Note To My Younger Self

A note to my younger self, in two words:

Don't Worry

What good did all the worry do me?  Not one thing.  I borrowed troubles, I sweated the small stuff, I worried things down to the bone.....  If I could go back in time and give myself a note, not only give myself a note, but make it a note that I would believe with my whole heart and start practicing right away, it would be those simple words.

Don't Worry

Followed quickly by:

Be Happy

Finger snapping optional.

Inspired by prompt #4 at Mama's Losin' It!

And 10 Months Later.....

Ten months after I was frantically trying to finish my nieces stocking for Christmas 2012, and sadly, had to admit defeat to time, as blogged about in this post, I have finished it.

In plenty of time for Christmas 2013.  Whew!!

And in plenty of time for me to start procrastinating the sewing project of 2013!

Rays Of Sunshine

The way to start a morning off on the wrong foot is to start it by pulling a disgusting clog out of the drain so you can shower without standing in water past your ankles.  Add to that, spilling an entire warehouse store size dog food bag right after opening it.

Those two things started to push my before 7:00 AM morning into bad day territory.....

But for my daughter who told me the dog food spilling wasn't bad, dogs will eat anything, even dusty food, and did I need any help, and would I like some toast?

I laughed because she is right: our dogs will eat anything, all I needed was the dust pan, and yes, please, toast, with so much butter, more butter than she would think a piece of toast could hold.

And suddenly, my day had rays of sunshine, and the day was back on the right foot.

The Way I Like Them

If my Grandma's cookie jar isn't full when we come to visit, she pulls out her frozen cookie stash and serves us ice cold cookies.  I've never really understood the concept of having extra cookies to freeze until now.  I'm still learning how to shop for a party of teenage girls vs the way I shopped for a party of teenage boys!

Weeks ago, I had a plethora of  extra cookies.  I filled the cookie jar and still had so many cookies.  I decided to freeze them, an experiment, to see if they were still okay after a freeze.  My other option was to let them sit on the counter and get old and stale and finally go to the great garbage can in the sky.

Throwing out perfectly good cookies seems like a sin.

I froze 2 gallon bags filled with chocolate chip cookies and discovered something about myself.  I like frozen cookies.  I like to have a frozen cookie after dinner.  I like to have a frozen cookie with my coffee.  I like to have a frozen cookie pretty much any time of the day.

So when I had an abundance of cookies again, I put 8 in the cookie jar and froze the rest.  Both of my kids responded with, "What's with the frozen cookies?" and I smiled as I replied, "I like them that way."

In most things, I am ruled by my mother heart and set aside my own wants in order for my children to have theirs, which is how I've eaten too much tofu and watched too many scary videos, but in this one thing, I'm not budging!

I like my frozen cookies too much.

Fall's Cereal

The best part of our walk
Is the half block under the tall oak trees
The heaps of golden red orange leaves
Our feet kick up a delicious
Snap Crack Pop
The girls put their noses down
Plowing leaves over their heads
Leaves swish up my ankles
Tails wag
Smiles abound.

The Bear Facts Of Life

Bears are scary.  Those claws and teeth, their territorial possession of any land they are on which you might accidentally walk into, their desire to eat the same berries that you wish to pick....Yep.  Scary beyond all reason.

As a kid, I had some defining moments with bears, but all without actually seeing a bear.  Once, when berry picking with my Mom and siblings, she thought she heard a bear and hustled us back to the car, except for myself, who did not want to be hustled until she said the dreaded words, "I thought I heard a bear," and then I hustled myself right into a sticker patch and got all the scratches one might expect from that.  Another time, my Mom and sisters saw a bear in a neighbor's field, going after their pig, and the lady of the house came out and shot it with her shotgun.  Said bear was hanging in the barn for any who wanted to see.  I did not.  Next, a bear got drunk in an apple orchard, and the call went around the community for all to come see it's funny antics, and I did not go.  I refused to go.  A drunk bear?  Are you insane?

Those three brushes with bears gave me a life-long fear.

As a grown up, I have camped all over bear infested country, and I have seen black bears and baby grizzly bears and survived.

But every night when camping, I know a bear is sitting in our campsite, waiting for me to move, so it can come over and ask me how I'm doing.

I might have also read too  many "drama-in-real-life" articles where bears tore open campers to drag people off into the night.

All of these memories were brought to the forefront of my mind, when my Mom casually mentioned that my aunt saw a bear when she was out walking her dogs.  12 miles from my house.  Sure, she was out in country section of our hometown, but all I could think was BEAR!!!  Too close!

This post inspired by prompt #3 at Mama's Losin' It!

A Perfect Storm Of Reasons

The problem with buying luxurious bedding is that it has created the most wonderful, cozy nest imaginable and when the alarm clock blasts its rude tones, all I can manage is to extend one arm to slap it quiet.  When it sounds again, I know it's time to get up, but the sheets and comforter become a perfect storm of reasons why I should hit snooze one more time.

And maybe just once again.

The only thing that made me get up this morning, sort of on time, is knowing I had to wake up my daughter and take a shower before anyone else beat me to the bathroom.

So I got up, and carefully smoothed the covers back to rights and promised myself that I would be back tonight closer to 10 than 11!

Puzzle Party

In our many garage sale adventures this last summer, I bought a puzzle.  I was taking a big chance on it, as it was open, and old, and it promised more than 500 not inter-locking pieces, but I bought it anyway.  How could I pass up a "historic puzzle" of the front page of The New York Times from December 11, 1936 when Edward VIII renounced the throne?

That's right!  I couldn't!

But then it sat in my dining room for weeks because I'm not actually a huge puzzle person.  I bought it to resell in my shop, but I can't do that unless I know there aren't any missing pieces.  

Yesterday at church my sister asked if I wanted to go to some estate sales.  Yes, I did, but I was so tired, the drive to them seemed super exhausting.  Instead, I saw my puzzle and suggested that my puzzle loving sister come over and we'd put it together.  

She brought her puzzle board, just in case we didn't finish in time, I could move it off the dining room table.

When we opened the box, I thought this was a mistake.  It was a front page of a newspaper, for crying out loud!  Tiny font, tiny pieces, and many fake edge pieces.....  But we invited our mom over and we all started working.  My daughter put on an old movie and did her homework with us and we laughed and talked and teased my son that he should stay and join us.

And then we were in the home stretch.  We had about 20 pieces left, but we'd been working on it for hours. Mom had to go home.  My sister did too, but she's a crazy awesome puzzle person, and those last pieces were going in on her watch.  My daughter came over and the three of us had a moment or two of worry that we were missing a piece, and then suddenly we had three pieces left and three spots and we each put one in until it was a finished puzzle and we whopped and hollered and clapped!

Puzzle parties: that's where the fun is at!

And yes, it's the next day, and the puzzle is still out and put together.  I'm going to enjoy looking at it just a little bit more!

Six Word Saturday

So many errands, more coffee please!

Doodle-De-Doodle-Die-Day

I can not remember a time I did not doodle....when the edges of my notebook pages and borders of bulletins weren't a mass of swirling, twirling lines, when a curve turns into a mouth and two dots makes eyes and coils of hair twine down to join frogs on lily pads and beagles with floppy ears....

While I took notes at school, marching between the lines of writing were all manner of geometric shapes and girls with updo's and shaggy haired dogs.

Even now, give me a pen and paper and a boring moment of forced stillness and my paper is doodle-de-wonderful.  I sit at work, caught up, waiting for the phone to ring and fill my scratch paper with doodles, over which I cross-hatch until there is nothing left to identify it as a drawing.

After all, I'm grown up, a professional.  I can't have notes I pass to the doctors be filled with knights and dragons and maidens picking wildflowers and borders of hearts and butterflies.....

Rainy Day Exercise Temptation

The trouble with rainy day exercise is that I do it indoors with the TV on.  And at 6:00 am there are mostly infomercials on and I love infomercials and I start thinking about how much I desperately need this wonderful invention....

How can I live one more minute without this glorious contraption?

Which is how I ended up with an 'ab roller' years ago.

I have stiffened my resolve and I did not reach for the phone to order.  But it was very difficult to find the will power to do so.  I hope I don't see that commercial again tomorrow!  I can't guarantee I'll remain firm a second time.

World Class Juggler

I've been pretty tired lately, and having a slight sinus cold hasn't helped.  But I have powered through it; haven't missed work and kept up with the house and even walked the dogs in the evenings.  I was sure I was keeping everything together, running smoothly, and had become a world class juggler.

That is, until last night's dinner.

Or rather, the lack of dinner.

I remember pulling dinner out of the freezer and preheating the oven and sitting down for the next 40 minutes, confident I was cooking and had time to take a moment to do nothing at all.  Only, it turns out I'd forgotten the part where I put dinner into the oven to bake.  I walked into the kitchen and saw dinner thawing but not cooking and knew I was done in for the moment.

I ordered pizza.

I think I'm still a world class juggler.  I picked  up milk and bread on my way to get the pizza....and I remembered to put the milk in the fridge when I got back home!

The Woes Of Purse Gum

I've given up chewing gum.

Not for health reasons or for jaw pain or fear of pulling out fillings.  No, I'm done with gum because I spilled my last pack in my purse, and pieces floated around in a sea of debris, and many pieces unwrapped.  Those unwrapped pieces sank to the bottom and wriggled their way into cracks and turned into a giant gummy mess.

A gummy mess in a purse is not as fun as it sounds.

I dumped everything out, tossed stuck together receipts and washed $3.79 in change to make it less nasty to hand over at garage sales and made the firm resolution: I will not carry gum in my purse.

Unless I spend that $3.79 on one of those plastic jumbo cases of gum, with a snapping closed flip top.

Now that's an idea with merit!

I Can Explain This Mess

I have just made the shocking discovery that my car looks like a crazy person owns it.

Sometimes when you pass a car, and you glance in the windows and see that it is full of stuff, not boxes or bags like a move or a shopping trip, but mounds of clothes and household items and empty fast food bags, and you wonder what sort of person does that to a car, how can you drive with all that junk?

Well.  That's my car right now.

I'd taken it for granted that my tinted windows would hide my mess.....

They do not.

In my defense, I'm in the process of moving new inventory into my vintage booth, and I've just finished with a booth at a vintage market and those two things are colliding in the back seat of our family car and meals have been a rushed on the go staple.

But that side glance into a crazy person's car, and realizing it was mine has been a real eye opener.  I'm cleaning it out tonight!

Understanding Ruth

The story of Ruth and Naomi is an old one, a Bible story told to youngsters seated in short chairs.  Ruth says to her mother in law, "Wherever you go, I'll go too."  As a kid, I like the romantic part, when long before Bruno Mars said it, Ruth said, "Boaz, I think I want to marry you."  But the other part, where Ruth follows her mother in law away from her family home and all she knew, that I never understood.

I'm lucky in the mother in law department.  I've got a nice one, a kind one, a giving one, but would I go with her wherever she went?  Trust me, she's been to some wild places and I tend to be more of a homebody!  For 20 years it seemed like all we had in common is we love her son.

But then life got hard and sad for all of us and suddenly I knew what Ruth was thinking.  It isn't blood that ties us as family, it is love.  And that love will lead me to do all sorts of things I never thought I could, just because I saw a way to help, a need to fulfill, a hand to squeeze when things were rough, and a person I could be friends with.

I never made it to visit my mother in law in Morocco, I can't visit Baghdad, but her next post is Ireland.  I'm going to start saving my pennies right now to make that happen.

I Write

My purse is littered with half written ideas
Sheets of paper, folded and creased
Crumbled and worn from rubbing
The dregs of my purse:
Loose change, paper clips, hard candy and
Unfinished ideas
Some take flight, stuck to an envelope
Handed over the post office counter
Written thoughts winging their way to freedom
Retrieved by the postal clerk
A To Do List, he said as he handed it back
A to do list, indeed
I drag them out, blinking and stumbling
Into the light of day
And I think,
Oh, I remember now,
I write.

What She Learned

My daughter has become very busy this school year.  And since her car is not quite ready for prime time driving, our options are she drives our family vehicle to school and I take the old pick up OR I drive her to school and continue onto work.

Both options have draw backs.  I don't love driving the pick up; it literally has holes in it where I can look down and see pavement.  But I also don't love having to leave the house at 7:15 to get her there on time.  We do half and half and on the days I drive her to school, we are both trying to get ready in our bathroom at the same time.

Our wonderful 1905 house only has one bathroom, and it is a narrow weird one at that....but hey, we've got indoor plumbing so I'm not gong to complain!  When my daughter and I need to get ready at the same time, it's a synchronized dance around the bathroom sink and mirrors, taking turns with the flat iron, brushing teeth, doing make up, and talking.

This, I said to my daughter as I scrunched up my curls with my hand, this is how I did my hair back in the 90's.  I'd let my hair dry to just barely damp, then soak it with spray gel, then scrunch and scrunch the curls as I finished drying them on low.  Then for the final piece of early 90's hair magic, I'd curl my bangs in two directions.  One half curled down over my forehead, but the other curled up and bigger over my head, all said as I mimed the whole process.

My daughter just stared at me.  That, she said, couldn't have been a good look for anyone.  And has your hair always been that curly?

I looked in the mirror and realized I'd scrunched all the curls into super curls.  I grinned at her.  That is the power of scrunching, never underestimate what it can do for your hair!

If only I'd had some spray gel!


This post inspired by prompt #5 at  Mama's Losin' It!