Friday, August 20, 2010

Beautiful Surf....

A reader posted a comment that seemed to sum up my week...
人生有如洶湧的波濤,如果沒有岩石的阻擋,怎能激起美麗的浪花?
which roughly translated means
(and I do mean roughly translated)
Life is like surging waves, if not rock the block, how can they create beautiful surf? 
Which I took to mean....
That in life our obstacles create the beautiful surf from the surging waves.
I am having a week of surging waves and a few big rocks to hurdle.
So I appreciated the reminder.
To sit back and look for the beauty of the surf.
And so to my blogger friend who left the helpful comment....
感谢您的评论,并感谢你阅读我的博客。
And to everyone else....
Surfs up!


Saturday, August 14, 2010

Toy Thoughts


I have been decluttering lately
There is an ugly sounding word...
Not it's meaning but what it sounds like when you say it.
DE-CLUTTER.
It sounds harsh on the tongue,
and I guess it is fitting since decluttering can be a little harsh
when done properly.
I began this "little project" when I started contemplating the changes that are about the occur in my life.
THE DREADED EMPTY NEST (a surefire hit of a post for the future)
I figured that if my nest was going to be empty..
that at least it could be clean.
Not clean as in antiseptic pine-sol fresh (although that never hurts)
but clean as in devoid of
junk.
And let's face it...wherever there are children....there is junk.
baby furniture
baby appliances
old clothes
blankets
drawings
art projects
painted ceramic do hickeys
old school papers
books
mother's day gifts (oops)
and
TOYS
mountains and mountains and mountains
of toys.
My problem is that I LOVE toys.
I always have and I always will.
I think that we come to earth programmed with specific likes and dislikes
It's like they told my spirit...
"Hey you over there....
yea... you.... the one that is just sitting there all the time...
It's your turn.
Just an FYI.... you you are going to like
photos, fancy lunch treats, graveyards and toys.....a LOT
You will always hate bullies, olives and exercise.
Now go on....
Get outta here."
When my children were born it was such a wonderful excuse to indulge some of my favorite things.
I would spend countless hours wandering the aisles of Target in search of the latest toys.
I would get a rush of adrenaline to find a toy that I they liked on clearance.
My mom who was always my shopping buddy would try to be patient with me,
but would often tell me that she would only go on a shopping excursion if it did NOT include the toy section.
But it always did.
But back to de-cluttering (((shudder)))
I was doing pretty good with my task until I came to a wicker basket
filled with random little knick knacks.
Random reminders of little hands
wandering around...
leaving
junk
scattered
in
their
wake.
I don't know whether or not I am ready for "the empty" nest
but I KNOW I am not ready to de-clutter
everything.
Not just yet.
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Friday, August 13, 2010

Who needs a dog?


I
L
O
V
E
my new camera!!
It is just a small one for my pocket
to take pictures of EVERYONE in Guatemala.
(or a certain someone)
BAZILLIONS of them.
It has all of the new quirky features for people that think that playing
with a camera is just about the best thing EVER!
It has a fish eye
a color swappper (not the techie term for that)
a color isolator thingee (that IS the technical term for that one)
a color saturator
a miniatures feature
a blink warning indicator (I have pirate eye...a term I coined for my ability to close one eye for EVERY picture of me)
a panoramic stitcher thing that actually SEWS my photos together into one
and a little genie that will pop out of my camera and clean my room and other chores..
(no not really but that would make me love it so much I might marry it)
But seriously....the best feature ever is
IT KNOWS ME!
No really I mean it.
It recognizes my face and waits until I get into the shot
(if I should so choose to set it on this feature which I never will since I hate hate hate pictures of me...remember pirate eye??)
and THEN it snaps the shot!
I can also set it to take a picture when I wink!!!!
or SMILE!!!
Can you believe it?
I know that I can't.
I am going to just sit and hold it today in my hands and marvel at it's abilities.
With this kind of technology.
Who needs a pet?

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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Thought provoking Tuesday

I like to think.
It gives me something to do while I do my other favorite thing.
Sit.
And I often have things that I wonder about.
So in an effort to share
I am going to commit to
(trumpets are playing a bah bah bah BAH!)
THOUGHT PROVOKING TUESDAYS
A different random thought every Tuesday.
(don't get too excited..I also said that I would clean my room today too...hasn't happened)
Here is today's
When did we become a people that feel the need to list our accomplishments on our vehicles?
Like some sort of moving billboard of our personal lives.
I started to ponder this today as I came home from my Sonic Happy Hour Drink run and was driving behind a car that had a license plate cover that proudly declared,
"BOTH of my sons are Eagle Scouts. (emphasis added)
(whewf aren't you glad that they both did or else it would have had to read "Only one of my sons is an Eagle Scout...we are really worried about the other one)
I remember a time when the back window of a car was reserved for checking your blind spot
and I could only guess at the fact that your child is a soccer/band/ballet/baseball honor student.
Back in the the day when we realized the only other people interested in that was Grandma and Grandpa and then only marginally so.
It started out innocently enough with the little stick figures of how many people were in your family..
A fact that ever other driver on the road is fascinated by.
Then the stick figures became symbols that told something about your life...
like flip flops,
or people holding bats and balls.
Then the addition of pets...a sad day indeed.
We were then treated to their numbers on the various sports teams they competed on,
which I must say will come in handy if I ever go to one of their games,
"Look Mr. T, there is #79...his mother drives a white Mercedes SUV.
Now I see names underneath the figures....
I remember being warned as a young mother not to write my child's name on their lunchbox so that a stranger/pervert couldn't call them by name to help him find his lost puppy.
I guess that doesn't apply to moving vehicles.
Maybe it doesn't matter whether or not I am impressed with your accomplishments.
Maybe it is my being raised with my Grandma saying, "fools names in foolish places"
Maybe I am just not proud enough of my children's accomplishments to invest in a decal.
I was just wondering....

Before you write any pithy comebacks or go and scrape those stickers off your back window, I apologize if I hit a nerve...My motto has always been live and let live.

P.S. Enlarge the picture and see if you can guess what made me chuckle and take a picture of this one.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

PB&J the right way


I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today.
In a nod to my mother I cut it the way she did.
Across and not diagonal.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Growing up I didn't appreciate that she cut it that way.
All of the "cool kids" had their sandwich cut on the diagonal.
I am not sure if I asked my mom to do it differently
or
I suffered in silence
but it was a hardship for me nonetheless.
And that was not the only problem I faced.
All of the other cool kids had really cool lunches...
individual chip bags like Cheetos and Doritos.
Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and my personal favorite. HoHos
each little roll wrapped up in a blanket of aluminum foil
which could be carefully flattened out and used to create fanciful foil designs.
I did not get those coveted items.
My lunch had
a sandwich,
a plastic baggie of chips created from a bigger family sized bag of chips,
and a homemade cupcake, which presented the biggest of my lunch time woes.
Everyone knows that the frosting is the most important part of any cupcake
In fact the cake is really only the vehicle used to transport the creamy frosting goodness to your mouth.
Well when you put a frozen cupcake in a baggie it initially looks fine
but after sitting in a hot paper bag for a few hours it is not.
As I would sit at my cafeteria table and pull out my cupcake
it was like a cupcake massacre had been committed.
The frosting was smeared all over the inside of the baggie.
In an attempt to get all of it's lusciousness I was forced to turn the plastic baggie inside out on my fist
and lick it off,
like a big fist shaped frosting glove.
It was not only embarrassing but the smell of plastic mixed with frosting
still haunts me to this day.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
My own children were given EVERY lunch delicacy that Kroger could provide.
If there was a new lunch type item to hit the market.
It was in a Winn kids lunch first.
Gushers, Cakesters, Fruit by the Foot, Little Debbies, Pringles, Twinkies, Snack Stix, Ding Dongs, Pop Tarts, Mini cookies.......
The other children at the table marveled at the uniqueness of their fare.
When I told my children about the hardships I had endured
and the shame of my frosting glove,
they said....Oooo I would like cupcakes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I actually did learn years later why my mom cut my sandwich like that.
It is easier to put it in a baggie.
Thanks Mom.
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Monday, August 2, 2010

Chapter 4: I love a parade..but it's not my fault

Chapter 4: I love a parade but it's not my fault.
You really need to blame him....
My Dad.
As a child one of my favorite memories were the nights Dad would pull out the slide projector
and we would look at family slides.
We would relive happy moments together.
Laughing at each others pictures,
Thinking up silly captions and
secretly wishing that we could hurry up and get to the ones we were in.
Dad would often ask us which year we wanted to review...
We all would shout, of course, the year in which we were the most prominently featured.
There was only one thing that could bring those fun times to a jarring halt.
Dad's parade pictures.
I can still hear Mom's voice,
"John....go through those faster..no one wants to see those 50 pictures of a parade."
Click...Click....Click
I remember the sound of the remote straining to slog past them.
The groans from the crowd almost drowning it out.
The deep sighs of relief when a familiar face appeared
Not sitting on a float.
It didn't even matter if it was one of my siblings....
I tried hard to remember the year we were on so that when Dad called out for a favorite.....
Well my friends..
Genetics is a funny thing.....
Somethings are just too strongly embedded in our DNA to fight.
And so without further adieu
I give you the Park City Fourth of July Parade....
(and don't even TRY to click through faster...I can hear you...)
(please ignore the pained look of Ninja's face)
There!
Now was that so bad?
I didn't think so.
And like the Beatles sang,
"You're such a lovely audience
We'd like to take you home with us.
We'd love to take you home."
Because I have three times as many more pictures of the parade..
This was just a sampling
wait.....
come back....
please.....
thanks dad :(