So this Friday I'm heading out, in a caravan of two cars full of six giggly women, loaded til the sides bulge, with sewing machines, cutting mats, rotary cutters, power strips, pajamas, board games, wine, snacks and chocolate in various forms. We're headed to Chataqua. This is what the website had to say about Chataqua for any of you 100 - 1200 miles south of me:
In the southwest corner of New York State, just 10 miles south of Lake Erie and Interstate 90 lies a beautiful 23 mile lake, Lake Chautauqua. On the northwest shores of Lake Chautauqua is the world famous Chautauqua Institution, a cultural resort like no other in the world, in its over 125 year history, Chautauqua Institution has provided its participants with stimulating lectures, famous performers, symphony music, opera performances, ballet, all manners of visual and performing arts, lively debates, inspiring religious speakers and music. Presidents, ambassadors, actors, authors are among the many who have spoken from its famous lectern.
A little photo of Chataqua Lake, for any of you who haven't been this far north.We're attending a quilting conference that is expected to draw FIVE THOUSAND WOMEN, and contrary to what you may think, if you're getting a visual of a bunch of women sitting around with buns on their heads, and laced up corset-style dresses, we're a fun, crazy bunch who happen to love quilting. We're staying for two nights, in three efficiency rooms, and have already figured out how to drag tables together to set up a sewing center where we can stay up way too late chopping up pieces of fabric so we can sew them all back together again. The speaker is Eleanor Burns, known as The Stripping Lady, not because she undresses more often than normal, but rather for the quilting technique she promotes.
I've been stashing my allowance for months for this little trip. I found out today I don't even have to drive, I get to sit in the middle seat and knit the whole road trip. There's a quilt show of 900 quilts one day, and of course there will be vendors selling fabric, and street vendors selling foods that consist mostly of grease and salt. One whole weekend away with girlfriends eating too much, sleeping too little, possibly spending a bit too much, talking and giggling til I'm hoarse - All play and no work - I'm all over it!
Labels: Girl Talk
Being involved in Bible study through the summer has been good for me - the structure, the accountability, getting together with the group of women each week to encourage each other and study God's word - as Martha would say, it's a good thing'. Two of my dear friends joined with me, and we've enjoyed our weekly carpool time. It's amazing how much gabbing you can get into a fifteen minute drive!
Sometimes you're ready - sometimes you're just not. I've been a lifetime member of Weight Watchers for over twenty years, but you can walk around twenty pounds overweight while holding onto that title. They still charge you the $11 when you weigh in, a whole lot like they would if you weren't a lifetime member..... you get what I'm saying here..... Being a 'lifetime member' of Weight Watchers and a one dollar bill will get me an ice cold diet coke. It also kept me from doing anything about the weight that had slowly attached itself to me, and decided to hold on for dear life. When I signed up for First Place, I somehow just knew that I was ready. Ready to do something differently, ready to make some lifestyle changes, ready to get this extra weight off for good.
We're less than a year from retirement and it's going to involve a lot of big lifestyle changes. This seemed the right time to get healthy on all levels - spiritually, emotionally, physically. I never came back and reported on it, but seven sessions of Christian counseling put me in a much better place emotionally, gave me some insight into behavior patterns, relationships, etc. I've heard before, post-counseling, when people say, 'that was the best money I ever spent'. It was. I'm here to say, if you think you need to go, go. Even if nobody else understands, even if you don't get a lot of support, even if he won't go with you. Go for yourself. It was really a wonderful experience for me, well worth the money, and I'm thankful for good insurance that covered it. But if you don't have insurance there is still free Christian counseling out there. Joanne, my counselor told me that even counselors need counseling now and then!
First Place didn't cost me much of anything, but it's been a great program. Not only has it brought structure to my summer, something that is usually woefully lacking, I've finally lost those proverbial ten pounds I'd grown accustomed to. The ones I decided not to drag down to Texas with me, the ones I decided weren't going to be invited to the lake.
I don't expect I'll be missing them much. Isn't it hard, as a wife, as a mother, to take time for taking care of ourselves? We all have full days with a long list, and we're usually the last thing on it, whether it's diet, rest, quiet time, or just fun time with a friend. If I don't have time now, if I can't make it a priority at this point in my life, when on earth will I?
Much like staying out of the sun, much like wearing more moisturizer, I wish I'd done both these things at least ten years ago. I've heard before I can't give what I don't have. I can't care for others if I'm an empty vessel. Boy, aren't the big lessons hard to learn?!
Labels: Girl Talk, Glimpse of the Heart
A fellow blogger suggested that I read the book by Nora Ephron, 'I Feel Bad About My Neck', not because she'd seen a picture of my saggy neck (it isn't)(yet) but because she thought our writing styles were similar. I was so excited to have someone even think I had a writing style I ran right over to the library and tried to check it out. It was on a wait list, which I thought to be another encouraging sign. I added my name to the wait list and waited.When the book became available, I ran right over and grabbed it. Being a diehard
Labels: Girl Talk, Lighthearted, Silliness
It's supposed to be lazy summer, so let's just stop and have a cup of coffee together and do some catching up. I'm going for a caramel latte.I'm feeling a little hyper, there's been so much going on. Days lately have felt like if I turned a corner I'd meet myself coming around it! So in nothing resembling order, here's what's up.
My hair!!!! Any girl knows how important hair is, and mine got butchered last December. It's been six months and it's finally looking good again. Thank you God, for Nina. She's worth every dime and I'd go to generic TP and mac and cheese before I'd switch, or let anyone else touch my head. She's so great she even tells me tips to color my own hair, how to make those color resistant grey parts suck up that color like crazy! How can I not love her?
I'm maybe, just maybe, meeting a sweet blogger for lunch this Sunday afternoon. I'm not telling who yet, but she and her family are traveling from NY state. She emailed me that they would be very close to my home and would I be interested in meeting? Absolutely! So see, if you're ever anywhere near Pittsburgh, click that email on the sidebar and we'll get together. And Gretchen, I'm just going to come to Seattle someday, with DH in tow and we'll all go to dinner, yes we will. Since we were separated at birth, I think it's the right thing to do. For any of you down south, I think we should have a meet and greet at my lake house, after I get settled in, I'll invite my mom and sister and daughter, and you can meet them too.
See this:
This is the system my daughter, Sarah mentioned in her blog. Big weeks and little weeks. This week was a big one, and I got the master bathroom painted. Not the baseboards, door or window. Not the window treatment sewn. Not the vanity painted. But the walls, two coats, and that's worth celebrating. To celebrate I ordered monogrammed towels from Land's End. I've always loved the look of monograms. So the house staging continues. My husband asked me tonight if he could really use the towels. I surprised him and said 'yes'. I didn't tell him they're white and can be bleached if he gets them dirty.
Books!!!!!!!!!!!! Summer is made for reading, but I have books coming out the whazoo! I don't even know where to start.
Sarah sent me two for my birthday, I special requested two at the library and they came in today (thank you to the blogger who recommended "I Feel Bad About My Neck"!), and I got another today as a birthday gift. I'm in the middle of three right now and have another stack of four or five on the kitchen counter. DH must feel like he's living on some floor of the public library. Not enough time to read! How I would love to just curl up for the whole live-long day and read away the hours.
You know how you get presents, and they're sweet and special, but some just hold a special place in your heart. Every Christmas I look forward to my mom's package coming, especially if it has squiggle ribbon on it, because it's one of those warm, fuzzy memories for me. My sister and I both ended up using squiggle ribbon on all our packages too. This arrived from my big sister, Barb today.
Perfect gift! Kiwi green paper, great summer read, new Celestial Seasonings tea that I can't get here, and coconut shower gel and lotion from Bath and Body. I'm crazy about anything coconut, which she of course knows, being the big sister and all. And to top it all off, a sweet little green squiggle bow.
Remember Craig's List. We sold furniture. Then we sold the camper. This week I sold this:
In ten minutes. Bought by a young couple for their first home. I love Craig's List!
My DH is home! After three weeks of traveling and being gone more than home, he finally pulled in tonight and said no more trips to Virginia for quite awhile. That means no more staying up til 1:00 am for me, no more eating Lean Cuisine's at my desk, no more painting at 9:30 pm, back to cooking, packing lunches, doing laundry, etc. etc. etc. I'm so thankful he's home again. He was involved in a dangerous shaft-filling project, and I literally prayed for him to not get blown up. One of the kids called tonight to make sure he made it home safely, because I'd asked them all to pray for him too. I think God must delight in hearing our prayers, and I prayed specifically that my husband would be so protected that he would feel the brush of angel's wings. (Thanks Mom for that saying from your post. Love that!)
I've had three sessions with the therapist now, and all I can really say is that if there was any dust between my ears, it is gone. Hard, hard thinking. But good. And of course she has me reading a book. Deep book. I'll come back and share more, after I've figured it all out a bit. For now, I'm just busy thinking hard, and hoping that burns calories.
Speaking of calories, I've done two weeks of First Place and have lost two pounds. That's two more pounds than I've lost in the last year, so hip hip hoorah for that! Amazing how watching what you eat and exercising works. We ordered an ellyptical to exercise in the basement.
And speaking of the ellyptical! DH put it together, down in the basement rec room, so I could use it while he was out of town. He came upstairs and told me it needed to be dragged into the storage room because we are both too tall and when you stand on the ellyptical, our heads would hit the ceiling panels. I explained ever so sweetly that absolutely would not work because I would not be able to watch the 1,000 Tivo'd 'how to sell your house' shows I'd taped, while I exercised, and I can hardly bear to exercise with entertainment. Without - it's not happening. So I explained that we will simply remove the one panel and our little heads will be half in the room, half in the ceiling. It works. Looks a bit strange but it works. Who has adjustment disorder? I'm all about adjusting to the disorder that abounds at our house right now.
So how are you? What have you been up to? (I think guys sit down to a cold one, scratch a bit and say "how's it hanging?" Thank the Lord we weren't born guys.)
Labels: Girl Talk
At our second meeting of First Place, I was sitting third from the corner. We went around the room, doing the typical 'share who you are in three sentences or less'. I was very deep. "When you're tall you can get away with eating more Butterfinger candybars than the average gal, but I know the truth. This roll of glob greets me every morning when I sit up in bed. It's been around so long I'm considering giving it a name and buying it Christmas gifts. And by the way, I'm married, three kids, four grandkids, blah, blah, blah." We continued around the room. The woman in the corner started to share, then just stopped. Unable to talk, she began to cry. We, being women, stopped too, while she took a deep breath. She told us her husband had died in a car accident last fall, her daughter was critically injured, and she was there because she needed a group of women. She only shared for a few minutes, in sentences broken by long pauses, but by the time she stopped talking the entire room was crying.
Fifteen women sitting in a circle crying.
The leader began to grab boxes of kleenex that had been tucked into the corners of the room, and started passing them around. After we'd all gotten our wits about us again, I noticed the kleenex, because it would have just been tacky to do so before, but Look At Them! Black and white toile instead of a nice lavender with big ole flowers in varying shades of pink, or teddy bears and ducks, or manly stripes of dark blue and burgundy.
I oohed and aahed over them til the leader told me she found them at Walmart, in a set of three, and of course I asked what the other two looked like. She said they were tolerable, but not quite as cute. The next day, when I went grocery shopping, I checked out Kmart. One box of three, the one toile and the other two passable for the guest rooms. Then to our grocery store, and they also had the packages of three. One had two of the black toile, which was like hitting the lottery jackpot of kleenex, so I threw them in my cart. Then I spied, in the back corner of the shelf, two individual boxes of these black toile kleenex, and oh my, to not have to buy the others, which were only tolerable, but just these, of course they went in, adding to the mountain of kleenex growing in the cart.
The checkout clerk didn't say a word about the fact that I was buying something like 99 boxes of kleenex and most of them matched. If they stop making them, I obviously need a lifetime supply, and I think the clerk understood that, in spite of being a male. Yeah, I'm sure he totally got it.
It would be an understatement to say I'm ready for some serious allergies, or the monsoon of colds with post-nasal drip. Or circles of women sitting around talking about their kids heading off to pre-school or college, or their husband who doesn't quite understand them, or when their child, Tunchie, who was four, fell over the balcony, landed on his head and laid there for awhile and she thought she'd lost him, or why they just can't get rid of this ten pound albatross that has been living around their waist for, oh say, twenty-five years. Yep, I'm set.
I'm not completely heartless. I realize there are bigger things in life than what my kleenex boxes look like. I sent a note of encouragement to the woman who is struggling with her profound loss, telling her I would commit to pray for her this week. And the balcony thing - absolutely happened during a Bible study a few years ago. When I heard that Tunchie made it, and it had happened forty-five years ago, well let me just say I felt such immense relief because the woman sharing was well over sixty and I had been sitting there wondering why on earth she had a child so late in life.
Women - deep, tender-hearted, with a God-given need to share, the light and hard and silly and profound things of our lives. I'm set to have them gather in a circle around my living room, with lovely black and white toile boxes of kleenex tucked into the corners. Women who will cry, forty-five years later about when Tunchie fell and landed on his head. So fling the front door open wide, plump the pillows and put on some coffee - I'm all about that kind of gathering. With the right kleenex tucked into the corners of the room, and maybe even a little less of this waistline hanging around like a rude albatross.
In your entire life have you?
Gone on a blind date NO
Skipped school YES
Watched someone die NO
Been to Canada YES
Been to Mexico YES
Been to Florida YES
Been on a plane YES (a lot!)
Been lost YES (often!)
Been on the opposite side of the country YES
Gone to Washington , DC YES
Swam in the ocean YES
Had your booze taken away by the cops NO
Lettered in a high school sport ARE YOU KIDDING?!
Cried yourself to sleep YES
Played cops and robbers YES, we played 'army' more
Played dolls YES, Thumbelina was my dearest treasure
Recently colored with crayons YES with Landon at Bob Evans
Sang Karaoke NO
Paid for a meal with coins only YES, dug up from the pit of my purse
Done something you told yourself you wouldn't YES
Cheated on an exam YES (I'd guess yes to a math test, although I don't remember for sure)
Made prank phone calls YES, I was the typical dorky teenager
Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose YES
Caught a snowflake on your tongue YES
Danced in the rain YES
Written a letter to Santa Claus YES
Been kissed under the mistletoe YES
Watched the sunrise with someone you care about YES, Easter sunrise services
Been arrested NO
Blown bubbles YES, very recently to entertain little ones in the nursery
Gone ice-skating NO (there wasn't much ice in Texas!)
Been skinny dipping outdoors YES (recently! yes, the kids are horrified...)
Any nickname? YES Bevmeister, Bevanator
Mother's name? Judith Ann
Favorite drink that I'm allowed to have on a regular basis? Diet Coke or Coffee;
Favorite alcohol - margaritas or zinfandel wine
Tattoos? NO
Body Piercings? YES, Ears only
Birthplace? Beaumont, Texas
Favorite vacation spot? Outer Banks, NC
Been to Africa NO, No desire to go there, I'd never recover emotionally
Eaten cookies for dinner YES, Oatmeal chocolate chip, which seems reasonable to me
Ever been on TV NO
Ever steal any traffic signs NO
Ever been in a car accident? YES, thankfully it’s usually just me.
Drive a 2-door or 4-door vehicle? 4 door gas-guzzling beast
Favorite salad dressing? Ranch
Favorite Pie? Pecan with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side
Favorite number? Good grief no.
Favorite movie? Sound of Music
Favorite holiday? New Year's Day - I love brand new starts
Favorite food? Seafood of some sort
Favorite day of the week? Sunday
Favorite brand of body wash? Anything from Bath and Body
Favorite toothpaste? Sensodyne
Favorite smells - just bathed baby
What do you do to relax? Putz, do nothing that amounts to anything productive
How do you see yourself in 10 years? Retired, spending time with hubby and family
A fun meme, if anyone would like to join in, feel free to grab it and paste it into your own blog.
Labels: Girl Talk
I'm tall, 5'10" so I can carry weight pretty easily. If you saw me (more than my profile that is) you wouldn't think I need to lose weight. But just like most people, it's been creeping up slowly and surely over the past twenty years, and I'm now at the top of the green BMI numbers. My gyne and primary both told me I'm fine - that I look healthy and strong. Still, I know I'm a bit over what I should be, my cholesterol is likely not the best, so it's time to pay some attention to this area of my life.
I'm a lifetime member of Weight Watchers. You can be over goal and still be Lifetime, trust me. Recently I found a program much like Weight Watchers, but Christ-centered. It's called First Place, you meet with a group of women for a weekly Bible study, weigh in, encouragement and accountability. There is no weekly charge once you buy the materials needed to participate. The next group begins June 3, and I'm signed up to go. In the meantime I've ordered the materials off of Amazon, and am starting early. It's time.
To find out more, you can go here, to their website. If you're able to join a group, I'd recommend that, but if you can't, the materials can be purchased at Amazon for very reasonable prices. Sometimes it's not about looking good in a swimsuit, or shedding weight for some special occasion, but rather just getting your act together in all areas of life. This temple is just a bit pudgy, too many McD's french fries going in, and not enough calories being burned.
I'll let you know how it goes. It seems much more efficient to me to just get it done, get rid of those extra pounds, than to keep putting it on my resolution list.
Labels: Girl Talk
I just ordered this book from Amazon. The review in our daily paper made it look like just what I need. My closet is already organized with shirts together, skirts together, blues then greens, then yellow into reds, brown and then black. You know - the normal closet, but I could really use help looking at everything hanging there and having a clear idea of what on earth to grab for different occasions. Once you go past choosing an outfit for a visit to the local grocery I get a bit challenged, and tend to wear the same ole boring stuff over and over.Labels: Girl Talk
Anyway, we painted, added new bedding and window treatments but it just didn't have any oomph or punch. When our son Dan and DIL Janae were here in late March, I asked her opinion. What was it lacking? It looked 'nice' but just didn't grab me either. It took her about five seconds to comment, 'you know, hotels and really nice homes' master bedrooms all seem to have a big painting over the bed....'
Voila! (see Sarah, I can learn and did not type Whallah! although I still mispronounce about half the words in Websters Dictionary, tough ones like 'blah' and 'diva' and 'Guiliani' but I did fix 'Voila!'.) Janae even suggested I go with a not-ordinary shape. So being the big spender, I measured the space, then headed right over to our local messy consignment second-hand store, walked around, climbed over, pulled out every single painting they had in the place. Nothing was quite right. Or too expensive since I don't care enough to have a signed print from Ethan Allen with a second-hand price of $200! Good grief, I wouldn't pay that the first time around.
When I walked in a woman was making a truly huge pile of items at the counter. She'd grabbed one painting that I liked, the others were a bit too high-brow or fussy or feminine for me. I liked the one, but acted all non-chalant and kept moving. Ends up she's a dental hygenist who sidelines decorating very expensive homes in our area with consignment items! Wealthy people apparently pay her to look around, find stuff at good prices, bring it in and decorate their homes! Who knew? I just thought they all had great taste, or at least better than mine.
She told the consignment store owner she'd take all the items, 'audition them' with the home owners and bring back what they didn't want to buy. Right before she left, she set aside the one painting I liked. She told the owner 'it wasn't quite high-end enough'. Soon as she went out the door I grabbed it like nobody's business and talked the store owner down $5 to a whopping price of $40.
Here's the 'before my personal decorator Janae helped me' look:
Here's after:
Thanks Janae, and if you ever get tired of your day job, you just might want to start checking out consignment stores and expensive homes in your area. Apparently there's money to be made in what you're doing! Now, about my wardrobe and total inability to figure out shoes.....Labels: Creative License, Girl Talk
Vinyl wall quotes - just the ticket for dressing up an area but if the next owners don't really want that, they can just plug in their hairdryer and take it off. I found out they are also carried at Target and I found mine at Joann Fabrics for $19.99. I'd guess Michaels has them too.
It took me about an hour to apply it, because my wall is just a wee bit bumpy from the five gallons of joint compound. If you had a smooth wall it would likely take about ten minutes. They provide a little white 'credit card' type of thing to rub across the transfer, so you don't have to trash your Target credit card, not that I have a Target credit card, since I'm opposed to paying 21% interest on something I bought on 'sale', but you get the point.
I am T.H.R.I.L.L.E.D. with how it turned out! $19.99 at Joann's and I used the 40% coupon, so this dandy wall-dresser-upper cost me around $12.00 - I still think a 'passion for food is a passion for life' but they didn't offer that quote, yet. They do sell one that says, "All because two people fell in love" and I'm thinking it would be great in the rec room over our family photos. Then there's the one that says, "Always kiss me goodnight" - wouldn't that be great over a guest bedroom bed! The possibilities are just endless.
I think the next owners will love this, but if not, I'm willing to write a counter-offer with the hair dryer thrown in with the house!
Labels: Busy Buzz, Creative License, Girl Talk
Not everywhere we've stayed has been great - there have been some real loo-loos in our hotel past. We've been eaten alive by fleas, had drunk people next door scream at us through the walls, slept in water beds that rocked so hard I literally woke up with bruises on my hip bones. That's back when my hip bones were somewhat more protruded, so I'm not thinking that's going to happen again anytime soon - I've covered them with a bit more padding for protection. We've stayed at places with red velvet curtains (not window treatments) (never a good thing!), places where we literally all slept in our clothes for four hours and then hit the road again because it was just too yucky, but at 4 am in the middle of Kansas you can't be real choosy. Come to think of it, most of those awful places were in the middle of Kansas. Not sure what Dorothy was thinking there, 'there's no place like home!'
This weekend, we're heading out to Virginia for a quick overnight trip, to accept an award for DH's company, and they are putting us up at a hotel, wining and dining us, then the next morning we'll have breakfast out, and make the seven hour drive back home. It sounds like a nice get-away to me.
I'm not very germ conscious, so it came as a surprise to me the last time I was with girlfriends. We got on the subject of hotels and they started telling me they take T-shirts from home to put over the pillowcases, they wear socks so their bare feet don't touch the floor. One of them, honest to pete, cleans the hotel bathroom with a traveling cleaning kit she carries. Are you kidding? I barely clean my own. Part of the purpose of leaving is to go somewhere it's not my job to clean a single thing. They started telling me horror stories of why they don't drink out of the glasses, because you know someone might have just popped a new paper cover on it and not washed it. On and on and on. That there might accidentally be a hair in the bathtub sent them all over the edge. (Note to self: double check for bathtub hairs before next guests arrive, so they don't run screaming out the front door...). Seriously, the odds are that some are just hairs off my head of wavy hair... I swear I shed more than the dogs.
Much like reading your teenage daughter's diary, sometimes too much information is just that - better not to know. I was excited about our little trip, but can't a girl just go stay in a hotel, drink a diet coke over ice while sitting up in bed watching cable TV, and not hear the horror stories of that special on whatever channel it was, about all the creepy germs that show up when you shine that funky light on the bed? Please don't start describing to me why you don't ever touch a hotel bedspread. Or blanket. I have no intention of shining any lights on the bed.
Really, I'd like to just go back to the days when I walked through the hotel door, delighted to be there, use up all the little shampoo and conditioner bottles, check out what is on HBO, and start looking for the ice machine, somewhere down the hall. Reality checks - over-rated!
Labels: Girl Talk
There's nothing that feels as creepy as pulling on yesterday's wet swimsuit, and since we're leaving for Mexico in about three weeks, I needed to buy an extra one. Pulling on a swimsuit is traumatic enough, without it being wet and full of sand from yesterday's visit to the beach. I headed to Land's End to do some browsing. They're known for carrying swimsuits that will put everything back where it was about twenty years ago, or before you had children. That's worth quite a bit in my book. I'd received the catalog in the mail a week or so ago, and it had the cutest tankinis. Perfect for anyone with tummys that could use some coverage, in other words for about 95% of the population over 21. And in cute patterns and colors other than black and navy blue, which are just a bit too matronly for my taste.I found an adorable three piece set, the top, bottoms and a little skirt that can be thrown on for walks down the beach, or sitting in the little restaurant next to the pool. It took me about two seconds to choose a little skirt over trying to do 9,000 leg lifts or walk 500 miles between now and departure date to deal with the less than toned condition of my thighs.
Girls, you have to go to this website, regardless of whether you have a trip in your future or not, or plan to ever wear a swimsuit again. It was such fun! When I got there, I was asked to sign up for a Virtual Model, or "online twin" as they called her. (That's, sort of, me on the upper left, the only time you'll ever see me online in undies.) I typed in all my bodily statistics, including length of torso, weight, height, year I was born. I chose my face shape, hairstyle and color. It was fun to watch her morph as I added inches here and there, and see what happened when I clicked on "more mature". After I made her look like me, I chose the swimsuit, and clicked 'try on', and sure enough she did! There she was with my outfit on, and I was able to change colors, patterns, etc. and then turn her profile to see how non-flat my tummy would look in that particular suit.
When I'd finished all of this, I clicked on "ask for size suggestion" and lo and behold it told me 'size 6'. Come on! My daughters, who are 20 and 25 years younger than me are size 6ish, so I knew that wasn't right; obviously guessing at measurements isn't the best plan. So I went in and added an inch all over, and it told me size 8. That's still pretty darned terrific, and when I said, let's go with a size 10, she tried it on, and I was able to see what it would look like. (And if I actually look that good on the beach, that would be pretty fabulous too.)
Clicking on 'checkout', and seeing the total - completely worth it. To cover up a bit, to have everything put back where it's supposed to be, and to have someone, anyone, tell me to buy a size 6 - that hasn't happened since I was in middle school! Want to have fun with this - GO HERE. You can see the generic virtual female, you just have to go in and make your adjustments. I've always thought it would be fun to be a twin, now I have one that can show me what I'd look like with red hair, or if I gain or lose ten lbs, and she can try on clothes to my heart's content. Most ego-boosting 45 minutes I've spent in a long time!
Labels: Girl Talk
That's the definition I got when I looked up "sasrcasm". If you asked me, I'd say I really, really dislike it. I don't enjoy humor that comes at someone else's expense. But I find myself wondering, am I guilty of it myself? I'm so aware of it in others, but do I give myself a "get out of jail free card" when I'm guilty too?Sarcasm is stating the opposite of an intended meaning especially in order to sneeringly, slyly, jest or MOCK a person, situation or thing. It is strongly associated with irony, with some definitions classifying it as a type of verbal irony intended to INSULT OR WOUND. An example of sarcasm is using "that's fantastic" to mean "that's awful".
So what is your take on it? Is it just a form of humor that comes with certain personality types, do we all do it, is it okay, not so great?
My ears seem very touchy to it lately for some reason, so I'd really like input from others - what do you think? As a Christian, is it okay? Do I need to look more closely at the intent, or am I just being too picky? Or am I even a pot calling the kettle black?
What do you think? I'd really like to know.
Labels: Girl Talk
What? Isn't that the way everyone orders their Girl Scout Cookies? By the carton, by the dozen? People, they only come once a year, so you just can't mess around with that "I'll take two boxes please" thing. These have to last me us twelve months!
When the kids still lived at home, we compiled our order, a few Thin Mints (I really dislike them), Peanut Butter whatevers, I don't even remember the names of the others because really, in my mind there's no reason to make more than one kind - Samoas. Every year I order 12 boxes, one dozen of our favorite kind the only kind we really like.
And $42 is perfectly reasonable to spend on cookies, if you only think of it in increments of $3.50 per month, or even better, $0.12 per day. That's likely laying somewhere in the bottom of my purse, amongst the cracker crumbs and extra ink pens.
Here's how I see it:
75 calories each (and they are nice enough to admit you need two to be a serving, so 150 calories, but then that's a bit like telling us a teensy carton of Hagen Daas has more than one serving in it, come on, especially if it's that Heath Coffee stuff?!), 75 calories each and 16 to a box, so a box is 1200 calories, which is lower than the suggested caloric intake for a typical Weight Watchers Day! I could eat just Samoas every Monday and be sticking to my diet! Makes me a little light-headed to think about it all. If I were to eat the entire twelve boxes in one sitting that would still only be 14,400 calories and since we all know you have to burn 3500 calories to kill the 4.12 pounds I'd gain from eating them all, I'd have to walk
ONE HUNDRED FORTY FOUR MILES TO BURN THEM UP!
Okay, that is a bit much.
Wait, that's to and from the mall 7.2 times. Completely doable.
And if we stick with past behavior and give away a couple boxes here and there, a few of those shopping trips can be by car.
I love it when I make complete sense! Happy Math!
If I were to eat two - cookies, not boxes - with coffee, and call it breakfast, that's only 150 calories, which is a lot less than a bowl of cheerios and way more fun. And I found this in the Parade this morning:
"Wake up Hungry", "Waking up hungry for breakfast is a good sign YOU'VE LIKELY LOST WEIGHT WHILE SLEEPING! (Shoot, who doesn't wake up hungry? I wake up starving, so obviously I'm losing weight!) Too many people eat late at night and then wake up with a food hangover. Instead, make sure to fuel up during the day and diet by night. Eat every FOUR HOURS: breakfast at 7 am, FIRST LUNCH AT 11 AM, SECOND LUNCH at 3 pm, following by a light evening meal." Nancy Clark, author of Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook.
That Nancy, what's not to love about her thinking. I can live with no Samoas after 7 pm, if it means I get to eat like a Hobbit guiltfree, SECOND LUNCH INDEED!
I swear sometimes life is just so rich and good I can barely stand it. Where are those tennis shoes anyway? BTW, if my math turns out to be wacky, I don't really need to know that. I'm happy with it just the way it is!
Labels: Girl Talk
Truth be told I'm a bit of a tightwad. Even when I have the money for something I still hate to spend more than I have to. On most things.Labels: Girl Talk
Guess what?! My sister, Barbtha, over at A Chelsea Morning, is teaching herself to knit. And she isn't really any good at it - right this minute. She told me (not that she told me I can share it with you but I'm going to anyway, even though she might post that horrible photo of me in second grade when my bangs were completely over the top dorky, for doing so) that she's learning to cast on and isn't any good at it.
Yet. Within an hour, or maybe even a whole day, she'll have it mastered, and within a month or so she'll be posting photos of fisherman cable sweaters that she just whipped up, and striped socks, and adorable baby toys. On this I can depend. I know her track record for excellence in all things domestic. But for right this minute -
I'M BETTER AT SOMETHING THAN SHE IS!
A little hat I whipped up for Grandson Caiden. (Okay I had to rip out the football five times before it resembled anything like this.) I truly cannot stand it. This never happens. How completely clever of me to pick up a hobby that she hadn't completely mastered yet.
A little giddy here.
Labels: Family Affair, Girl Talk
Years ago we celebrated Valentine's Day by sitting down to a 'fancy' dinner with our three kids. The dining room table was draped with a battenberg lace tablecloth, and covered with china, wine goblets, napkins and lots of silverware. Don had gifts for each of the girls and I had one for our son, Dan. It was good training for all those upcoming proms, wedding receptions, or dinners with the boss at the Country Club. I still have sweet memories of the kids sitting around the table, in their 'Sunday-go-to-meeting' clothes, how grown up and special they felt to be our valentines.A few years after the nest was emptied I asked DH to add up all the Valentine's Day gifts we had chosen not to exchange and please, oh please buy me a new quilting machine. He did, he's good that way, even though it didn't occur to him to do the same and ask for a bass boat.
This year neither of us was really in for exchanging gifts or even going out to dinner. It's one of those years where we just feel content to have dinner on TV trays, in our pjs, watching whatever's on Tivo. We've been married long enough that, at least for this year, it just feels nice to be together. That's not to say that a few years down the road I won't come up with some contraption that'll make up for the lack of gift exchanges, plus some.
Here's what our celebrating will consist of. Don doesn't share my lack of opinion on chocolate. Actually he likes it in almost any form, and the more often the better. So I made him these:
Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins
1 1/2 cups a.p. flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
In bowl combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Combine egg, oil, milk, lemon juice and vanilla. Mix well. Stir into dry ingredients just til moistened. Fold in zucchini, chocolate chips and walnuts. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or til muffins test done.
The recipe calls for filling 12 muffin cups. I do six, and I pour that batter plumb to the top. What comes out is something that looks like it should be behind the counter at Starbucks, costing $2.50 a pop. The zucchini was from the Farmer's Market last August, but you can still get fresh zucchini at the grocery. Just shred it skin and all, and dump it in. It gives the muffins some umph to keep you going through the morning, and makes them nice and moist too.
The chocolate chips and walnuts? Makes you forget you're eating something relatively good for you, and whether we exchange gifts or not, everyone needs a little bit of chocolate on Heart Day.
Labels: Girl Talk, Slavin' Over the Stove
Then Don and Jeremy are wiring the storage room, lights in the closets and a few extra outlets. I'm a girl who loves all sorts of things that need to be plugged in. Next we're ordering in pizzas for the workers and the women who love them, then off to church. Right from there we're going to see a great chick flick, "There Will Be Blood". I know, but you have to let the men pick the movie now and then. As long as there's a large bucket of popcorn involved I'm good to go for most movies, and I can always close my eyes. I don't normally choose a movie with the word "Blood" in it. We've heard this is really, really good, in a bloody sort of way - Oscars material.
After that, Sunday morning, we'll sleep in til the week's weariness has worn off, then we're off to breakfast out. Speaking of blood and being knit together, right after that we're going to see this:
It's the "Bodies" Exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. I've gotten mixed reviews from friends, but my husband (who was pre-med in college) asked for this for his Christmas gift. So we're off to spend a day at the Science Center, which is always fun in itself. Real bodies, treated respectfully, showing God's amazing work in creating us.
So it should be a fabulous weekend, stuffed to the brim with all sorts of activities celebrating a zest for life. Hope yours is just as great!
Labels: Girl Talk
Do you remember what I looked like when you first adopted me? Here's our family photo to help you remember. The woman keeps it on the fridge just for me. Every time I get an ice cube snack I see it and feel all warm and gushy inside. I still like ice cubes a lot.
Remember how tired I used to get after a little bit of play and a nibble of food? Man, I had to take a lot of naps back then. Potty training you guys wore me out!
Mom, remember when you let me drive?! The Woman doesn't do that - she sticks me way in the back, and keeps yelling "Dub, sit D.O.W.N.!" I like driving better. Riding in the back, you fly all over the place. I think it may be the Woman's driving but I'm keeping mum about that.
Last night I made a wish for snow for my birthday, and The Big Guy Upstairs obliged. Such fun, I made tracks all over the deck and yard, and because it's my birthday Woman didn't yell at me when I tracked in wet slush all over the kitchen floor. That usually makes her go crazy. Wonder what else I can get away with, it being my birthday and all? Hmmm, where's the cat box and cat food?
So I went to the dog beauty salon with Elway. Woman said we both stunk to high heaven, so we got baths, pedicures and that lady brushed us like crazy. Then she stuck us both in front of a big whirly machine forever. I didn't like it much, but something told me not to mess with her. She looked like she'd been around the block a time or two. We came home with fancy schmancy snowflake bibs on.
One of us still has ours. The other one was snatched in a matter of hours.We smelled good for at least a week, til Woman forgot she left us outside. It was such fun running through the wet mulch, chasing each other and laying down when we got tired.
When Woman remembered us, and saw the mud all over our bellies, there was heck to pay. We had to go to jail for hours, or til, as she put it "you can stay in there til the mud dries and falls off!" She yelled something about wasting $80, but her voice got garbled at that point and I didn't understand everything she said. I think that's a good thing.
So - back to my birthday celebration. Look who came to spend part of it with me - the kid!
He had brand new chalk. I thought the blue tasted the best. Better than the goldfish crackers I usually steal from him. Not quite as good as licking his face tastes.
So, wanna see my present? I thought so.
It's the most delicious, wonderful thing - a sock necklace! And it's been worn long enough to be all nice and smelly. Elway and I play tug of war for hours with it and it just doesn't wear out. Wonderful, wonderful.Labels: Girl Talk, Glimpse of the Heart
Does that title announce randomness or what? But look - a new chair for my bedroom! I was surprised to see that the old paint theme would have worked, but of course we're painting it a different color. Of course. I'm going with a soft mocha - it looks a bit like a cup of coffee generous on the creamer. Unfortunately the whole world seems to think houses should be neutral from top to bottom, so when we all buy the neutral houses we can repaint those taupe/linen/blah walls, with wonderful colors like red, kiwi green, or robin's egg blue, bringing back some life to our homes. Which makes me wonder why on earth we have to paint everything neutral but that's another soapbox for another day.
This style of furniture is a stretch for me, very different than anything I've ever bought. It looked like something I'd see in the Pottery Barn catalogue and lately I'd just like to step inside the catalogue and live there. When DH and I married he loved chrome, leather, sleek danish furniture; I was into country blue and bunny rabbits all over the place. Funny how we change with time. I told him we've finally been married long enough that we could keep the apartment the way he had it when I moved in!
I had to order this chair, and was surprised to find out it'd been 'over-ordered' which I think means half the country liked it too. Maybe it goes with all those neutral walls? It finally came in last night. The chair is from Levin's and is called Eggs Marbled, not a very pretty name, but I love this chair! So does the cat, so it should be covered with hair without any delay.
Tomorrow is sleep-in Saturday. When I do finally climb out of bed, it will be to go downstairs just long enough to grab a cup of that coffee generous with the creamer, and head back to this chair for devotions while I slowly slide into the weekend.
BTW - DH told me Superbowl Sunday is the second biggest eating day of the year - did you all know that? At our house we'll be doing all we can to keep that statistic going. There's always Monday for dieting.
And last - maybe nobody else wants to go there, but I've always had it on my list of places to see to go to Punxatawney and watch Phil see his shadow. We live less than 2 hours away, and next year is our last Groundhog Day here in PA, so DH agreed! Finally, after laughing at me for the last 10 years, he told me to go ahead and get the reservation for next year. Believe it or not the hotels fill up and you need to get your reservations almost a year ahead. Me personally - I'm hoping he doesn't see his shadow and that Spring is right around the corner. From the 1/4" of ice on the driveway, then the snow this afternoon, I'd say the chances aren't real good, but we can always hope. I'm beginning to feel ready for daffodils, tulips, forsynthia and such. Until then, I'll stay inside, spending some time in this fabulous chair, sipping coffee while I look at gardening catalogues. Hope everyone out there has a great weekend and that your favorite team wins.
Labels: Girl Talk
