While I Was Out….

So, I have read on a few blogs that people are talking about the term Alpha Blogging.

I never heard this term before. I didn’t really look into it, honestly. Here is what I gathered. But let me disect it.

Alpha – leader of the pack, top dog

Blogging – an online journal

Alpha Blogging – leader in writing an online journal?

I am pretty sure I don’t qualify. But, if you are following me, and you think that I am an Alpha Blogger, I have a little advice for you. Stop following me because I don’t know where the hell I am going!

We Interrupt This Lack of Blogging….

I found out today, two days after taking two weeks off, that they are finally closing my work site on July 15. It is such a relief to finally have a end date.

I have read a few blogs (very few), commented on a few blogs (even less than I read), and in general don’t feel like posting right now. I’ll be back though. I tried that quitting thing, remember?

Traveling

I have been watching some George Carlin videos since he passed away. I never was a big fan, mostly because my parents didn’t care for his comedy so I never really watched it. But a friend of mine pointed me to some videos he thought I should see. Then I started watching some more.

This one just seems to go with the trip.

Long Beautiful Hair

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

For those that don’t know, I am growing my hair so I can donate it to Locks of Love, in memory of my sister who died of lung cancer. Hair was very important to Laurianne, and one of the things that always bothered her was that she might lose her hair. She never did.

My hair has been getting long. Some of you may remember when it was extremely short. I have taken pictures, but I have been too lazy to post them, however, here is a crappy cell phone camera picture of myself from a few weeks ago.

So, today I had one of those loose hairs come off my head, you know the ones unless you NEVER had hair, and I decided before I put it in the garbage, that maybe I would measure it. So, if I went bald right now, Locks of Love would get 14 1/2 inches of hair. Woo! Maybe I should start saving the hair that gets loose too!

Unfortunately, I can’t shave my head bald yet. My goal is to wait for 2 more years, until after Calem turns 5 years old. I want the event to mean something to him, and I think five is a good age to start understanding about helping and doing things for other people. And no, I won’t really go bald unless it is for St. Baldrick’s. And even then, I better still be able to donate it.

Special note to my mom: Yes, that mark on my forehead has always been there! It’s a freckle. I love you, too!

Great Minds

I have had an idea floating around in my head a few days now. And I saw a few blogs today that had posts with a similar idea to them.

I have tried to write the post twice now. I had been thinking of it for days. And each time I would write, and my ideas would start to flounder, and I lost interest in it. I am sure if I lose interest in what I write, it isn’t going to be interesting to you. (In fact, that’s one of the first rules I learned about writing.) But I saved them. Maybe I can work with the idea another day.

So instead, you get this somewhat boring post about nothing in particular. Enjoy!

I Can Be Judgmental

A few months ago, I made a decision to myself that I was going to try to be less judgmental. People make mistakes. They learn from them. They move on. But every now and then, I run into a hurdle, and if you knew me in junior high school, you would know that I could never jump those hurdles. I am not a jumper.

Recently my judgment has been put to the test. And I am going to lay out my judgmentalism right here, right now: Why are teenagers so annoying!? Do the hormones make them stupid?!

I don’t know how many teenagers live next door to us, but on any given day, we can find 4 – 20 of them out in the yard. When the storm hit really hard, at least one girl runs out in the rain, shrieking really hard like she never had a shower before. The boys block our driveway with their car, but at least they are nice enough to ask if we need them to move it. When their is a lot of them, they turn on music and dance in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Mostly, I have been rolling my eyes and thinking to myself that they will outgrow this. But yesterday, actions drove me to finally saying something.

Nikki had started barking. Woof! Woof! WOOF! Woof! She was really bothered by something going on outside the window. Nikki is also a force to be reckoned with in some people’s eyes, because she is a black dog, and even though she is one of the sweetest dogs you probably ever meet, people tend to be scared of her. So, I was collecting laundry, and I look out the window to see what she is barking at. Someone walking along the street who passed by our house. (Our yard is not fenced, btw.) Or maybe she saw a squirrel. I look out there and three girls and a guy are walking along the fence. But, as I look more, they aren’t walking. They are loitering. In my yard. Nikki continues to bark, and they either don’t hear it or ignore her. She is in the house, after all.

I watch these kids a few minutes. They are grabbing each other. Tickling each other. They are running through our yard like it is an extension of their fenced property, though I think they may have been trying to be out of view of the parents of the house. Fed up with Nikki’s barking, I decided to ask them to take their hormonal selves out of my yard. Yes, hormones. As I open the door, the guy has tickled one of the girls so much, that she is on the ground and he is sitting on top of her. She is squeeling at the top of her lungs, making it obvious that she is probably the one who runs in the rain shrieking. I don’t know where the other two girls went.

I put Nikki on her tie out line. I hold onto it, and open the door. Nikki lunges a little, wanting to go play and see what all the excitement is away. And I said in a firm voice, “Can you please go someplace else and do that? My dog thinks you are attacking each other.”

I got an eye roll. The girl said, “I guess” in a flat, obstinate voice. Then they took it to the front yard where they toned it down a whole heck of a lot!

However, this has helped me to realize a few things:

1. I am the mean old lady next door.
2. Even though I don’t have kids, I can still sound like my mother.
3. Sounding like my mother isn’t that bad. Why do people have a problem with this?

Crazy 8’s

Metalmom tagged me with this a while back. I didn’t do it right away because I was lazy busy.

It’s called Crazy 8’s. I guess I am suppose to choose 8 things about each category. Anyway, here we go:

8 Things I’m Passionate About

1. Photography
2. Writing
3. A really good book
4. Chocolate
5. Gaming
6. Dark sunglasses – Do you know how hard it is to find dark sunglasses!?
7. Music
8. Those very important people in my life who normally get listed in these memes, but I decided to be different and not list each one separately. (I didn’t forget. You know who you are!)

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

1. Travel
2. Take singing lessons
3. Convince myself that healthy food tastes better than junk food.
4. Have/raise some children
5. Find a job that challenges me
6. Take a photo that people buy as a postcard
7. Eat sushi in Japan
8. See the Statue of Liberty with my own eyes

8 Things I Say Often

1. I love you.
2. Wait.
3. Hi, Babe! (To the cats and dog. lol)
4. Are you hungry?
5. How are you?
6. Do you want to drive or shall I?
7. Sorry.
8. Thank you.

8 books I’ve Read Recently

1. The Last Unicorn
2. A Series of Unforunate Events – #13 The End
3. A Series of Unforunate Events – #12 The Penultimate Peril
4. A Series of Unforunate Events – #11 The Grim Grotto
5. A Series of Unforunate Events – #10 The Slippery Slope
6. A Series of Unforunate Events – #9 The Carnivorous Carnival
7. A Series of Unforunate Events – #8 The Hostile Hospital
8. A Series of Unforunate Events – #7 The Vile Village 

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. Silent Lucidity
2. Iris
3. Everything Changes
4. Falling
5. How You Remind Me
6. Outside
7. Serenity

8 Things That Attract Me to My Best Friends

1. Humor
2. Understanding
3. Compassion
4. Caring
5. Love
6. Fun
7. Creativity
8. Trust

8 People I Think Should Do Crazy 8’s

1. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it.
2. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it.
3. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it. 
4. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it. 
5. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it.
6. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it.
7. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it.
8. I’ll just say it 8 times. I think everyone has done this who wants to do it.

 

 

Chickens and Rainbows (aka Hi, Mom! I’m alive!)

Friday morning started with a chicken looking in from my window:

And ended with an orange sky and a full arch rainbow:

That shone through, even though thunder and lightening filled the sky:

But I don’t have a picture of the thunder and lightening. Believe me when I say, these pictures don’t do that night justice.

Every day we have had a storm, except Sunday which was beautiful to look at but hot and humid and not my type of weather at all. Then again, I am going to stand by my philosophy that guys dig pasty white girls. It is better than sunburnt red girls you can’t touch.

Last night was the worst. The storm pretty much started when I got home. It let up for a short bit, and then seemed to come back again from the east. I have heard people say storms from the east are worse than storms from the west, the direction they normally come from. This one moved in quickly. I turned off my computer as lightening strobed the sky and thunder cracked overhead. Water poured from the sky, from off the roof, like someone turned off a faucet. Then we heard hail or debris hitting the window (I say hail, Dan disagrees) so we went into the closet. Miss Britt’s recent Iowa trip always flirts through my mind when we have to go to the closet. Five minutes later the storm was over.

Today, bright and sunny again. We will see what this evening brings.

I know weather isn’t interesting to a lot of people, but in the ten years I have lived in Indiana, these are probably some of the worst storms we have seen. We have had flooding. People have died. It makes me think of how much the weather is like life.

Because no matter how bad it gets, the sunny days will return.

Happy Trails

Yesterday, I found out that I won’t be working by mid-summer. My job is being moved to a new location. That’s all I am going to say about that right now, though.

This morning, I went let Nikki out. Suddenly, Brutus dived into the blinds as I was opening them. When I got the blinds open, there was a chicken staring in at us. A CHICKEN! I said, “HOLY CRAP, there’s a CHICKEN outside!” Dan didn’t hear me. But I took pictures. Interesting thing is, I know the some of our neighbors have reported the chicken neighbors for having chickens. But oh, well. No skin off my nose.

Yesterday I bought plane tickets. Dan and I are flying one-way to California to buy a car from my parents. It’s a car I have really liked and it’s in good condition. We plan to drive it back to Indiana. My folks sent the car to their mechanic, an old friend, who replaced the timing chain and said it was in good working order.

From California, which we will probably leave less than 24 hours after we get there, we will drive to Colorado. We originally planned to go through Las Vegas, cause I want to see that city one day, but it is two hour extra, so we might just go the shorter way. We will stay in Colorado a few days. It is a place we have thought about moving to, so we really want to check it out.

From Colorado, we will drive to Indiana again.

Dan and I did this road trip before, when we moved to Indiana. We didn’t make the Colorado stop along the way, but it is a trip we had always said we wanted to take again. I don’t know if we will go back home through Nebraska and Iowa this time, but we have both been looking forward to it. The best part is that this time, we won’t be driving with two cats, so we will have a little more freedom in that regard.

Depsite the job stuff, we are still taking this trip. I asked my boss about my time off and she asked if I still wanted to take it. I said, “Sure I do! I bought my plane tickets!”

The Big Oh-Three

Today is someone’s birthday! And are the big 0-3. It is so hard to believe this big guy use to be such a tiny little baby, and yet it seems like it was just yesterday this big guy was such a tiny little baby. I don’t know where those three years have gone.

Every year, for Calem’s birthday, I write him a letter. I have two so far. I have sealed them and when he is older, like maybe 3-0, I will give them to him. I don’t really know what to say to him this year, but I am sure I will think of something!

So, in honor of Calem’s birthday, here are three things about him:

1. He like MSN. He see his Aunt Lynda on the video cam, but he would rather have more winks. (If you have MSN, you probably know what Winks are.)
2. Calem keeps a very busy social calendar, and is very active which keeps Oma and Opa young.
3. Calem loves Elmo. Elmo rocks. Elmo, Elmo, Elmo, Elmo. But I think he might still call him Melmo.

I finally bought our plane tickets for our trip. The price went up which made me sad. It has gone up the past two days, so I got them now before they were over $200. I will be seeing the birthday boy at the end of the month. I was going to talk about the trip today, but it will have to be tomorrow. Today’s post is about someone turning the big 0-3.