shoes and clothes. Well, Paul offered to take me to the driving range last night to teach me how to hit a ball. I got super nervous and backed out and we went out for dinner and went shopping instead. I was so sure that I was going to miss hitting the ball and everyone at the range would laugh at me and I would feel ridiculous. My arm muscles were quivering thinking about it. They are quivering right now! I need to get it together. I just want to be at a course or a range with just Paul and learn without anyone around. Maybe I should add learning to play golf onto my next list of things to accomplish...

I know there are tons of other things I am afraid of doing but those have been the most recent two to show up. I also am aware of how ridiculous these are.