Just Being Fancy

I have a new fabulous piece of technology that is going to help eliminate the excuse of not having time to blog. I have the iPad 2 and I just figured out I can blog from it! Please do not mock me. I have admitted that I have limited technical ability. I do not have a smart phone. I do not have a vehicle with back up assist and cameras. I am just a simple girl with a witty way with words and a vocabulary that makes most people cry or run for a thesaurus, sometimes both. Well, I am giving technology a try and who knows what will happen next. All I know is it is awfully fun sitting hear on Christmas night tapping on a screen with keyboard but no actual keys. I raise my glass of merlot to Apple for making less of a Ludite out of this lady . Merry Christmas!

Five For Friday

Today I dedicate my post to my friend Judy, who seems to enjoy my feisty personality, and actually asked if I was blogging today, after learning I was feeling extra feisty and unfiltered. Some would shy away from me when I am "truth telling" but not Judy. She is brave, she is the mother of two teen aged boys. I am guessing that makes her tougher than most. So here are some of my random and unfiltered musings...

1. Do Not Suggest Something You Are Unwilling to do Yourself. This should be a law. As I mentioned in many posts, I am a professional volunteer (that's right professional, as in do not try this at home. I am a professional, you may get hurt). Well, in this capacity I do many things, most relating to my kids and their various interests. I tend to do more than the average mom, but that is my choice, and I own it. Here is where the unseasoned person gets in trouble with me. Suggesting something else for me to do. As in, "I think it would be great if you could get all the scouts to march in formation, while singing America the Beautiful. That would be great if you could do that." Agreed, that would be simply amazing, however asking the person who is already the leader, and chairperson of several different activities to make this great moment in home video history happen for you, is insane. I speak for all the "do-ers" out there who get all kinds of things done...SHUT UP IDEA PEOPLE. If you are not willing to make it happen and lead it yourself, you need to zip it. If you have a great idea, you need to back it with some action.


2. U-turns are not the best way to go the other direction. My husband and I have noticed a marked increase in the U-turn on the streets lately. I am not sure if people are that worried about saving gas or are really that short on time or what. It is not a safe practice in a city. U-turn all you want on roads with no traffic, but you are begging for trouble doing that on the streets of this town. Use some common sense people!!!


3. Blue tooth users appear crazy. I say this because these people walk up and down the aisle of stores, seemingly talking to themselves. I get that the whole earpiece thing is a safety feature in the car so a person can have two hands on the wheel. However, walking around outside of your vehicle laughing and chattering away with no one next to you and your hands free...well, you look like a nut job. Associated with this is anyone who is using any type of phone in a public bathroom. Please, allow yourself a few uninterrupted moments to do your business. Everyone deserves a bathroom break, and I am pretty sure the world will continue to spin if you are out of the loop for five minutes. I am also sick of hearing your call while I am answering the call of nature. Enough said.


4. Cider Mills. I am not sure if I was disadvantaged as a child, but I never recall visiting a cider mill. I know they existed because we had apple cider in our home. Now it seems everyone flocks to the cider mills every weekend. My kids have gone on field trips to apple orchards and cider mills, but as a family we have not done this activity. I like cider and doughnuts as much as the next person, but why do I have to see the source of these foods being made? I also like salad. Should I go to the lettuce fields? A tomato patch? The crouton factory? I feel like a jerk not being all up on the cider mill visit, but I really do not get it. There are tons of bees swarming the sweet products, and the places are crowded to maximum capacity. Perhaps I am a cider Scrooge...I just do not have the Fall Harvest spirit. I am curious as to what three ghosts would visit me if I am indeed a "cider Scrooge". That feels like a whole blog post in itself.


5. Campaign for the 25 Hour I am still campaigning for one more hour in each day. I would blog more, and my nails would look better. My petitions to God have not yet been answered, but I will keep them up until I get less busy or He grants us all one more hour per day. Perhaps if some of the presidential hopefuls focused on giving people more time they could get me more interested in other things they have to say.

Have a wonderful weekend, whether you are at a cider mill, or wandering around like a nut talking on your bluetooth. Just keep it safe and avoid the U-turns.

FANtastically Tired

Here is what makes my husband crazy. I am a playoff sports fan. I do not care about any sport until it is down to the playoffs. That is when it matters, that is when I care. I am a HUGE Tiger's baseball fan RIGHT NOW. I always like the Tigers. If you give me tickets to the game, I will go and I will like it. When I am at a live game I tend to people watch and shop for spirit wear, but I love that stuff. Right now, I actually turn on the baseball game, even if my spouse is not home or if he is in another room. I can only really care when it comes down to the wire. This fickle fan dome baffles my spouse. He lives and dies by his teams. A loss can bring him down and make him very hard to be around. I on the other hand, can turn it on and off. I always semi-care, however I save the real depth of caring for the playoffs.

The baseball season is long. I think I have heard it is 160 some games long??? That is a lot of baseball. It is not humanly possible for me to care or even feign interest for that long. The Tigers have been having a phenomenal season, and I have been following it in news excerpts and fleeting glances at Sports Center. Until the playoffs...and now I am really watching whole games and losing out on some precious sleep. It is exhausting caring this much. Staying up late, and still getting up early. Last night's win against the Yankees actually made me so joyful, and excited I slept horribly. I was just too jazzed to properly fall asleep. If I cared all season long, and lost the amount of rest I have lost during the playoffs throughout the whole season...well, I would be a complete mess. I am not sure how you die hard, all season long fans do it. I am fully prepared to lose more sleep as the Tigers take on the Rangers. I will cherish the sleep on nights with no games, and I will very much appreciate any day games that may happen. Frankly, it is just so much fun to be swept up in the excitement. GO TIGERS!!! (I will sleep after World Series)

Outer Order = Inner Peace

I am working on testing the theory that outer order can bring inner peace. Not that I am completely lacking inner peace, but I could always use more. Nor am I so completely disorganized that I can not function, but once again, most of us could be a bit more organized as well. In order to reach my goal I have decided I need my house to look like it is on the market to be sold, all the time. Yes, I am staging my house, but not selling it. The clutter is slowly but surely disappearing. This time I am not just moving the clutter from one place to another, like some people do when company is due to arrive. No, I am going finding place for everything, and sometimes (more often than not) the place is the garbage can. However, standing between me and my perfectly staged home is a disease. Yes, a disease. An affliction. I have a horrible, awful, non-communicable disease. I am afflicted with flat surface disease. If I see a clear, clean, flat surface, I have an urge, no a NEED, to put something on that clean, flat surface. Mail, books, glasses, keys, you name it I will put the item on a clean flat surface instead of its rightful place. It is a sickness. The last few weeks I have been fighting my inner clutter demon. Forcing myself to file or shred papers. Coaxing myself to shelve books and putting my keys in a special bowl, just for my phone and keys. It has been torturous. Unlearning clutter-making attacks every fiber of my being. No, I have never liked the clutter, but it is a hard habit to break. However, I have noticed, when I go to bed at night and the counters and end tables are tidy, I feel a certain satisfaction with myself...perhaps even some additional inner peace. And each day I can honestly say I am waking up to a fresh, clean, start to the day.

Positivity, DCN's, & Laughter

Today I am writing to cheer myself up. I caught myself having a pity party over the little potholes on my road called "life". I tried to use positive thinking to turn pull myself out of the pity pool, but more often than not anymore I need to write in a journal to really distract me from myself. So today I am blogging my journal, since I am pretty sure I am not the only person on the planet that can get caught up on the little stuff. My son often reminds me of this because he has been known to make the statement, "I am feeling a little glum". Yes, at the age of seven he says "glum". He is his mother's child and tends to make less common vocabulary choices. Anyway, we all get a little glum and the only solution is to focus on the positive. However, when making laps in the pity pool it is often hard to get positive. It is a real conundrum. Thus, I write it all out, or at least the really nagging things, and then I look on paper and see that really my life is not in Suckville, or even in the same county. Then I am not so glum. Sometimes.

If the writing it out does not stop the gloom and negativity, I head right to the DCN's. What are DCN's? (You know you are wondering) DCN's are Dinosaur Chicken Nuggets. Now you are wondering, what the hell does that have to do with anything? Well, DCN's (you just say the letters, never the words) are exactly what my kids requested for lunch a few days ago. I was not clued into the lingo, so it when something like this...

Daughter: Hey, umm, we were thinking some DCN's would hit the spot.
Me: Umm, first of all who is "we" and second what are DCN's?
(insane laughter from son (who is in another room) & daughter)
Son: (yelling from another room) DINOSAUR CHICKEN NUGGETS.
(more laughter from them, and now from me)

Thus was born the DCN phenomenon. It is just a funny thing to hear, and fun to say, and even tasty to eat (occasionally). We do not really have DCN's in the freezer regularly, which makes it even funnier that my kids have taken to calling this food by its initials. It makes me laugh every time I think about it. Yes, it is ridiculous. No, it probably is not funny to anyone else in the world except the four people that live in my house. The point is everyone has a DCN in their life. Something funny that can bring a smile to their face, and a lightness to their heart. Life needs these little things that keep us from taking ourselves too seriously, or to encourage us to get out of the pity pool, dry off, and get on with life on a more positive plain.

Never Forgetting

Today is September 11, 2011. Ten years since so many lives were horribly cut short, and it seems all Americans lives changed that very sad day. Today, ten years after the fact, with so much media coverage of the opening of the memorial and the remembrances of those who were lost, I had the opportunity to talk to my kids about what happened and why 9/11 is significant and part of our national history.

My daughter was had just turned two in 2001 and my son had not yet been born. So for obvious reasons neither had much of a concept of what happened or why. Seeing video replay of the World Trade Center under attack today was the first time either one had seen the horror. (I did not let my two year old see the constant coverage 10 years ago, not knowing what her little growing mind would retain) They both had questions. What happened? Why would a plane do that? Who would do that? Pretty much the same questions I had ten years ago. So over lunch we talked about terrorists, Osama bin Laden, and the resilience of the American spirit. Do they understand now? No. I do not think I ever will either. However, they do understand that we, as Americans, can never forget, nor can we live in fear.

Resetting

Hello Stranger. That is how I felt when I logged on to blog this little ever so brief entry. I actually had to reset my password, because I had something clever that I would never forget as my password. However, I guess it was not clever enough. So now that it is reset I can begin. Strangely, my whole post is about "resetting". Not passwords, my life. It seems I have become caught in the morass of others' lives, and now I am struggling to see where I am in the whole picture. Thankfully, when I was talking to a friend earlier today, she is also in the same place and looking to "find what is hers". I am blessed to be in such good company in the "inner turmoil" struggle. Starting on September 6, 2011, my goal is to find my "thing". What this "thing" may be I have no clue. So I will be doing some soul searching, praying, and perhaps more soul searching, as I look to reset me.

September 6 is not a completely arbitrary date, it happens to be the first day of school. So it is somewhat logical.