Good Surprises!

Life is full of surprises. I like surprises but it's hard to surprise me. My analytic brain picks up on little things and I usually figure things out even when I don't want to. It does challenge me though to put a considerable amount of thought into the surprises I give to other people.

I have told Tommie that she does not need and can not have a cell phone until she starts Junior High. She's a really great kid, she rarely asked for one. But I would like her to have one in the event I ever become employed. I thought it would be a big surprise for her birthday and I put it in a huge box filled with peanuts and wrapped it. While she unwrapped it, I called it. I thought she'd know immediately what it was and go ballistic on the box but I forgot ring tones are not universal and I think she dared not to hope. With extreme puzzlement she dug and dug as I continued to call it. Daddy ruined my fun though and encouraged her to dump out the peanuts. When she finally found it, there was a look of sheer amazement on her face and I got to be the hero, if only for a minute. It's those brief minutes of appreciation and the few times when the kids actually make the right choices that give me a sense of gratification. Yeah! Here's to the tough times of parenting, it can be worth it!

How does your garden grow?

This is the middle stages of our garden. When you could actually see rows of things. As it stands right now, the zucchini have blossomed into giant green forests, the pumpkins have threatened to take over the entire garden, literally crawling feet everyday. Ironically, we have 2 pumpkin plants and one giant pumpkin on each. One for each kid. The tomato plants have become 3 foot high bushes with more green bulbs than Christmas trees. I hope the weather will just keep warm enough a little longer so they can ripen. We harvested enough beans to get us most of the way through the winter. I hadn't expected much from our fortress because although we brought in topsoil and fertilized, the fact is, the ground in Herriman is a very fine combination of rock and clay and not to mention being overrun by grasshoppers.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the abundance and variety of veggies. But it's not just the fresh, organic vegetables I am serving at the table, it's the "everything" that has come with it. The kids outside with their eyes aglow looking for the first sprigs, helping me weed, checking the plants, learning when to pick and ultimately tasting the fruits of our labor. The best is always right off plant, dirt and all. Often times, the sour face and "yuck" are enough to make me giggle.

Of course a certain amount of satisfaction comes from a fruitful garden and a beautiful yard but even more than that, it's been a place of solitude for me. A place to reflect, to think, or sometimes just NOT think. But the very best part for me is, bringing back loving memories of my grandpa. As an engineer, everything in his garden was perfect and I don't ever remember seeing a single weed, perhaps because he was always working out there. He was so animated and excited when we started gardening at our home in Sandy and I could always count on him to help me with a bug problem or tell me some new method he'd come up with. Reminiscing about it always brings warmth and a broad warm smile to my face. So, even though the season is not over, it has already been successful enough to anticipate the adjustments I am planning for next year.

Twinkies

Given my history, you might actually think this post has nothing to do with Twinkies, but ah ha! I got you, IT IS about the all-American, sweet cream filled, moist golden, could sit in the west desert for a year and not go bad because it's so filled with scary preservatives that I can't even pronounce them, snack. Twinkies in itself is such a funny word that there was nothing else to call this particular post. I have a joke with a good friend of mine who is sadly moving away to California...about yes, Twinkies. And of course there is nothing better to send a friend away with than good memories. So I as I stood dutifully in the store to buy Twinkies it occurred to me that I had no idea where to look for them. It was then that I realized, I've never bought a box of Twinkies in my life. Really, never? Really, never. I bought 3. Two for a Twinkie dessert which I have lovingly named Redneck Delight (just add fried chicken, instant mashed potatoes and gravy from a jar) and one for my friend to take on the road. I think that I have fulfilled my quota for Twinkie purchases for the rest of my life.

Semi-annual Review

Well look at that, it's July, five months since my last post, I don't have a job after all, and there is still dog hair in the corners of the house, I border consistently on not enough sleep (thank heavens for Xyng). But all is not lost, I'm glad to see that I haven't disappointed my last resolution of breaking my resolutions. So in review, it's been a start to another successful year!

Civil War

I recently took a full time position. Doing something virtually new to me...foreign so to speak. I start in late March, I am hoping for the 22nd. This has pros like...getting a steady paycheck, having insurance, not staring at my floor knowing it needs vacuuming at two in the afternoon and cons like...not being here when the kids are done with school, losing out on my Tuesday morning golf league and dealing with office politics and drama. Perhaps though, the biggest con is the fact that I will not be able to blog at 2am without serious drawbacks and my 5 times a week at the gym at 8:45 am will now have to be at 5:45 am. Yes, I did say 5:45, this is where the civil war has occurred. Anyone can tell you I am NOT a morning person. I would rather walk across hot coals on my way to the dentist, carrying a half dozen porcupines on my back than get up before the sun...you get the picture. In preparation for this, my body has gone into rebellion. I fall asleep at horrible hours, I can't get up and I am sleepy half way through the day. I keep thinking to myself, I should start getting up earlier and gradually work my way into this. But take last night for example, I actually went to bed around 10:30. When 7:30 rolled around I pulled the covers over my head and by 2:00 this afternoon I was ready for a nap! Seriously!

Goal Setting

Good grief, where does the time go? 2010 resolutions- 1. Try posting a blog update more often than every 2 months although since Tracy is the only one who reads it may be I should just call her on the phone and let her know what's new. 2. Spend more quality time with the kids. So what if they'd rather play their Nintendo game, force the issue and make them like it! 3. Figure out what to do with my life. Should I know what I want to be when I grow up yet? Is there a job out there that I can like what I do, work minimal hours and make maximum money? I need to find that job. 4. Clean house, after all Superbowl is coming up again and I need to get the dog hair out of the corners so people don't see how we really live. 5. Get some sleep. Maybe then I wouldn't be so ornery. No, then I'll just be well rested and grumpy. 6. Break all my resolutions and try again next year.

Chapter 17

The past is such a funny thing. When I think about mine, I wonder why I didn't apply myself in school, I wonder why I wasted so much time in front of the mirror and I wonder what I was thinking when I made some of those fabulous choices. I really don't give my younger persona much credit because let's face it, kids are just plain self absorbed and inexperienced.

The other day I was digging around for an old picture for a friend and I found something I wrote in 1988. I was surprised at how intuitive it was.

A person's chronological age is not nearly as important as how he sees himself. You can be full in years but young in spirit. How you see yourself is often related to what you do with yourself, and what you do with yourself is often related to how you feel. Although, age has it's compensations you can increase your quality of enjoyment for you are rich in experience. The most important thing is not just to add years to life, but to add life to your years.

Not quite sure what to think about my 17 year old self but maybe I need to take some of my own advice!

One Last Hurrah!

Dead Horse Point

Nothing stops a mother's heart like your children running along the edge of a 2000 foot cliff. It's amazing that none of us dropped dead right there on the spot. Here we are clinging to the girls in case a good strong wind comes along and blows us right off. Legend has it that cowboys corralled wild mustangs onto this butte and forgot about them. The state park sign that is posted at the view point tugs at your heart strings describing the poor horses looking on the Colorado River longing for thirst. While I feel that it was a terrible tragedy, I find it somewhat amusing that the writer would think that a horse could possibly see and know that there was a river just full of satisfying water a mere 2000 feet below. Well in any case we were careful to bring lots of drinking water for us while we hiked around the Gemini Bridges area, Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands. We had a great feasts of dutch oven cooking and Tracy made her first s'more. But you know that it has been a successful trip when you run out of beer and you get a camping ticket. I can't wait until next year!

Sobered Up!

Well I have finally sobered up since the last post. And what a long drunken stupor it was! Ok, actually it was just a summer full of fun and adventures. When it finally warmed up in June we took a trip to Topaz mountain with our good friends the Browings to collect crystals and try our hand at dutch oven cooking. It was a smashing success! We found tons of beautiful crystals and Apache Tears. We ate like kings and queens, princes and princesses! It's a good thing we followed all that eating up with a hike to the top of a mountain. In July, the kids took swim lessons and played in a junior golf tournament and won a trophy! Then the kids and I were invited to join my friend Beth and her kids to her home town of Spokane. Her parents were patient hosts with 5 kids tearing up the place and Beth was an awesome tour guide showing us all over the area including Coeur d'Alene Lake and Arbor Crest Winery. We finished off the trip by meeting Tom and Andy in Riggins, Idaho where Andy won $500 in prize money for dazzling the town with his country music. At the end of July the kids started back up in school again (darn this year round school schedule!). 4th grade for Tommie and 1st grade for Michael. August started off with my 20 year high school reunion. I wasn't going to go but Tom convinced me that it would be fun and...actually it was. Most people had gotten past the immaturity and generally wanted to know what you were up to. Then a few days later we had that country star (Andy) in our backyard to play for our friends and neighbors. The wind blew like crazy but that was all a plan to get the music to float up the canyon. I finished up August with a girls trip to Park City. We floated down the 45 degree Provo river which was pretty fun, except the part where Julie and I did a very graceful flip and we froze our butts off! Sharing a few bottles of wine and a soak in the crater at the Homestead and then later in the hotel hot tub warmed us up though. So you see I wasn't drunk all this time, well... maybe some of the time.

The Reason I Drink

Michael was picking up his cars off the family room table on Friday, cars that he had played with outside in the sand. As he picked the cars up they were leaving a pile of dirt behind. I told him he needed to clean that up. He said "you should clean it up, you're the maid". To which I promptly retaliated "I am not the maid!". And quite calmly he replied "well...you're like a maid". Anyone reading this now is cringing as they imagine the scene unfolding before them. And the possibilities were endless, stringing him up just by his toes, washing out his mouth with a whole bottle of Soft Soap, making him sleep with the chickens in the coop, forcing to him scrub the entire house with only a toothbrush and a lintroller...but I reminded myself, I asked for this...bundle of joy, and now I have it. So off to his room he went for an early night while I played games with Tommie.

Grand to be Great!

I'm about to become a Great Aunt. It's hard to imagine really, I feel... oh, I don't know about 25ish. And truth be told I don't really think I'm that great at anything. I'm a fairly decent wife, although I have my moments, I'm a good Mom but there again I have my melt downs. I know my way around the kitchen but I go through phases of really not wanting to cook at all. And I'd like to think I'm a respectable mortgage broker. But there it is, I get to be great at something, and not just once, oh no...3 times this year. Wow, I am so lucky! What will it be like, hopefully many years from now, when I get to be Grand?

The Sock Anomaly

Everyone knows the washer and dryer eat perfectly innocent, unsuspecting socks. White, black, pink, red, green ones, they have no preference. The anomaly occurs when I get fed up with the basket full of mismatched socks and decide that these poor lonely items are never going to find their mate again and toss them out. This is inevitably the time the washer and dryer then chose to give back to the community and return some of the mismatches. Is this part of some plot to make housework the first step to insanity? I think the washer and dryer is in cahoots with the dishwasher that leaves the film on all my glassware. It doesn't help that my daughter is going through a phase of wearing mismatched socks on purpose. Hey, this could work to my advantage I could just throw all the mismatched socks in her drawer and let her deal with it.

Distraction Much!

I drag myself out of bed and make sure the kids are up. Tommie is up but Michael is not, I gently shake him and say "Time to get up for school". I get his clothes ready and lay them on his bed. "Come on" I urge. Going back into my bedroom I begin to throw on my gym clothes. "Now, where is that pink tank" I begin to fold clothes from the laundry basket on the floor. "Ah there it is" the match to the sock I am wearing on my left foot. The phone rings, could I please pick up an additional kid at the bus stop today? I am back down the hall, topless of course "Did Michael get out of bed yet? Michael get up!" Back to my room, while putting up my hair, "oh yeah, pink tank" and I pull it out of the half full laundry basket. "Whew! I haven't even gotten downstairs yet!" And so it goes...I wonder if housewives in the 1950's were able to complete a task... get the kids breakfast, dressed and out the door for school, folding laundry, doing the dishes and such without being distracted by a dozen other things. I wonder if I am completely mistaken in assuming that 50 or 60 years ago, things were much simpler.

Self Sufficiency

We are but a mere a week or so away from starting our latest project. A garden. Yes, another thing to add to the daily task list. And it has been quite the investment due to the fact that we have started by flooring the selected area with a chicken wire and a gopher proof railroad tie base, next we are going to cement 4 X 4 posts and and surround it with a 9 foot deer proof fence. Fort Knox would be jealous!

Q & A

Tonight while Michael was putting away the clean silverware from the dishwasher he asked me a very important question. "Mom, are these places behind our knees called leg pits?" This is one of the many life altering questions that whiz through his mind at any given time. He gets very angry with me when I chuckle. But he has it wrong, I don't laugh because I think he is funny, I think it's incredibly amazing how complex his mind works. I only wish I wrote down everything he asks, I will have to work on that.

Gas...not Flatulence but Propane

Our lovely home is powered by electricity and propane. This was great 9 years ago when we moved in, it was about $.74 a gallon. It made it considerably less than natural gas. Kind of a nah, nah nah thing. However, over the years that has changed. When gas hit close to $4.00 a gallon, propane was around $2.25. Ouch! We bought propane May 30, 2008 for $2.24 a gallon, just under $2,100.00 for a tank. Yeah, ouch again! As everyone knows gas dropped quite a few months ago, quite drastically. So if anyone fancies themselves a gas expert and can tell me why propane, that has a history of being significantly lower than car gas, for as long as I know anyway, is now the same price as car gas please tell me! Can you tell I'm setting up for another one of life's little quirks? Our propane guy who is absolutely fabulous and always on top of our usage has called twice to sell us gas but being the stubborn person that I am, have refused due to the price. So Saturday, I thought, you know I'd better check our gas. I went out and lifted the lid...well needless to say my chin hit the ground when I saw the needle buried at...zero. I called my guy and he couldn't get us gas until Tuesday! Last week when temps were toasty this wouldn't be much of a problem, just quick showers and no cooking, but it wasn't toasty and Tom being just as stubborn as I am refused to hook up a reserve tank for fear he would mess up the line. By Sunday, the heater was off to the house, by Monday it was everyone in the shower together you have five minutes to clean up, by Monday night we did homework huddled around a space heater, by Tuesday morning it was 57 degrees in the house. And guess what? The price went down 20 cents over the weekend! Ha ha ha, no pain no gain!

Article 5.1 Weather in Utah

Well I haven't been around for a while but it's 1 am and I'm back :) I had a bad week a couple of weeks ago and in between fits of emotion I just really didn't have anything to say or I just couldn't put into words. I prefer to keep this skimming along the lighter side of life, mostly stuff I can be sarcastic about and make jolly fun of. Let's face it I'm strung up tighter than an undersized pair of pantyhose and I've got to cut holes in those suckers to loosen them up! So today's topic is...well I don't know, could be a number of things...like, how about the beautiful, light, airy blanket of fresh snow I found on my deck this morning. What a tease, I actually got a sunburn last week from sitting on my front porch and now I'm listening to the honeycomb size snowflakes blow against my windows. In case you don't know honeycomb is big, big, BIG, BIG! You'd think I'd be used to this by now, it happens every year but I'm not. I bitch every year, but then I've heard women aren't happy unless they have something to bitch about. So I guess I am really happy!

Why?

So, Saturday morning, my son got up and sauntered over to his Dad's side of the bed and asked him to turn on cartoons for him. Sometimes it's hard to drag yourself out of bed on Saturday morning, so I got up. Michael was waiting patiently on the couch like a little angel. I turned on his cartoons for him and went in to check on laundry. Michael said "I want Dad to turn on the cartoons". I guess his button pushing abilities far supersede mine. Seriously, he turned off the TV and went upstairs to drag Tom out of bed, and I said "why?" just before I confined him to his room for a half an hour.

Time Warp Continuum

Do you ever have one of those days where you're buzzing around getting everything you want accomplished and it's running so smoothly. Yeah, me neither. Today I was doing quite well but I had one of those time warp moments. You know, I put some stuff in an envelope then was momentarily sucked into a time warp and when I came back out to write the check that needed to go into the envelope it was gone. Then I proceeded to turn the house upside down in an effort to find the damn thing, to no avail. By the time I had to take Michael to karate I had mortgage papers strewn across the kitchen table, dishes piled to the ceiling in the sink and a mountain of dirty laundry the size of Mt Baldy. Hey! You never know where envelopes will run off to. Needless to say I had to redo my envelope but I am sure that it will rear it's sneaky little head tomorrow!

Page 3

Today while sifting through Yahoo Finance, I use the term "today" loosely because I know it's really tomorrow but I have yet to sleep. Anyway I always like to know what I am up against when it comes to my line of work. Someday, I'll be able to predict interest rates and I'll be rich! Until then I'll just have to do good old fashioned research and projecting and being wrong. Anyway I ran across and article with a little different view than the rest of the world. Saying that mortgage brokers are getting somewhat of a bad rap. It was a refreshing change to hear someone say I am not neccesarily the greedy scum of the earth. Of course then I read all the comments about what a crappy article it was. I especially enjoyed the one from "The People's Advocate", who stated that people aren't smart enough to educate themselves about getting a home loan. So I responded: It's just like the American public to not take any responsibility for their actions. It's all somebody else's fault they got into a house they ultimately couldn't afford. And of course it's all somebody else's fault they had to buy a new car to go with their new house a week after they moved in, and some new furniture and a boat and after all that hard earned spending we really need a week in Hawaii. Give me a break! There are some unfortunate people who got sucked in because someone told them exactly what they wanted to hear. But I am sick to death of listening to people cry about how nothing is their fault, from their financial debt to problems with raising their children to killing their neighbor. Yes, there are some really bad brokers out there and I agree that is based on character. Go to more than one mortgage broker, check the bank, check a credit union. The bad loan originators are not going to turn good because of more regulation. The bottom line is people need to educate themselves!