Things I know about the new office...
The female janitor empties the garbage, the man vacuums and he’s got this cool canister that he wears on his back.
It’s 94 steps from my office to the AS400 printer and back.
Month end in May takes more than 3 reams of paper.
The east stall of the bathroom has more toilet paper at the end of the day than the other stalls.
It’s 37 steps round trip to the printer by Cindy’s desk.
Would you call it bait and switch?
This weekend one of the local shops that I find barely passable (I’m so not into the cutesy country theme) advertised that they would be selling Anchor for 10 cents a skein. That’s below wholesale, so I was there right when the doors opened at 10 am. There was no Anchor floss to be found. It turns out that the night before the sale, someone called and bought the whole stock including the display cabinets. So I had a wasted trip out there and since they won’t be carrying Anchor, absolutely no reason to go there anymore. So, unless someone wants to go to the home of Pine Mountain Designs when they come to Utah I won't be visiting it (except to get my free pattern during the Wasatch Front Quilt Shop Hop).
Moving Day
So all the offices around me have been emptied of furniture and I've just been told that my desk is moving but I'm supposed to keep working. I hope there is a spare table around.
Please, Please, just let me do it...
Please let me smack down the next person who tells me I'm abusing my kids because I don't pay for television channels. If I hear one more person tell me that I'm a horrible parent because my kids haven't seen Spongebob at home...
I'm sorry but $70 a month buys a lot of books, why should I spend it on 36 channels of nothing to watch?
I so do not need another hobby....
A
Creative Memories consultant described how easy scrapbooking would be for a glue impaired person like me, I started thinking about the music scrapbook I could put together for DD, the academic and Scout ones for the boys (I have to have an Arrow of Light scrapbook/display before February and an Eagle one sometime after that).
I have boxes and boxes of pictures and a drawer full of papers that I've saved for the kids. I just figured that someday I would hand them to the kids or the kids’ spouses and let them do it.
Then this morning, my youngest sister informs me that my mother is "cleaning the treasure room." And sometime before September she will be presenting me with my "pile of treasures" that she saved of mine.
I live in Scrapbook Heaven; I seriously think it's a zoning law that every strip mall and corner retail outlet must contain a scrapbooking store. Not to mention, it’s overtaken quilting as the number one activity at Enrichment Night (women’s activity night at church). Stampin’ Up and several other Scrapbook supply companies started here and are still based in Utah. I think that’s one of the reasons that I’ve worked so hard to avoid getting sucked into the whirlpool.
So, am I fighting a losing battle here or should I just give up and give in, print the digital photos (or buy that on computer picture organizer that just prints out your full scrapbook page) and start doing books for myself and my kids?
(and I'm reminded, Mr. Darwin should have a book with his baby pictures and stuff in it.)
Hah! This is Darwin and I have the computer again…
They are all out of the house and they left the computer turned on and logged onto blogspot. Not to mention, I have been in IM contact with my friend
Pancho. So I can let you know that the treatment has not improved. For the last 3 nights I have been locked out of Mom and Dad’s bedroom. I have been forced to sleep with the boys! Is it my fault that allergy season made me throw up? True, I could have tried to make it outside but if Mom is not going to get up, why should I? I’ll admit, it would have been smart not to barf on Dad but I’ve never been called particularly bright. Last night was not too bad. Some people came over late and I was on my best behavior because they had food. Someone even fell for my hungry look and fed me French Fries FROM THE TABLE. I did not know this thing was possible. I thought all people food had to go into my bowl for a short period of time in order for it to be Beagle safe. Really, I thought that the reason they had me “Sit, Darwin, Stay” was so that the toxins would be neutralized in my bowl and that they only called me to the bowl when the people food was safe. I realize now that this was a silly thought. After all, food that falls from the table doesn’t need to go to my bowl and I eat it just fine. Do you think this waiting for people food to go in my bowl is another of their tricks? I have to go think on this more. It sounds like a problem that calls for a rawhide chew. I need new rawhide chews. They only give me one a week. At least now that the snow is gone I can dig again. Hmm, I wonder if muddy footprints on Mom’s comforter would be a good present to remind her that the bed is really for all 3 of us?
So who is the decider in your group?
I’m hearing the term “the decider” on the radio, at the opera, on the train, and in many conversations. From what I can tell, it’s the new catch-all buzzword for “that pushy person in the group who always has to have things her way.” My in-laws would tell you that I’m a decider. My co-workers would tell you I’m not.
My in-laws were the type of people who discussed options to death without ever reaching a conclusion. The first day of our Disneyland trip was murder. We sat in the center square for almost an hour trying to decide where to go next. Finally the kids started complaining that they were hungry so I took them to Gephetto’s Grotto in Fantasyland for hot dogs and drinks. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law complained the whole time but they still ordered and then while they were debating things, I took my kids on the Fantasyland rides.
After a discussion with my husband about how Disneyland held such horrible family memories that he tried to erase by bringing our kids there, I decided that we weren’t going to sit and talk for hours while the kids got bored. But, I wasn’t going to be all bad either; I would do whatever my sister in law wanted to do. I learned quickly that it didn’t matter what I did, just the fact that we were doing anything made them upset. It’s funny that my brother-in-law thanked me as I headed out to Pirates of the Caribbean (SIL picked, I said, “Sounds good, lets go!” and started walking in that direction. I would agree with whatever the first proposal was and head out. Finally my MIL told me to stop it, she was tired of always doing whatever was suggested first, she wanted to debate things not do them. It was at that point that my SIL turned to her and said, “No wonder we never rode this many rides and the day ended with you and Dad fighting.” Don’t you love watching someone have an epiphany?
Now at work, I’m not a picky eater and so many other people are so I always let them select the restaurants for lunch. I’ve also learned that no matter what restaurant I pick, someone will either hate it or have a food allergy so even when I make a suggestion, I usually end up retracting it. In some ways, this common courtesy ends up making me look like a wuss. But when it comes to food, it doesn’t matter as long as I get some so the decision isn’t that important. Maybe the only time I’m a decider is when the decision is important? But then again, I would have to debate that for awhile...
A ramble on the drug industry and personal responsibility
Many of you know about my fight to get help for my son since the school wanted to call him ADD and I knew he wasn’t (I had the pediatrician backing me). I was relating part of this story to someone who made the comment about the drug industry wanting to hook them early into the culture of taking a pill to make it all better. It got me thinking (yes, a dangerous thing, I know).
When did we hand over the control to the drug companies? Was it in the sixties when we had the music which encouraged drug use to make people feel better(Go Ask Alice)? Was it before then in the fifties when as the Beatles later described the era “she goes running to the shelter of her mothers' little helper.” (And you wondered how June Cleaver kept that smile on her face?) Or does it go back even further? Post World War II we had a boom in the drug industry, the war had forced us to experiment and pushed R&D and now someone had to recoup. Even tobacco was thrust upon us as a health cure.
Even before the war though, we had patent medicines – the cure all and snake oils. Today we have the FDA and they train people to think that if they haven’t put their seal on it then it can’t be any good. How can the FDA put a seal on proper nutrition though? How many of the behavioral problems at school could be solved by eliminating sugary cereals for breakfast? DH says when he’s teaching junior high, he can tell by 3rd period who had sugar for breakfast and who didn’t. The sugar kids are starting to crash and becoming irritable when moments before they were jumping off the walls.
I can’t help feeling that a lot of the new “popular” diagnoses are related more too improper nutrition than mysterious maladies. I would love to have someone diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome document their food intake for a full year and submit it to me.
We talk about childhood obesity and obesity in general. How much of that is related to sitting in front of the TV and how much to fast food rather than home cooked meals?
At work, in an attempt to lower health costs (and improve productivity), they started a Weight Watchers group. Weight Watchers has two programs the FastTrack where you count points, and the Core, where you don’t count points but what you eat comes from whole foods. I think I’m the only person at work on Core. I really didn’t find it hard to drop the sauces off meat and vegetables. What I did find is that as a family, we’ve been eating out much too often. It’s easier to pick up 3 tacos for $1 than it is to remember to thaw something out and put it in the oven after work. We’ve been doing better as an entire family these last few weeks. But I do find that I’m spending more in groceries. Fast Food Nation warned that poverty may be contributing to poor eating habits since fast food is cheap and plentiful and when both parents are working, it’s easier and cheaper than cooking from scratch.
How many people remember how to make the simple meals of a few generations back? I remember sitting at Grandma’s table where dinner consisted of salad with homemade dressing, steamed carrots, potatoes and onions, all from the garden. Dessert was home canned peaches. There wasn’t a preservative in site and the food tasted better although the tomatoes and the carrots weren’t the pretty kind that one finds in the grocery store today. Have we really traded substance for style? I worry about chickens eating chicken parts instead of grain. But that’s really another subject and once again, I’ve let myself ramble into another topic…
Weekend Update
This weekend started with the friends of the NRA dinner where I had fun bidding against radio personality Doug Wright for a bronze sculpture of a mountain man. DH and I also won a bronze statue of a cowboy, a picture of Lewis and Clark and a round of sporting clays at a new gun club on the west side of the valley. For a fundraising dinner, the food was really good; Roast beef, spinach stuff pork roast, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies and salad. Saturday was tutoring, working down at the houses, and then I took a nap, studied for the GMAT (and getting more scared the more I practice problems I do), made the sample quilt block for church out of the fabric for my ugly quilt contest, and watched Ferris Bueller with the kids. Sunday, I picked up the sample to head out to church and realized that one of the blocks was in wrong. During Testimony meeting, I picked out the block, turned it and hand stitched it back into place. Testimony meeting was really good, one of the ward members is a dentist who went with an organization to Honduras to do dental work. The 2 dentists, 1 endodontist, and 1 dental hygienist treated over 100 people a day while the family members they brought with them rebuilt the medical library and also created a modern surgical suite for the one hospital that serves 2 million people. It was a pretty amazing meeting with the stories that they told about service and charity. The relief society lesson is working itself into a blog. It was about how literacy is not just reading and how it’s possible to be able to read and still be illiterate. The main point is that women need to be educated and aware or they will not know what is going on with their children and the world. DD is convinced that it went over the heads of most of the women in the neighborhood whose main concerns are the latest home décor and fashion. I did get to announce that DD will be playing with the Utah Symphony on May 16th. I was asked to publish it in the church bulletin next week along with ticket information. This weekend I read a great mother’s day book that I really wish I could afford to buy and send to everyone. It’s Carol Lynn Pearson’s The Runaway Mother. My favorite line in the story is “Heck, if we manage to not eat the children’s chocolate bunnies before Easter, we’re doing a good job. All of us!”
The weekend ended with heading to my parents for Sunday dinner only to find out they are out of town, getting home and starting DS#2 on his cross-stitch project and going downstairs to study for the GMAT only to be interrupted an hour later when the surprise masseur that DH arranged for arrived. Needless to say, I slept really well last night.
How was everyone else's weekend?
Why I shouldn't take my kids to Needlework and Quilting stores...
I’ll admit to being too lazy to go rummaging through my kitted up projects to find the greens that I needed for a round robin. I have a full $20 punch card for my LNS so I knew I would be getting a few more things other than the threads (they have a Chatelaine trunk show going – the models are in but the patterns are not).
However, I had DS#2 along with me. He found X’s and Oh’s “Be Wise” and decided he needed a new project. You should see how the LNS employees jumped to help him kit it up. So instead of getting something for me, I ended up with a new pattern, stretcher bars to fit the piece of Aida he selected to work on, Anchor floss (no, it wasn’t embarrassing to have him tell the LNS worker that DMC is for people who can’t buy Anchor), a spool of Krenik (which I probably have in my stash but it was just cute watching him), and a project bag. He hasn’t started it yet since I point out he hasn’t finished his last project.
He wants a pair of Gingher black scissors and was trying to negotiate getting them as a reward for when he finishes the project.
He's getting as bad as his older brother who still hasn't started the quilt he needs to have finished by September if he's entering the contest.
Not to say I told you so...
But when DD was working with the Aviary bird show she thought it might be a bad idea to re-teach Anami to fly considering just how independent she wanted to be.
Tracy Aviary missing eagle.
Thoughts on copyright.
What
she said!!
I saw the strangest thing last night….
Buster Poindexter aka David Johansen singing the last verse of Come, come Ye Saints…it’s the verse that talks about death being a happy occasion. It’s in the extras on the DVD
New York Doll.
