Thursday, July 31, 2008

Where am I again?

Growing up when I would go out shopping with my mom I would get highly irritated with her when it came time to check out at the register. She always used checks. And she rarely, if ever wrote out the info on the check ahead of time. You know Date, the name of the place you are writing the check to and then signing your name so that you only have to fill in the amount when you actually get to that point?

We would be waiting in line and I would be thinking, "Get your checkbook out woman and start filling it out!" But I never said anything because I felt that it would be disrespectful. Not sure why. I 'm sure I could have phrased it so that she wouldn't have been offended so I just stood there rolling my eyes and tapping my foot at her.

Then when we would get up to the register she would wait until EVERYTHING was rung up before writing anything. And to top it all off I would see her pen wavering above the "to" part of the check and she would inevitably look up at the cashier and say "Now where am I again?" I would get SO irritated. How in the world could you not know what store you were in or where you were?

It's not like she had eight kids to worry about or a husband who was in and out of the hospital more often than she would have liked. It's not like I wasn't the 7th of those eight children and we all know how you lose brain cells with each child ;) . It's not like she was up at the crack of dawn every morning to make my dad's breakfast and lunch and to see him off to work and then get a hot breakfast for the rest of the family.

Flash forward 25 some odd years. I stand at the cash register I am tired and my kids (of which I have only four...half of what mom had) are either whining or crying and usually I am lucky enough to only have one or two of them with me at the time. My hand hovers over the part of the check where I am supposed to fill in the name of who the check is going to. My mind is a blank. Frantically I search my mind trying to figure out what store I am in. In some situations I desperately search some place for the name of the store so I don't have to look sheepishly at the cashier and ask "Where am I again?"

Karma, it'll get you every time. I have become my mother.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Angry Dancing

Did you love Footloose? Did you grow up with it? It was filmed in towns close to where I grew up so it was a blast to watch thinking I was "all that" because I had been to those places where they filmed.

Remember Kevin Bacons Angry Dance (<----LINK) in the warehouse? If you like that then you'll get a kick out of this....

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

What Would You Do?

Scenario...

You are in a store. It's a larger store lets call it "All-Mart". You are only there to grab a few things and then head on out. The things that you need are close by the power tool isle. You grab your few items and as you are walking back you take that power tool isle. Let's say you have a mouse sander and want to see if they have any sanding papers that would fit it. As you are standing there perusing the sandpaper and sanders a lady driving one of those automated carts comes by you, goes a few feet away and stops. You stand there still entranced by the many different little gadgets that there are associated with power tools, but alas there are no papers that will fit your mouse sander. The lady in the cart, in the mean time has started doing something somewhat strange. You hear this rattling noise, like plastic packaging being ripped open so you glance down the isle towards her and see her put a pair of little wire cutters down. You hear more ripping and notice that she is totally taking something out of it's packaging. Being dumbfounded that this person is doing this all you can do is stand there and watch in amazement at the brazenness of it all. After all you are standing only 6 maybe 10 feet away. The lady takes what ever it is that she has removed from the packaging and puts it into something else but you can't tell what. You are thinking "Well maybe she needs whatever it is right then and she will pick up the packaging and take it with her to the check out." Then she puts on the power and scoots on out of there, leaving the packaging behind. Being curious you walk over to see what it is. It's a mister that mists water out to keep a person cool so there really is no way she could use it in the store and she left the packaging there.

So if this were to happen to you what would you do? Would you say something to the lady as she is in the middle of opening the packaging? Would you go and find someone after the fact and let them know what you had observed? Would you have had more presence of mind and realized what she was truly doing and gone to find someone before she drove off in her little cart? Does her being in the little cart make it o.k. for her to do something like this?

What would you do? I wanna know. Spill.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Changed My Mind

I was going to blog this morning about a man who made some comments about Autism that were, to me, hateful. Instead I decided to not spread the hate and only give that man a passing mention. I decided to change my mind and spread something much better. I decided to spread hope and love and life.

I'm dedicating this blog to Randy Pausch who is someone I would much rather write and think about. He passed away on Friday after battling Pancreatic cancer. In that time he gave what has come to be know as The Last Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University. The lecture was originally entitled "ReallyAchieving Your Childhood Dreams" Someone uploaded it to UTube and it took off. (You can watch the video here The Last Lecture). Then a book was written by the same name.

I only found out about it on the trip that my husband and I took for our anniversary. We had wandered into a book store to pass some time and the book was sitting there. I picked it up with interest and Ty told me about it. About how this man had Pancreatic Cancer and how he was choosing to live his life instead of waiting to die. We didn't buy the book and I promptly forgot about it until this morning when I turned on GMA and they were doing a story about Randy because of his passing. I now have my name on the waiting list at our local library for the book. And I am hoping to find time to watch the actual video on UTube today.

You may wonder why I would tell you about a book I haven't read or a video that I haven't seen. Well because just the idea of this man's philosophy touches me. I know that I don't live my life to the fullest. There are things that hold me back and scare me. But I want to learn from people like him. Learn to go forward and live life, help others, send love and beauty out into the world. So today I'm trying to do that by telling you about Randy Pausch.

Enjoy today. Love those who are around you. Live. Hope. And I will strive to do the same.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Image Search Answers

So today as I was surfing through through the blogosphere I came across a new take on those "about you" quizzes. (It was on Naomi Masina's blog. Who I found through Natalie Norton. Both fabulous photographers. ) You type the answer to your question into a Google Image search and use one of the pictures that come up. You are supposed to use a picture from the first page but I'll admit that I didn't do that for all the questions.

And just to say...this may not be "new" to you. It's possible it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYY past new but I haven't seen it before so it's new to me and I had some time on my hands so I did it. If you do it let me know so I can see what you come up with.

My Age.....


A Place I'd Like to Travel....


My Favorite Object....


My Favorite Animal....


My Favorite Color....


Town Where I live...




A Past Pet.....


A Past Love....


My Best Friends nickname...


My Screen Name.....


My First Name...



My Middle Name....



My Last Name....



One of my Bad Habits....



Your First Job...


My Grandmothers name....



My College Degree....




What I'm doing right now.....

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Pioneer Day

Today is Pioneer Day in the great state of Utah. It's the day we celebrate the pioneers coming into the Salt Lake valley. I am blessed to have a rich pioneer ancestry and am very grateful to those amazingly strong and fore bearers who gave up comfort and pretty much everything that they owned and the life that they knew, left their homes and made the journey across the plains. Because they were courageous and wanted to follow a prophet and were true to their religion I am able to sit here today and type to you in the comfort of my home.

Our family was able to participate in a Pioneer Trek with our ward family. We went out in handcarts, dressed in Pioneer clothing and were able to get a small taste of what the handcart companies went through. I know it wasn't anything close to the sacrifices and hardships that they faced but it helped me understand them and appreciate them more. Here are some pictures from that great trip that we took. It was fun and it was hard, most of all it was memorable.

Happy 24th of July. Thank you ancestors. I am who I am today, in part, because of you.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

4th of July Pictures

I've been trying to figure out how to post my pictures here in a way that I like. Because I don't really like this blogger layout to be honest. But right now I'm too lazy to figure out something else so I finally got it. I made a mosaic at Big Huge Labs. I like how this works and if you click on the picture then it "should" go bigger. We'll see.


O.k. it worked! So some explanation of pictures. Of course my dad in the Uncle Sam hat. Then J. We do a karaoke night on July 3rd. My brother brings his karaoke equipment and we all get down. There's a picture of him and my oldest sister singing "Fire and Rain". That was cool. I got down singing "Love Shack" and "Celebration" The picture of the three beautiful girls lower down on the mosaic are three of my nieces doing an awesome job singing some trucker song I think. We had a flag ceremony and one of my brothers posted the "Support our troops" flag. Mom and dad, of course are in there, amongst the balloons that we let go and watch float into the air. My nephew and great nephew are looking cool with their shades on. Two of my other cutie nieces posed for one of the shots and of course G. is in there being a ham. j is playing a pioneer game with one of her cousins in the shots on the last row. It's a stick game where you have to use a stick to pick up a neckerchief and place it on a bucket. There are two teams and two buckets at either end of the playing field. It pretty darn fun and the kids enjoyed it. M.'s there with her dad watching the flag raising ceremony and taking a break on the grass. And one of my little nieces that were adopted from China showing off her adorable self and the great cookie that she made. In case you can't see what it says on it, it says "I love you".

I love the Fourth of July. I love that my parents have this tradition. It almost didn't happen this year because of some health related problems. But I'm sure glad it did and I hope it continues to happen for years to come.

It was probably just late....

but it still made me laugh.

I was up later than usual. I needed some time to sit and unwind and was watching John and Kate Plus 8. Have you seen this show? It's so much fun and the couple is just so....real. Anyway when I watch t.v. later at night I turn it down lower so that T. can try to sleep, because I do this I turn on the closed captioning so I can read what they are saying and not miss anything. As I was watching the show they went to commercial and it was a Zatteran's commercial where a lady is standing in a crowd of people at Mardi Gras with her hands upraised and she yells "Throw me something Mister!" I know this commercial. It kind of annoys me. Sometimes they have the CC for commercials and sometimes not. This time they did. Except I think that the person typing got confused with something from the show that had gone on break because the wording on the screen said "Throw me something Daddy Hamster!" I cracked up.

I know that, now, whenever I see that commercial I will say (or at least think) "Throw me something Daddy Hamster!"

Like I said maybe it was probably just late and now maybe it's just early but it still makes me giggle.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Fried Chicken

So today I tried my hand at fried chicken. Yep. A good old fashioned Sunday dinner of fried chicken and biscuits with broccoli and cauliflower and a little bit o' gravy. Surprisingly it wasn't too bad. I don't know that it's something that I will cook on a regular basis though because it does take time and it is greasy. I just dipped the chicken in egg and then in some flour with salt and pepper mixed in. Like I said, it was o.k. Not great but not terrible either. I wish I'd have thought to take a picture of it.

I don't really enjoy cooking all that much and T. and I have been discussing going the once a month cooking route in hopes that our grocery bill might come down some. I do have some misgivings about once a month cooking because there are meals that you can't cook in advance....like fried chicken. And many of the meals that I have seen are "casserole" type dishes. Not that I don't like casseroles but I would imagine that they could get tiresome after a while. I need to go and surf the web and see what else I can find out about it. Has anyone out there tried this and have some words of advice?

Saturday, July 19, 2008

What a Summer

This Summer has been pretty darn crazy. Therefore, few and far between posts. It's hard to believe that the kids head back to school in about three weeks! We got the registration packet from the Jr. High for J. this week. An eight grader in my house. Insanity.

This week was crazy and we had stressful moments. I'm grateful for prayer and for a wonderful husband to lean on during difficult times. We celebrated our 15th anniversary last week. It was wonderful. We traveled down South and saw a production of Les Miserables. I loved it and so did T. I'd been wanting to see this play but have never had the chance. If you get the chance to see it I highly recommend it. It's a tear jerker for sure but the message and music are amazing. We really needed that away time as a couple. I wish we could do that more but financially it's just not feasible.

It doesn't look like things will be slowing down much any time soon. It seems that life really does speed up as you get older. I am amazed at the people who find time to blog wonderfully witty or thought provoking posts and still get everything else that life hands out done....and they usually look good doing it to! Ah well, hopefully I will find the time to post more. If only I had a machine that slowed time down or gave me an extra hour in the day. Anyone have a time turner like in the Harry Potter books?