Trishtator

Today was my beautiful grandmother's 95th birthday. And by was, I say that because the day is almost over. Grandma's still here, living with my parents this week. Her daughters take turns caring for her, and hosting her at their homes. She's been "house surfing" for almost 10 years now. My grandfather, her husband, died about a year and a half before I was born, so I never knew him. But my awesome Grandma has been around ever since, spreading some serious smiles and "loves."

What I love about my grandma:

• She loved to make us breakfast, and she always buttered the toast to the very edges, with "too much" butter.
• Speaking of toast, she had a toaster cozy.
• She loved watching the Utah Jazz play basketball on TV. When we would visit, my dad would always watch the weather channel at her house.
• She had a great big tree in her front yard. I really wanted to climb it, but I wasn't allowed to, because the neighbor kids would want to. It was a big sacrifice I made to keep those neighbor kids safe.
• She came with my family and I to our 1988 trip to Disney World. I remember riding the "Thunder mountain" ride with Grandma, and she almost fell out! We laughed and laughed.
• Grandma let us sleep on the couches in her living room, even though she really wanted us to sleep in her guest bedroom. I loved sleeping on the couch! (Some things don't change with age, do they?)
• She made me my "blankie," which I slept with well into my 20s. Now it's so threadbare that it would probably vaporize if I carried it around too much.

• She's the sweetest, kindest soul ever.
• She taught her family to love God, and to serve the people around them.
• She always has time to hold your hand and smile at you.

I love you grandma - happy birthday!

I got my hair cut yesterday. It was strange, because the first ever "hairstylist I liked and would returned to" no longer works in the business. That had never happened to me before.

Fortunately, I still went to the salon and got the mange chopped though. It just gets so heavy, and grows out unevenly almost. Oh, and another note, I would possibly consider blow-drying and straightening my hair on a regular basis - if there was someone who would do it for me. And I could just sit in a chair and close my eyes. Not likely gonna happen.

Anyway, this is the style I chose.

this is not really my news to share, but i've opened my trap anyway and spilled the beans.

this morning i sent my nick off to college for his first day. to be fair, he went to boise state for 3+ years back in the day, but he's back in the class today!

this was a long road. in the 13 months after his celiac disease diagnosis, life has turned upside down for him (with a new sense of health, but still some social challenges that go along with not being able to share food with people). and in the 3 months since he stopped eating soy, he has started feeling better/stronger exponentially! this was the ending to a decade of gut-aches and body-aches.

this all led to him getting back to school, and i am so happy for him.

i sit at my office this afternoon, jealous after the call from him about how he loves his philosophy class, and his computer class is going to be hard. an hour later, he called back and said he thought he would add a class. i miss going to school, and i'd trade it for another boring day in the office. please can i go to school? please please?

anyway, i'm just saying that i am so happy for nick. onward and upward!

I bought a new camera, after mine walked off after camp. We're headed to camp tonight, and so I'll come home with a hard drive full of life, only more colorful than it was last night I captured camp digitally.

This camera rocks. Way better than my last one. Must be because I did my research before buying it.

I'm off to the Sawtooths, the best birthday present I could have. (Maybe short of my family, but they already came this month!)

100 Books

I wanted to do it after Erin and Tamsin did it too! Currently I'm reading Girl in Hyacinth Blue.
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Where do you fall in the list? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.
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Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible (The entire thing!) - X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X

Total: 4

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 3
Total so far: 7

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X

Total: 4
Total so far: 11

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X

Total: 3
Total so far: 14

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 2
Total so far: 16

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 3
Total so far: 19

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 2
Total so far: 21

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 2
Total so far: 23

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistr
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X (not ALL of them . . . )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 4
Total so far: 27

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Overall Total: 30

These four (and their respective parents) came to hang out for the 4th of July.

This included:

• pizza at my favorite, Big Apple Pizza, with 3 squirrelys and "ANTRIHHHHSH!"
• a potluck in the park around the corner from my house
• sliding down the slides in a park in American Fork (along with yummy sandwiches)
• watching the littlest one eat a corn dog at Crown Burger
• splashing in the pool with the middle two

Getting snuggled with a little one, wearing a swim diaper. It leaked 40 pounds of water on my lap, but it was so precious. :)

I heart KSL.com. The news there keeps me up on local events, national and international debates, and even has some funny articles.

Today I read about the BYU student who had a tranquilized moose fall on his car, and then the Division of Wildlife Resources, who tranquilized the moose, wouldn't be up-front with him, and he has to pay for damages. Funny stuff. As long as a moose didn't fall on your car, anyway.

My other all-time favorite was the white plumber van parked in a Provo neighborhood with a signed taped in the window that read "free candy inside." The best part - and I quote from the article -

The white van was parked on a neighborhood street in front of a home. No one on the street knew who the van belonged to, and the neighbors were worried about the sign posted in the back window.

Adults looked inside and did not see any candy, but they did see a mattress and some clothes in the back of the van. Police were called to investigate. [GOOD THING THOSE ADULTS WERE AROUND!]

Officers tracked down the van's owner, who is a college age student. He told officers he put up the sign a few days ago as part of a prank with his friends.

Police credit the neighbors for watching out for their neighborhood. "With this sign possibly enticing children to a van, your worst case scenarios come to mind. So, it was good, a good example of someone in a neighborhood watching out, not only for his own family, but the whole neighborhood," said Capt. Cliff Argyle, spokesman for the Provo Police Department.

Officers say the man was very cooperative with investigators and was actually embarrassed by what happened, so much so he drove to the police station to show officers the sign was down.

 

 

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

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Discussing news wouldn't be complete without me telling you about my awesomeness. After all, blogging is the favorite eco-centric activity of the 21st century.

So, this article appeared in the Associated Press and, locally, the Deseret News:

From the Huffington Post: Obama Has German Roots - Researchers

The key issue to notice here is the following phrase, taken from the article:

Tracing the ancestry of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, the investigative team linked Obama back to Wolfley relatively quickly. But it wasn't until last Friday when a researcher was poring over microfilmed documents at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, that they got the breakthrough documenting Wolfley's German ties, Tyler said.

Ahem. You're welcome.

That is all.

I'm so amazed that life is full of growth. New leaves on trees, tiny yellow flowers on my tomato plants (I think there are 11 flowers by now!), new babies, hard times, joyful times. It's eye-opening to me how quickly things and people can grow. The maple tree that shades my front yard is one day sitting on a cold April morning, gray in the early morning light. Just days later, it burst forth with maroon leaves and little green stickies littered around to step on with bare feet.

A few things:

• Last weekend on Memorial Day, my parents came by to share some yummy crockpot meat with us. We learned that my dad loves hummus (which he'd never had before), and ate some super-delicious fresh strawberries. My mom even brought an extra pint of strawberries, which I just polished off. They were incredible!
• This morning a friend and I volunteered at the warehouse for the Utah Food Co-op. Our shift was from 4:30 am to 6:30 am. It was delighful! We were preparing the orders to be taken to the pickup sites around the valley. There was a time while growing up that I wanted to be a grocery cashier, and spent all morning "booping" items across the kitchen table before Mom could put the groceries away.
• I came across this fascinating chart on the New York Times website. It's an interactive comparison tool where you can learn about "class" in the United States. (My little secret - I'm LJing right now so that I wouldn't lose this link. So much for secrets!) It's fascinating to me that merely having a bachelor's degree puts one in the top fifth of the "class" brackets defined in the chart, and the chart also represents that only 9% of U.S. adults have bachelor's degrees. I'm surprised by this, but it may be because I live in Utah, where there are many people who stayed here after graduation, even though it wasn't their ultimate job destination. So, there's a higher saturation of people with degrees, and fewer jobs to accomodate those people. I suppose the only reason I would even play with this chart is if I felt like things in my life were out of balance. So, I'll be honest: I feel like things in my life are out of balance. I think I'm in the midst of some big decisions on the "class" front, although I haven't fully formalized plans or made official decisions. I'm sure they'll be more for me to say on that later.
• For our monthly "adventure," Nick and I explored the right fork of Emigration Canyon, just to the northeast of Salt Lake City. At the top of the hill is a memorial to those who came through that passage (the Donner party, the first Mormons in 1847), as well as a spectacular view of the valley, a hiking trail, and...some radio towers. There was also a sign that indicated continuing on the road would take us into Morgan County (Utah), and so we continued. We passed East Canyon reservoir (I assume it was a reservoir, it may be a lake), and entered the outskirts of the city of Morgan. The house my grandmother was born in (in 1914) has been bulldozed, although it was there when my mom and I passed through there in 2002. We stopped at the Jubilee grocery store in Morgan, and like every good road trip, I bought some Kraft ranch because it was on sale?!? (What's up with me and buying Kraft ranch when it's on sale, even hundreds of miles from my home?) We drove through Stoddard, Peterson, and then Ogden Canyon, before stopping at the fabric store in Centerville. Overall, it was a delightful day filled with ranchers (!), green hills, windy ridges, good conversation, mini-hikes and some sun on my left arm :). Previous monthly adventures have included Zion National Park (April), and a snow hike in the Mirror Lake Recreation Area (March), where we watched huge chunks of ice break into the river.
• The countdown is on to Camp! I'm looking forward to some sunshine, no cell phone, some serious laughter, and being with people who warm my soul.
• I also can't wait to see nieces and nephews this summer! (I'd like to see them any season of the year - summer just happens to be next). Love 'em!
• Still waiting on the accreditation application. My boss says it's good that I'm still waiting - it takes longer for them to accept than to reject.

Dear Life,

I am trying really hard to focus. I wear those fancy noise-cancelling headphones. It makes people think I'm popular, and listening to the best music. Really, I'm listening to the sound of air, and my own brain.

Please stop placing shiny things in my paths. I tend to stop and play with them, and turn them over in my hands and say "ooooooooo." Really, life, I'm asking nicely.

In sincere hope,

Trish

My Little Sugarhouse

I did go running. On Tuesday night. It was new, interesting, liberating, good. I didn't have any pockets on me, which I found complex when carrying my pump (which had no place else to be but in my hand), a juice box, and my cell phone. As far as I can tell, runners don't use things like rolling suitcases in these sorts of situations. Based on mapquest, I think I went about 2 miles, or to Liberty Park and back.

[future note: If I wanted to do a 5k, I could run to Liberty Park, and then go around the 1.5 mile track.]

The sun was going down, trees blossoming, people in their yards or walking dogs. Houses for sale (hmmm, they were all so perfect, but so  outofmypricerange).

My brother called me when I was about 1/2 mile from home on the tail end of the run.

"Whatcha doing?"
"Running."

[start walking]

"From who?"
"Myself."

[Silence, but the audible sound of the gears in his head cranking.]

"It's a joke. I've heard that some people do this for exercise, and so I thought I would try it."
[pause]
"Oh."

And don't worry, my funny pharmacisttwinofa brother is a smart guy. He just wasn't sure why someone [me] would run.

Funny.



Maybe I'll tell you about my running pants, because I have a thing for discussing pants. Some other time.One last attire comment: For those ladies who run, Underarmour is a life saver. Oh yes.

It's been a while. Here's what I've been doing:

• Working my pants off. Not actually. Just working hard!
• I turned in my accreditation application (for the second time actually, the first time it never made it through the mail) a little while ago. It's similar to taking the bar exam, or something. After my application is accepted, I take an 8 hour test in the library, and then an oral with a group of professionals.
• This evening I watched my adult neighbor (in his 20s) hook his nephew up with a rappelling harness and they climbed up and down the tree in the front yard. It was funny and interesting. A few years ago, on the 4th of July or something, I went outside to see fireworks coming from the Bees stadium and heard a rustling above me. This same neighbor was sitting in the tree watching the fireworks.
• Last weekend, Nick and I went to Zion National Park! It was so fantastic! It rained and snowed on us some, on our various hikes, and I happened to be wearing all cotton (socks, jeans, T-shirts) and a down coat (down + rain = a cold, wet person who smells like a duck). Nick was smarter and wore wool socks and liners, and could actually find his rain coat. I'll post some pictures a little later. We also ate at the very delicious Troy's BBQ in St. George. So good.
• I've been cooking in the crockpot every Thursday for the last few weeks. It's because I'm attending a Financial Peace University class with 2 of my coworkers, and get home about 10pm. And hungry.
• I'm thinking about taking up running. It's not because I like running, but it has occurred to me that you can do the same good in running as walking, only faster. This may actually be worth it. I still have yet to actually do any running.
• I'm a member 3 months running of the Utah Food Co-op, and I love it! It's a cheap way to get great meats, fruits and veggies, and have a chance to serve the community. I think everyone should join! (There's locations all over the Wasatch Front, for people who live in Utah.)
• Tonight I cut five onions. I wore my sunglasses. It helped.
• This year Pete the Pepper is big enough to be planted outside. I'm also planting tomatoes and fresh basil. :)

Hmm, yep. That's all. Happy weekend!

I'm avoiding going to bed specifically because I have an early meeting at work tomorrow. Yeah, I know, explain that one to me.

But here's what I've got to say. Ack...I can hardly say it out loud.

I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance.

I really did. When I first became a proud car owner, I got Allstate. I loved their customer service, and after having an accident to deal with under my parents' Geico coverage, I knew I didn't want to go with them.

Well, so dawns the day of Allstate deciding not to give me great customer service. I called them a little while ago and asked to add renter's insurance, and I've heard less from them than from the vacant lot across the street.

Since I realized I was probably paying extra overall for my "great customer service," I sought out the world of other options.

Here's what I discovered.

6 months for a 27-year old, single girl who drives a sporty Toyota Matrix (in Utah)

Allstate: $885

Progressive: $473

I know. I can't believe it either.

(Hopefully you can now feel better about yourself by realizing you have cheaper car insurance than someone out there. Mine, at least until last night, was astronomical.)

I totally got inspired. Some of you bloggers have been sewing lately, and I just had to join the club.

What I did was take these:



and make this:



I took my pair of cords, that fit a little weird in the thighs, and fixed the whole thigh problem by making them into a skirt! The brilliant part is you cut up the pants and use almost every inch of fabric, and when you're done, it's not pants! Amazing, I know. I used this great pattern down to the letter.

My pants had the ever-so-slight bootcut, and this turned out well, flaring out just below the hips (yay for A-line!). I tried to take a picture of me wearing it, but my dark lighting plus self-timer work was sub par. (Meaning, all the photos I took look like some sort of an alien, that happens to be wearing my new skirt).

I decided not to hem it, but just to sew a line about 1/2 inch above the edge, to keep it from fraying too far.

I would say overall, I spent 3 hours on this. That includes the 45 minutes I fought with my bobbin. Sometimes my sewing machine just needs some slappin' around.

3 Things You Didn't Know:

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1. Your personal power animal is the Bullfrog
2. Your 'Numerology' number is 1. If it wasn't bulls**t, it would mean that you are ambitious, independent, and self-sufficient. Although you are generally happy, loving, dynamic and charismatic, you can sometimes be egotistical, selfish and melodramatic.
3. According to the US Census Bureau°, 0.003% of US residents have the first name 'Trish' and 0.0023% have the surname 'Tolley'. The US has around 300 million residents, so we guesstimate there is only 1 American who goes by the name Trish Tolley.

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My coworker found this website today (while she was legitimately working, I might add), and we had fun with it. We ended up with quite the range of animals, but you should see for yourself. Please do tell - what's your power animal?

So, I'm giving a presentation this morning. I just read all about Tamsin's, and then Melissa's desire to consult all of unknowing folks in the ways of true life and happiness. Nick has always said that would be his prime job, but he would like to be called a sage while doing so.

[As a side note, my presentation is about DNA and genealogy, and takes place at BYU, so, uh, that rules out the miniskirt I was considering.]

So, here' s the conundrum. What to wear?

Option 1: Black pants, wingtippy shoes, my black with white pinstripes business jacket [from H&M!], and a reddish purple vertical striped shirt. [Yes those are men's shoes. Mine are not.]

Option 2: above pants, shoes, jacket, with a blue vertical stripe shirt. I always lean toward this one because it's a really nice color of blue.

Option 3: Brown pinstripe pants, brown shoes (wow, this sounds boring), a maroon shirt, and a brown jacket.

Option 4: my ethereal white peasanty shirt, sassy grey pants, some shoes [I have no idea], and some color on there somewhere. Too bad I don't have a colored jacket. White makes it difficult for people looking for me to actually locate me (because my head is, well, pale all over).

 

I think I just put myself to sleep. Still, this is the basic wear for folks who speak for an entire hour about an old-person topic. I can't shake the boat too much here.

I need to go shower. That will help my outfit right there.

I'm leaving at about 12:30.
I heart your advice. And I'll likely try on each of these outfits anyway.

Please excuse me while I clamber onto my soapbox.

Investments, folks. Investments come with a few principles. You are giving some money which you don't need at the time, and placing it somewhere so that it can magically grow. Magically? It comes with risk. Risk is a principle that comes with emotional implications. When one risks, one is putting something out there, with the chance that it may be successful, or it may fail, and then the "something" is gone.

I'm so bothered, or so curious, how it is that people made investments without realizing that it involved risk. Things don't magically grow. Things don't appear out of nowhere. You don't get something for nothing. The something you are trading when you invest in stocks, bonds, franchises, is your emotional comfort. You are trading the idea, and the legitimate possibility, that the money doesn't come back. As my parents would say: "money doesn't grow on trees, yaknow?"

And so why is it that we are surprised when the money didn't come back?

I've lost about half my 401(k). No, I'm not retiring next year. (Ha - wouldn't that be nice?) When I signed up for this company 401(k), it was explained to me that because of my young age in regards to retirement savings, I may benefit from a more aggressive approach. More risk. Guess what? At this very moment, it was risky, meaning that part of my hard-earned money is gone. That was the risk level that I chose with my investment plan.

Today, Bernie Madoff pleaded pled guilty to fleecing people for almost 20 years. Those people took a risk. It looks like it didn't work out so well for them.

In life, we all take risks. Just sayin'.

First, some self-evident truths:

1. I have a short attention span.
2. This "adult" business - working, in particular - is wearing me out. :)

The hypothetical:

If one works constantly, one is bound to be tired of doing this at some point. What is one to do when it becomes difficult to focus on the task at hand, and the mind continually wanders to various other (random) things and ideas?

Does anyone have ideas of how to recharge, particularly when drastic changes are not really an option?

Maybe I've got the January itch because it's incredibly, beautifully sunny outside right now, and my 3rd floor office window looks east onto the snow-covered mountains. It's just one of those scenes of "hope" and "future" and "singing on mountain tops, possibly in Austria." But I'm working.

What's this "one" to do? I'm looking for some suggestions, which may result in my looking fondly upon you for ever more. Oh wait, I already adore you. Please, though, suggestions.

So, I think there's something wrong with me.

I continued organizing today. I even left work early so I could do more. I am terrified about this; I hope it's curable. Ok, fine, treatable?

I accomplished 2 more things on my list of 52. [Just as a side note, I made the list of 52 so that I would do one area each week, and it would take all year. It looks like I'm really throwing a wrench in this New Year's Resolution.]

• Cleaned off my main kitchen counter top. This one was baaaaad. It was so sorely neglected, and now, it can breathe. I scrubbed it too, and then got to arrange my fruit in the fruit bowl, just to show off how beautiful my counter looks.
• Cleaned off and dusted and organized the top of my bedroom armoire. I have the coolest vintage armoire that Nick found at DI about 2 years ago, and I was putting it to shame before by having a mess on top. I have now paired lots of socks (and am appalled at the stack of socks which currently have no mate), put away various pirate parephernalia, and organized various medical supplies (oh, the endless syringes that appear in my room - all unused). Now it is the happy home to my desk stuff, pump supplies, and I hung my very cool modern art piece behind it.

I also picked up a 32-piece set of airtight canisters at Costco tonight. Now, all my gluten free flours are in containers, rather than in bags nestled into a box that once held a "flat" of soda, on the floor. Yee-haw! I also had a lot of fun pouring things like corn starch, which make a huge puff in the air when poured. Um, yeah. I'm easily amused.

Also on the list of worrisome symptoms, three posts in three days? Good heavens, there seems to be a problem here.

One last creepy thing: I did the dishes right after dinner.

I better go lay down.

(In other news...I am seriously coveting this hamburger bed.)

I had some guests over tonight. I love these guys, but I found myself unprepared for guests.

One of my resolutions for 2009 involves organization. I have been working on a list of the "52 places to organize" this year. I have to say I don't quite have a full list of 52, but it's coming along.

My guests made me think more about having "everything in its place." I know this is true for me - if things have a designated place, it is much easier to figure out what to do with them, manage the size/number of the items in the "place," and easily pare down when the place is too full.

My other pitfall is not following through. It's not that I'm completely lazy, but I'm so busy with work, my cooking adventures, church, playing with Nick, and well, sleeping, that there are things left undone. I am generally very good at doing my dishes and laundry and scrubbing things down, but the thing that comes to mind are "new things." For instance, the lamp near my front door broke a little while ago. First, the plastic shade shattered (it had gotten too hot). Then, the turnable knob to turn the light on and off stopped working, so I had resorted to unscrewing the light bulb when it was time to turn it off. Well, last time I was at Ikea, I picked up a new lamp to replace it. Unfortunately, the new lamp had been sitting in its box, unopened, for at least 3 weeks. These are the types of things I have trouble following through with because of the busyness of life. I also have a framed art piece, and a new set of hanging hardware, but haven't put the two together and gotten the piece on the wall. Sometime soon, I hope.

Tonight, in an effort to work with my 52 places, and to feel better about my scattered life, I set to work. Here are some of the things I was able to do:

• clean and organize my underpants drawer. (this was actually on my list of 52).
• some minor putting away in the pantry
• putting together the lamp (mentioned above), screwing in light bulb, plugging in, and tossing old and very broken other lamp
• vacuumed the corners under the credenza, since I was already under there for the lamp process
• combine Jelly Bellys (I received a bag, and it needed to be with its friends). yummy.
• got a few things from the store (yummy apples, and some chips)
• went through several Real Simple issues, ripping out the few articles/recipes that I want to keep, and recycling these old issues. put a new set of issues in the bathroom.
• located first aid supplies from around the house, and put them in a tub in the bathroom. this will keep me from buying endless bandaids because I think I've run out.

There's a lot more to do, but for another day. I feel much more centered when I have located a place for things.

Ahhhhhhh.