The Cereal Dust Blues

I love cold cereal. As previously mentioned, I also love hot cereal that has sat out until it is cold!

The only part of cereal I do not love is when the box is almost empty and you know you won't have enough for a full bowl, but worse, all the cereal crumbs have turned to dust and settled in the bottom of the box and are going to pour out into your innocently waiting bowl.

I've been known to combine the last bit of cereal from two completely different cereals into one bowl of breakfast, and call it good even if it wasn't delicious.

But I've also been known to look at the last bit left in the box and decide the dust to cereal ratio was too great and put it back on top of the fridge to await some unsuspecting family member or complete staleness....whichever comes first. Usually the staleness!

This morning I decided to risk the ratio and poured the very last cup of cereal into my bowl. It had less flakes than crumbs and after the milk poured in, it became clear (as mud) that I'd made a bad choice.

I needed a strainer of some sort to get the cereal out. A spoon just wasn't cutting it. I finally gave up and drank my cereal.

And as much as I love cereal, I do not like to drink it!

Tomorrow is a new day, and because I finished off the old box, tomorrow is a new box of cereal....Joy!!

There's Nothing Quite Like An ID Photo

There's nothing quite like an ID photo to bring you firmly back down to earth.

No matter how carefully you pick out your outfit, or style your hair, or apply makeup, or practice smiling in the mirror, when you step in front of that ID camera, you might as well have not even bothered.

All I can say about the photo on my newly issued ID card is that it is only good for 30 days.

I can try again in a month.

I've already decided how to wear my hair differently, as my hubby kindly pointed out, to maybe make my head look less big in the picture.

He's right. My head looks GIANT in the picture!

Thank You, God

Thank You, God,

For blue skies and fluffy clouds;

For white and brown and black dogs lying in a spot of sunshine;

For fragile green shoots starting to show in a flower bed;

For a warmish breeze coming in through an open window;

For white and pink buds on a neighbor's tree;

For a chance to throw open doors and blinds and windows and sweep away the winter's grime.

Thank You, God, For Spring!

I Froze My Kneecaps Off

It's a Spring Time Miracle!

The rain actually stopped, and even better, the sun came out and our wet, damp world was bathed in that glorious yellow warmth.

It also coincided with the day we were going to the Roller Derby.

My hubby suggested we take the motorcycle. It was such a beautiful day, we wouldn't get wet, but we'd be cold when we came home at night.

I thought about it and decided to go for it. It would be so much easier to find parking if we were on the bike. And I feel so much cooler when I get off the bike then when I slide out of my Mom Car.

We took the bike, and it was a bit chilly on the way there. It's tricky to layer enough clothes to be warm on a bike, because when you get to your destination you don't want to look like the Michelin Man or suffer from heat stroke inside the building.

I should have Michelined up a bit more!

It was a wee bit freezing when we went home that night. I was huddled down behind my husband, trying to avoid as much of the wind whipping past us as I could, but one part of me always gets the most of it.

My kneecaps. My poor knees, on the front lines, getting the hardest blast of arctic air....All I can say is I didn't freeze my butt off. My kneecaps, well that's a different story!

It took HOURS, and heaps of blankets, but by morning I was warm again.

It was totally worth it.

For Someone Who Doesn't Like......

Ice-cream, I sure eat a lot of it!

As a kid I ate ice-cream and for the most part liked it. I have fond memories of Rotten Ralphs chocolate chip mint scooped mile high on my cone. But if it came down to ice-cream as a dessert treat or cake, cookies, pie or candy.....well, I'd pick anything over ice-cream.

That is, until I tried Tillamook Mudslide.

Tillamook is a creamery association that produces some of the best cheese, yogurt and ice-cream known to man, and it is practically in my back yard.

Well, if my back yard took 8 hours to get to!

Whenever we drive the Oregon coast, we stop at the factory for the free tour, the cheese samples, and of course, the ice-cream. It is a tradition that we hold dear. But I can also find Tillamook at one of my favorite places in the world: Seaside!

I only get Mudslide. It is chocolate ice-cream with huge chunks of melt in your mouth chocolate fudge and it is heavenly. It is chocolate to infinity! I love it.

I love it so much, I'll pick Mudslide as my dessert treat every night. I was so excited to learn Tillamook ice-cream was on sale at our local grocery store. I started dreaming about Mudslide and I finally hinted to my husband that I would be okay if we got some ice-cream (much to his joy and delight since he LOVES ice-cream).

But when we got to the store, there was just a big empty spot where Mudslide usually resides.

Apparently, everyone in town is a fan of Mudslide! And I don't blame them. It is the best of the best.

In case you are wondering, yes, we went home empty handed. If I can't have Mudslide, I'm not interested. No, my husband didn't cry over the lack of ice-cream. Much.

I Have An Urge To Shift

I have a new car. A new little convertible that I love with all my heart.

It is so much fun to drive! I'd forgotten how much I love a stick shift.

But, as I've discovered to my embarrassment, I am now accustomed to shifting. Regardless of what car I'm driving, I find my foot pushing down on a non existent clutch and when I want to put the car in reverse, my hand is groping towards the stick shift that isn't there.

It's disorienting!

I guess it just means I should be driving my convertible all the time. So what if it only has two seats? I can ferry kids back and forth. Twice as many trips, means twice as many times to drive!

I can get behind that 100%!

Did I Wear That Last Week?

I am a bit obsessive compulsive when it comes to what I wear when I go outside of the home. Let me be clear, when I'm just lazing around the house it's comfy pants and tee shirts! But when I go out, not just to work, but to my twice monthly visits with my nephews, or my every other month PTA meeting, I obsess over what I wore last time, and what I will wear this time.

I hate the idea of wearing the same things to meetings. Or wearing the same color two days in a row.

I've given serious thought to making a journal of what I wear day to day. The only thing that stops me is the knowledge that when we've died and our kids sort through our things, not only will they find years of journals with blacked out bits, but also year long lists of books I've read and notebooks filled with dog quotes, pictures, and ideas that I find interesting. If I added a record of my outfits....

It's two steps into crazy town. I may live on the outskirts, but I'm not quite ready to give up and live in the hub of the city.

Although. I do have the perfect graph paper for an outfit journal....

Old Lady Hard Candy

I think I am turning into an old lady whose purse is full of hard candy. The wrappers worn and linty from rolling around in the bottom of my bag for ages. It's the free candy from the local Mexican restaurant, the cast offs no one wanted to try.

I'm okay with that. I had a thought that I would be more like Mrs. Love, who always had a little baggie of M&Ms in her coat pocket, and after church she would give a couple to any child that asked. But if I have M&Ms open, I'm going to eat them all before I can give any out.

Besides, I never knew how good a pineapple flavored candy was until I had to dig for it in my purse. When I emerged victorious, with my bit of sweet treat, I discovered nothing had ever tasted so good.

Okay. A butterscotch would have tasted better, but the pineapple was not bad!

My Life With Static

As a kid I thought static was awesome: the crackling, the shock, the spark! Rubbing a balloon on my hair not only made my hair stand up on end, it made the balloon stick to the wall. Sliding my socked feet on a carpet to create a buildup of static that I could zap on someone was grand. Static was an amazing scientific experiment.

Well, now, it's an experiment I hate with a passion! On dry winter days my hair flies every which way. My skirts cling to my slip and tights. My shocking moments are actually painful!

As I was pushing my hair out of my eyes, again, and it came tickling back, again,and I was seriously considering getting a clip out to permanently pull my bangs back, I started to smile instead. In my younger years, I would have found this to be a fantastic experience. It's like the idea of holding a microphone. Kid me wanted that microphone desperately to be in my hands. Adult me doesn't want a darn thing to do with the horrible thing!

The smiling didn't stop my irritation, though. Static gives my hair a license to be in my eyes....and yes, that is as painful as it sounds.

The Serious Business Of Hopes And Dreams

Not everyone wants to go to college. I sure as heck didn't. But I felt it was frowned on by society in this modern age of feminism to say what I really hoped to do when I grew up, so I picked a career path and I applied to colleges, all the while swallowing back my hopes and dreams.

Because what I really wanted was to get married and have babies. At least six. Babies, that is. Only one husband.

That was my aspiration, my goal, my dream.

College would have been wasted on me. I know my choice to not go to college, to get married when I was 18, to have my first child at 21, is not a choice for everyone.

But by golly, it was the right choice for me.

My current hope and dream is that I am raising two kids who follow their dreams. Who aren't forced into anything, based on what their gender is or isn't. I see our society as swinging so far from the idea of 'the little lady belongs in the kitchen' to the idea that 'the little lady' can't find fulfillment in the kitchen.

There is a balance between the two and it's called happiness. My children's balance doesn't have to be my balance, and that is totally okay with me. In fact, my hopes and dreams at this stage in my life is just this: that my kids will find their balance of happiness and pursue it with their whole heart. I want them to embrace the whole world, to see possibilities in everything, to find joy in living and to understand what will be the right choice for them.

That is very serious business. I've never been happier.

How Warm Is It In Here?

I try really hard to keep our thermostat set at 68 degrees. On really cold days, or early in the mornings before the kids take showers, it can be bumped up to 70. But that's it.

I usually run hot anyway, so I don't worry about it. If I'm cold, I put on thicker socks and a warmer sweater.

But today, when I was getting ready for work I could feel the chill. It might be the gray, wet skies, it might be my soaking wet hair, but whatever the reasons, I decided to warm up the house to 70.

Imagine my surprise, my chill bumped skin surprise, when the thermostat said it is a warm 70 right now. In this house? I don't think so. But that is what it says.

I guess it's warmer sweater time.

And, I guess, the ceiling fan does not have to be on. I'm sure everyone would appreciate it if I clicked that chill breeze maker off!

Scraped Knees And Bruised Pride

As a kid, I had scabbed knees all the time. Even today, you can see the scars of all my misadventures! But as a grown up, I have only had a handful of serious scrapes.

Yesterday was one of them.

It was spectacular. I was walking down the sidewalk to go in the downstairs door at church, talking to my husband, and suddenly I was falling. My husband said it was like a ghost tripped me. I was standing one second, then crashing the next. Completely down, landing hard on my knees, my shoes flying off to parts unknown.

My first thought was get up and get inside. I wasn't sure if I'd hurt anything else but my knee, but stood up and walked without shoes. I got into my classroom, shut the door and peeled off my tights.

Yikes.

My husband went for wet paper towels and I sat down to look at the mess I now had.

And it was a mess!

I taught my one student, in the end letting him draw pictures on the white board because we ran out of craft ideas, all the while holding a paper towel to my knee as the bleeding sluggishly slowed down.

The thing with scrapped knees is that the day of isn't the worst pain. It's the next day, when you wake up stiff and sore and can barely bend your knee and can't bare to wear tights or pants and of course it would have to be a very frosty, cold day and what to wear to work becomes a major dilemma!

My knees are hurt, and my pride is bruised (I am 36 years old and tripped over nothing!) but at least I didn't seriously hurt myself. Or show my underwear. My skirt stayed down where it should.

Thank God!

A More Perfect Word

I have just spent a few hours typing up my handwritten journals from our 2007 and 2009 vacations. I'm a little behind! I always mean to get it typed up and put in our vacation scrapbook at the time I'm actually doing the scrapbook....but, well, I just don't get to it.

Besides being a bit worried about where my 2008 journal is, I was hit with a cold, hard fact.

That fact is I use the word "awesome" a lot. Like, more than a lot. Like, if I haven't written that something was "awesome" in my daily entry, then I wrote that it was indescribable.

I thought about changing the wording as I typed it, but it felt like censorship. I know, it's my own journal, and I can find another word that means the same thing, but I wrote those journals as we were on our trips. What I was feeling is how I wrote.

And frankly, it turns out that I think lots of things are just plain AWESOME!

From here on out, though, I vow to be aware of it. I don't use the word 'nice' because a teacher once said there are many other words to use. Don't settle for 'nice'. So I won't settle for awesome.

When I see something that takes my breath away, I will try out a new word. Like grand, impressive, magnificent, stunning, or wonderful.....

Those words are all fine and good, but awesome is just so awesomely awesome! It awesomely describes some thing's awesomeness. I'm pretty sure that when we travel, and I sit in the trailer late at night writing all my thoughts from our day, I will still use awesome. It's my go to perfect word.