Health – Eating, Breathing and Drinking

It’s funny – I was flooded with hilarious (though not at the time!) memories after reading one of my husband’s cousin’s notes on Facebook. She recalls not having sugary cereals or Kraft singles – and remarks at the very end how she is doing the same now that she’s a mom. I recall that I was about 5 before my mother was unable to keep a grain of sugar out of my mouth (a friend gave me a lollipop which I POPPED right in before my mother could take it from me graciously) and how until I was 13, we did not even have actual sugar in our house. I remember eating several odd things over the years:

Tofu burgers (which have the consistency of wallpaper paste)

Tofu Chili (which isn’t that bad, though lacks a good bit of flavor)

Soy Milk (which we now know isn’t so good for us)

Rice Milk (which was runny)

Almond Milk Cheese (I don’t know how to milk an almond but I’m not sure I want to know)

Soy Milk Cheese (which doesn’t melt even when said child attempts to light a fire to it)

Resolutions

Resolutions for 2009:

• 1. Figure out a bit more about my Roth IRA. I don’t get it. I should!
• 2. Read more than a magazine in a month. Writing in my journal and reading a real book should be prerequisites to eating an ice cream sandwich. (And a good excuse to do so! As if I need one….)
• 3. Write more frequently on my blog – that’s what they’re for, right?
• 4. Update my resume, which hasn’t been touched in nearly 2 years. I’ve managed to add quite a bit to my repertoire of “can-do.”

Five Things I Do and Do Not Love

Five Things I Love:

(in addition to my husband, baby, dog, friends and coworkers)

1) Swiss Chocolate; thinking of Joan I nearly added the remaining 4 as Belgian chocolate, French chocolate, English chocolate, American chocolate…..but I will refrain.  Chocolate is basically the idea of this favorite.

2) Football on a cool crisp evening; I miss John and David’s games when Bekah and I would roar our praise and encouragement from the sidelines as we rummaged up and down the lines losing our voices…needless to say, Carol would be quite disapproving of our unladylike behavior.  :-)

3) New unwritten leather bound journals with nice neat faint lines to write upon;  I’m a sucker for them.  For anything leather actually.  

4) Organized living;  I love reading about it, how to do it, ideas for doing it better, and trying to do it. It’s my favorite section at Barnes and Noble, too, incidentally.

5) Weather that requires neither heating nor cooling apparatus; it saves money, which would be one of these top 5 only I’ve run out of numbers.

Five Things I Do Not Love:

1) Gas prices and shortages and the very necessity for having gasoline in the first place.  I know horses clouded up the atmosphere just as bad or worse and that everything stank back then, but please, I just want to ride a horse everywhere.  Cars are over rated.  Except in summer.  And winter.  And rainy weather.  Ok.  Never mind.  I’ll stick with the car.  But can we PLEASE figure out an alternative option to gasoline that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?  

2) Rude people; there is really no need for being rude unless someone is being rude to you.  As in, if I am rude to you, then feel free to be rude to me.  But if I’m being nice, then for the sake of all decency, BE NICE BACK!  

3) Photographers who cannot photograph.  Especially those at a family attracting business who appear to hate children and babies and have no idea how to deal with them nor take photos of them.

4) The smell of raw meat cooking.  Once it’s cooked I’m fine, just the smell that is emitted during the process of edible-izing is ghastly.

5) Warm Coca-Cola.  It explains how it could once have been thought to be medicine instead of ahhhh…refreshing!

I’ve been tagged….let’s see if I can figure out what to do. :-D

Here are the rules:
1) Link to the person who tagged me.
2) Mention the rules.
3) Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about myself.
4) Tag 6 other bloggers by linking to them.
5) Go to each person’s blog and leave a comment that lets them know they’ve been tagged.

So, here I go.

1) I can’t bid for anything on Ebay on the dollar.  It has to have a cents with it.

2) I am obsessive about saving money and not spending it if I can help it, but I can’t stand to let 6 months go by without a thorough truck/steam carpet cleaning.

3) I let my dog sleep on my pillow.  I know this sounds normal for some people, gross for others, but it is a plain and simple fact that I love my dog and she cracks me up when I wake up and her head is on the pillow next to me and she is snoring loudly with a paw on either side of my neck.

4) I spend more grocery money on fruit than I do on vegetables.  I buy frozen vegetables even though I don’t like them as good as fresh.  

5) My internal temperature (pre-pregnancy) is about 7 degrees lower than everyone else around me.  That is to say, if someone is comfortable at 75 I am cold, if they’re hot at 85 I feel great.

6) I hate milk.  I put milk in cereal and can eat it but I hate milk.  I can’t drink it unless it’s chocolate of course.  

I’m tagging
Joan at Grammy’s Goodies and Gripes

I would tag 5 more but I have a problem: I don’t know anyone else with a blog except for my husband and my brother in law.  I think they would ignore it.  And Emily tagged me so to tag her back would be cruel and unusual.  So I hope a rabid goat doesn’t bite me or anything for breaking the chain or something.  :-o

Life is never dull.

All I feel like I did all day was run around like a headless chicken.  There were donor letters to go out, labels jamming in printers that then spewed springs that then got lost inside of said printer…..  Comments to moderate constantly.  An email with a broken link that within 10 minutes got a corrected email sent out but I still got 81 complaints about the link being broken….  And another 3 that said “the 2nd one works.”  Yeah.  Thanks for letting me know…  :-|  The phone rang off the hook.  Solicitors trying to solicit business for the ICRS.  The skids of Creation Answers came in.  Speaking of which I forgot to let CMI know.  Meeting between 4 very diverse men and myself on the ICRS booth layout.  That was … fun.  In a weird sort of way.

The four men are very hard to describe accurately enough to portray the picture of us trying to agree on what will work, look good, appeal to a crowd and be easy enough to set up quickly.  Luis is all about what works, Joseph’s all about what will look good, Brandon’s all about appealing to the crowd, and Eric is completely in favor of anything that does not require acrobatics, gymnasts, a bale of haying wire and a large crane (which is the like of what Brandon’s schemes for booths can involve).

Needless to say, we were in that meeting awhile.

Linsay thinks we’re under spiritual attack at AV – I must say I wonder if she’s right.  We’ve had the weirdest stuff happen lately with printers and phones and people are crabby and then there’s the atheist who thinks I, as a homeschooler, couldn’t (and I quote with incorrect spellings and all) poor water out of a boot with writen instructions on the bottom.

Yeah.  I’m really really really getting sick of this guy and reading his crap every day.  I am about to write him myself and say look here!  Perhaps an atheist such as yourself and a public educated person like you wrote the instructions on said boot, and because of the gross misspellings, said homeschooled person was unable to make out the illegible instructions!  And stop blaming Gary for not posting your comments because it is ME that moderates them!  And stop thinking we have time to make up 164 people’s lives!  Good gracious!

www.americanvision.org (daily article from today and from 2 days ago)

Ugh.  I’m rather grumpy tonight….

 

 

Extreme Moose Tracks Ice Cream

The very word Extreme makes you think I ate the whole carton, but I didn’t.  It simply refers to it being chocolate ice cream with chocolate fudge, peanut butter swirls and peanut butter cups scattered in its blissful and satisfying flavors.

Yum.  It was on sale.  :-D

I am on a rampage to save stamps.  I’ve even started paying our water and electric bill online (something I never did til now) and so basically, we never need to use stamps.  I think it’s utterly ridiculous how rapidly expensive the mail system has gotten while equally rapidly going downhill in service.  The post office guy at work huffed when asked could he deliver 3150B’s mail to 3150B instead of 3150A and said it would mean he had to make another stop.  ?  Um yeah – that’s kind of why you’re paid $18 an hour isn’t it???

I would enjoy delivering mail.  I tried a few times but they never called me.  Like that 4 story bank that wanted a facilities manager.  I would have been good at that.  Oh well.  I always dreamed of working somewhere I had to ride an elevator to get to my office….but I’ve gotten over that because it would get old after about a month, I imagine.

My hubby is wanting to hog the computer from me so off I go to jiblet around the house…..again.

I found this to give a kick…

Insulting with class has unfortunately gone out of style….

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
Groucho Marx

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend… If you have one.”
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill… followed by Churchill’s response:

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second, if there is one.”
Winston Churchill

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
John Bright

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”
Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
Paul Keating

“He had delusions of adequacy.”
Walter Kerr

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
Mae West

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
Oscar Wilde

Life is fun.

Sometimes I kind of look around my house and feel all silly about it.  I mean, you grow up living in a house and you can’t do what you want with it.  You can’t paint the whole room a diversely different color without someone raising Cain about it.  You can’t throw a towel on the floor of the bathroom without someone telling you to pick it up.  You don’t rearrange all the kitchen cabinets and where you keep stuff without someone squawking.  

And then you grow up and buy a house and you can pretty much do whatever you pretty darn well please to and with it.  :-)  It’s quite fun.  Like I said, I feel very silly.  :-)  

 

Currently I am contemplating the concept of all the stuff that will soon be making its way from my parents house to ours.  They are in the process of getting a mortgage to buy the house that they’ve been leasing to own for the past 5 years.  Their plan is to get rid of 95% of nearly 30 years of collected CRAP (some of it more crap than other bits of it) and put the remaining 5% into storage while they sell the house and gallivant around the country trucking for a few years.  

Needless to say, the 6,000 or so books I own are making their way to our house that is equipped for about maybe 400 books.  Also the 4 giant plastic containers of Legos (my only other childhood pastime besides books) and various and sundry other things: the dinner bell from my grandparents’ farm which was there when they bought their house in 1941….  The wooden cradle hand carved and put together by a distant cousin of some sort of inevitably removed several times….  The stories about Tina Dunn, cop warrior, that I wrote at about 15….  Gads.  (Her Badge of Justice…really inspires you to pick it up eh?)  Gads.

I will say though that looking at the huge project in front of my mom mostly, and in sympathy for my dad having to haul a ton of this stuff…that I will never allow clutter and stuff to overtake my home and life quite the way many people do.  Bless my mom’s heart but she still has every birthday card I ever got, every drawing I ever made, and the program and/or ticket to every event we have ever attended.  

Sigh.  All in all, I’m … about to have to rescue Joseph’s pack of vitamins from Aberdeen once again!  Gads!

Miscellaneous Ramblings

I forgot to post that I had a .75 off coupon for any Hebrew National Hot Dogs (the best…no, the BAYST…) and when I went to use it at Kroger the other day, they had a pack of extra large sausage style hot dogs for .99 instead of $2.99 because the expiration date was approaching.  So I got the hot dogs for 24 cents.  :-)  They were really good too….

Gift cards are fun.  You can go shopping and spend money and feel absolutely no guilt or twinge or worrisome naggy feeling that you shouldn’t be.  :-D  

Aberdeen is a little worriwart when Jo is gone.  He is at man night and she is stalking around the house looking worried and grunting her little grunty whine noise she does and generally being a slight nuisance as I am trying to organize and clean up small messes around the house.  

Another event I forgot to mention was that at Jenny’s Pampered Host party the other day, I got the winning ticket for all the hostess benefits!  So I got $60 worth of free stuff and 2 1/2 price items….  Dang that was really awesome!  I got the new slicing mandolin, a set of outdoor utensils, bamboo cheese and cracker tray, and the new cute little mini-prep bowls which I just needed an excuse to buy.  Haha.  To get them free, one cannot resist.  

Gripe of my own (to copy Joan’s format): I’m not only getting used to a Mac computer…….it isn’t as bad as I thought.  I can’t believe I’m saying this.  Thank goodness my husband never reads my blog or I’ll never hear the end of it.  :-}

I have also uploaded all our vacation photos and probably some others to Kodak Gallery – you can view by going HERE.

     

 

Baby Showers, June Flowers, and Hotmail is Down

Today was a baby shower for my small kicking child at work – the ladies put on quite a shindig.  There was all kind of yummy salads and desserts and talking and sweet and thoughtful gifts.  Carol arranged the most beautiful flowers in a very attractive manner as everything Carol does turns out.  She let me put them on my desk after.  They smell SO good. 

 

  

I ate enough said yummy salads and desserts for 3 or 4 and enjoyed them all immensley.  I work with the coolest people – they’re so much fun and the most enjoyable company any workplace could produce.  They’re more than “coworkers” – they’re friends.  Ok enough mush, here comes the rest of the photos (some not so very flattering to me…).

   

Hotmail would not let me sign in to check my hotmail for the 2nd day.  ??  (It is working now.)

I have been extraordinarily busy this week and have not done a thing to save us money other than shopping at Kroger – we needed milk and beer and other necessities.  Haha.  Mostly fruit – I am always and only craving fruit!  I spent $100 but it was worth $160, plus I got our 3rd of the allowed 4 gift cards so I really could say I technically spent $70.  :-)

This weekend my goal is to: find some used cheap cloth diapers, find and venture out on my first CVS shopping saving experience and pay off a chunk of the credit card.  Sigh.  Money does flow in so slowly when one is trying to pay off debt.  Growl.  

I grew up with parents who had debt but I never was as aware of the detriments thereof as I should have been and will do my best to make my own children aware of them.  UGH.  

On a better note, there is a roast and mashed potatoes to be et as soon as my husband comes home.  :-)

Pregnancy Update

Seven and a half months into being split into a small person and a very small person.  I currently feel lovely.  The insane tiredness is nearly gone and only reappears if I happen to go to bed an hour too late (which has moved from being at first and second trimester’s 8pm to about 11pm……).  The headaches are gone – thank God.  I’ve been pretty good at taking my vitamins this month.  Don’t ask about last month.  OR the month prior.  Or….  I’ve been attempting to eat more regularly though that is extremely hard for me – I have a hard time STOPPING my work to go fix a half meal.  

Currently the only slight sufferings I am enduring are heartburn (nearly all the time), continuation of the red splotchy bumpy disgusting face, and severe poking, jabbing, ramming, kicking and otherwise physical abuse from a 5 pound blackbelt sitting somewhere above my bladder, next to my stomach and behind my ribs.  Oh yes, and in close proximity with my lungs.  I have grown more and more grateful for organs as I am afraid one day there will be holes in them put there by excessive force coming from my future tomboy (I can already tell).

All in all, I have no reason or desire to complain and if I do, I simply can go to www.cafemom.com and learn of some other women’s pregnancy trials and after wide-eyed terror that one day one of MY pregnancies will be plagued with such famine, disease and disaster…..I become quite grateful for a very normal and relatively harmless pregnancy.  Now if labor goes this well, I should be QUITE grateful!

 

Stressed Out

Life is very stressful.  Every corner you round brings one more thing to wear you out, seems like.  If it’s not that your computer won’t be shipped because you can’t understand the foreigner leaving a completely unintelligible message for you to call back with some code, or the scrapbook you ordered on ebay that was of course, in mint brand new condition, smells like it was “minted” in a cigarette factory…..or the person who refuses to verify that flowers have been delivered because your name is not on the account (even though your address, email and phone number are all your’s)……or the people who got a FREE OFFER online are upset because you haven’t shipped it out in a day……or that Juno insistantly refers to everything as if you already have the internet, which is the whole reason you’re trying to USE it in the first place, to GET internet……or the fact that you constantly feel like falling over in your chair dead asleep even though you got over 12 hours last night……. 

Any men reading this: do not underestimate the power of carrying a baby.  When a woman’s body is carrying a baby, it is as if she is working two extra hours per day.  I work 9-10 hours a day, but it’s really as if I was working 11-12. 

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish…Blue Fish…

I’ve always been frustrated by people who spout the very convenient and shallow diatribe of “just trust God and it’ll all work out.”  There are things that just don’t need to be said.  Some of these can be quite humorous, like asking me a month before my wedding if I was excited.  Nah.  Not really.  (???)  Or even now, as I am expecting a baby.  “Are you excited?”  Sorta….maybe…. (???) 

Sometimes it’s in telling you minutes after you watch dirt poured over your dead sister’s casket that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Duh.  We know.  You saying it just makes you look like an unfeeling callous person that obviously has never had something quite like this happen to you.  It’s one thing for ME to say that – it’s another for you to say it to me.

In another form, it’s knowing nothing about your life situation, nothing of your financial state, and then assuming one does, the ever present verbal bubble: “Just trust God and it’ll all work out.”

Explain to me, dear soul, how one looks at the hard line of numbers marching across the paper and the absolute and very disturbing MINUS at the bottom.  Explain to me how exactly God provides you with food and shelter when your paycheck isn’t enough?  Do you really mean that God will provide a credit card for you to use until you’re so far in debt you hardly notice anymore? 

I’m honestly really fed up with this whole shallow spit up of words people toss out so casually.  I KNOW to trust God, but has it ever occured to you that trusting God doesn’t always mean that the bills get paid on time?  That it should be no excuse for you to look the other way when we show up to work without lunch for the next week?  Come on!  (Not saying that we are, just hypotheticals.)

So my plea is this: when you come across a situation where you might not know what to say and one of these Hallmark card answers comes to mind – swallow it and simply let the person know your sincere sympathy and willingness to pray for them – even pray with them right there. 

I say this, as a somewhat hidden request for prayer in our situation.  Long gone are dreams of full time mom-work only.  Even with our basic house, trimmed down budget and nearly paid off debt, we are still stuck in a minus position of several hundred unless I work part time after the baby is born.  Thus being said, we have also found out that our somewhat perfect situation has somehow been lost due to forgetful bosses so not only will most of that NOT be allowed from home but also the baby is discouraged from being with us at work.  Long story short – I will not be mom to my baby for 15-20 hours a week.  This is highly distressing to me and while I am trusting God, it does seem a lot like the carpet has just been pulled out from under me because a month ago, God fixed it all so that it was perfect.  Somehow, it’s been messed up. 

In a nutshell – I’m very disheartened right now.  Especially because I know God can work things out, but once He has, man can still screw them up again and this is a very annoying fact.

Vaccines Aggravate Autism

Several of the vaccinations included the controversial mercury-based preservative thimerosal, points out the National Autism Association, which sees the ruling as confirmation of the claims of many parents.

“This case echoes the stories of thousands of children across the country,” said NAA President Wendy Fournier. “With almost 5,000 similar cases pending in vaccine court, we are confident that this is just the first of many that will confirm what we have believed for so long – vaccines can and do cause children to regress into autism.”

Continue story…

The First Post

How unoriginal is that for a first post title? 

Welcome to the world of my thoughts.  If you continue to follow this site, you will read many opinions and many ideas.  I could continue to attempt to elucidate that statement but will leave you to your curiosity or boredom whichever the case may be, and will further continue discourse at a later date.